Dragon\'s Lair

Dragon's Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released in June 1983 by Cinematronics. It featured animation created by former Disney animator Don Bluth. Most other games of the era represented the character as a sprite, which consisted of a series of bitmaps animated by playing them in succession. However due to hardware limitations of the era, artists were greatly restricted in the detail they could achieve using that technique; the resolution, framerate and number of frames were severely constrained. Dragon's Lair overcame those limitations by tapping into the vast storage potential of laserdisc, but imposed other limitations on the actual gameplay.

The game's enormous contrast with other arcade games of the time created a sensation when it appeared, and was played so heavily that many machines often broke due to the strain of overuse. It was also arguably the most successful game on this medium and is aggressively sought after by collectors.

Overview

Dragon's Lair features the hero, "Dirk the Daring", attempting to rescue "Princess Daphne" from the evil dragon Singe holed up in a wizard's castle. The screen shows animated scenes, and the player executes an action by selecting a direction or pressing the sword button with correct timing. The comedy of the game stemmed from not only the bizarre looking creatures and death scenes, but the fact that while Dirk was a skilled knight, he was somewhat clumsy in his efforts and was a reluctant hero, prone to shrieking and reacting in horror to the various dangers he encounters.

The attract mode of the game displays various short vignettes of gameplay with the accompanying narration:

Instead of controlling the character's actions directly, players control his reflexes, with different full motion video (FMV) segments playing for correct or incorrect choices.

A quote from a Newsweek article (August 8, 1983) captures the level of excitement displayed over the game during that time:

Dragon's Lair was also one of the first arcade games to cost USD$0.50 (or two "credits") for a single play, twice as much as games traditionally cost up until that time.

Background

Rick Dyer was inspired by the text game Adventure. This game gave rise to an invention he dubbed "The Fantasy Machine." This device went through many incarnations from a rudimentary computer using paper tape (with illustrations and text) to a system that manipulated a videodisc containing mostly still images and narration. The game it played was a graphic adventure called The Secrets of the Lost Woods.

Attempts to market The Fantasy Machine had repeatedly failed. Allegedly, an Ideal Toy Company representative walked out in the middle of one presentation.

His inspiration allegedly came during his viewing of The Secret of NIMH, whereby he realized he needed quality animation and an action script to bring excitement to his game.

He elected to take a reserved but as of yet unscripted location from The Secrets of the Lost Woods known as The Dragon's Lair.

Development

Dragon's Lair began as a concept by Rick Dyer, president of Advanced Microcomputer Systems (which later became RDI Video Systems). A team of game designers created the characters and locations, then choreographed Dirk's movements as he encountered the monsters and obstacles in the castle. The art department at AMS created storyboards for each episode as a guide for the final animation.

The game was animated by veteran Disney animator Don Bluth and his studio. Development was done on a shoestring budget, cost US$1 million and took seven months to complete. Since the studio couldn't afford to hire any models, the animators used photos from Playboy magazines for inspiration for the character Princess Daphne. The animators also used their own voices for all the characters instead of hiring actors in order to keep costs down, although it does feature one professional voice actor: Michael Rye as the narrator in the attract sequence (he is also the narrator for Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II).

Dirk the Daring's voice belongs to film editor Dan Molina, who later went on to perform the bubbling sound effects for another animated character, Fish Out of Water, from 2005's Disney film Chicken Little, which he also edited. Dirk shrieks or makes other noises on numerous occasions but speaks words only twice. First, he mutters "Uh, oh" when the platform begins to recede during the fire-swinging sequence, then he exclaims "Wow!" when first entering the Dragon's Lair and laying eyes on the slumbering Princess Daphne.

The music and many sound effects were scored and performed by Chris Stone at EFX Systems in Burbank. Bryan Rusenko and Glen Berkovitz were the recording engineers. The 43 second "Attract Loop" was recorded in a straight 18 hour session. Featured instruments, all keyboards, were the E-mu Emulator and Memory MOOG.

Technical

The original laserdisc players shipped with the game (Pioneer LD-V1000 or PR-7820) often broke. Though the Pioneer players were fine in quality, the laserdisc players just weren't built to undergo the strain Dragon's Lair imposed. Laserdisc players were designed primarily for playing movies, which resulted in a gradual movement of the laser assembly across the disc as the data was read linearly. However Dragon's Lair would seek to different locations on the disc every few seconds to access specific animation sequences as dictated by gameplay. The massive amount of seeking, coupled with the raw amount of hours the hardware was required to operate, could result in failure of the laserdisc player in a relatively short amount of time. The fact that the game was immensely popular and almost continuously played didn't help matters. As a result, the laserdisc player often had to be repaired or replaced.

It is rare to find a Dragon's Lair game intact with the original player. There are conversion kits available to use more modern laserdisc players in American games.

The original USA 1983 game used a single side NTSC laserdisc player manufactured by Pioneer, the other side was metal backed to prevent disc bending. The European versions of the game were manufactured by Atari under license and used single side PAL discs manufactured by Philips (not metal backed). Philips was also the supplier of the laserdisc players for the European games which were of course different from the American ones.

The European arcade version of Dragon's Lair was licensed to Atari Ireland (as was Space Ace later). The cabinet design was therefore different from the Cinematronics version. The main differences were that the LED digital scoring panel was replaced with an on screen scoring display appearing after each level. The Atari branding was present in various places on the machine (marquee, coin slots, control panel and speaker grill area), and the machines featured the cone LED player start button used extensively on Atari machines. Although licensing for this region was exclusive to Atari, a number of Cinematronics machines were also available from suppliers mostly via a gray import.

Legacy

The original Fantasy Machine was later released as a prototype video game console known as Halcyon.

Various home computer adaptations of Dragon's Lair were released during the 80's and 90's but because of (at the time) high memory consumption due to the detailed animation of the games, not all the scenes from the original game were included. This led to Escape from Singe's Castle, a pseudo-sequel where Daphne is kidnapped at the moment of Dirk's victory by a shapeshifter, forcing him to venture even further into the castle to save her again. The game was comprised of unused scenes from the laserdisc version, though some portions (such as the lizard king and mud men) were shortened. The 8-bit versions were created by Software Projects, while Readysoft handled the 16-bit versions. These used video compression and new storage techniques, but came on multiple 3.5" floppy disks.

The game also led to the creation of a short-lived television cartoon series by Ruby-Spears Productions (in which the originally nameless Dragon was given the name Singe, and Princess Daphne now wore a long pink dress). Thirteen half-hour episodes were produced. The show was generally run of the mill, but boasted an unusual feature: to keep the show in the spirit of the game, before each commercial break a narrator would ask what the viewer would do to solve the problem facing Dirk. After the commercial break, the outcomes of the various choices were shown before Dirk acts on the correct idea (with the occasional exception) to save the day.

A comic book mini series based on the game, but incorporating elements from the cartoon series as well, like Dirk's horse Bertram, was released in 2003 by Crossgen Publishing, concurrent with a mini series based on Space Ace. Arcana Studio is currently publishing the entire comic book series in 2006 as there were three issues that were never before published.

The game inspired a sequel (disregarding the Escape from Singe's Castle as one), Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, created shortly after the original, but released in 1991. It also led to the creation of 1984's Space Ace, another game animated by Don Bluth and his crew.

Dragon's Lair III: Curse of Mordread was made for Amiga and DOS in 1992, mixing original footage with scenes from Time Warp that were not included in the original PC release due to memory constraints.

In late 2002, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original arcade release of the smash hit, Digital Leisure Inc. produced a special edition DVD box set of the three arcade classics that defined laser disc arcade games: Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp. All the scenes from the original arcade releases were included and optionally the player could select new scenes that were animated in 1983, but not included in any previous Dragon’s Lair release. The games were also updated to include higher quality video, authentic scene order and a new difficulty selection to make it more challenging for Dragon’s Lair pros. Digital Leisure worked with a small independent game developer, Derek Sweet, to release a CD-ROM 4-Disc Box Set for Windows based PCs.

Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair was developed in 2002, as a 3D interpretation of the game for Microsoft Windows, Xbox, GameCube and the PS2.

In 2005, Digital Leisure created a new Dragon's Lair III which utilized 3D footage from Dragon's Lair 3D, but controlled via a system like the original arcade games.

In Late 2006, Digital Leisure released "Dragon's Lair HD", which features an all-new High-Definition transfer from the original negatives (as opposed to just sourcing the laserdisc). The original mono soundtrack has also been remastered into Dolby Digital 5.1 sound (on PCs that can support it).

According to Don Bluth and Gary Goldman a Dragon's Lair movie has been scripted and is ready to go into production once financing for the project is in place. The film will be in the classic, traditional 2D animation style.

On April 9th, 2007, a Blu-Ray version of Dragon's Lair was released. This uses the same HD transfer as the aforementioned PC release, but went through a 6 month process to clean and remaster the image. Dragon's Lair Blu-Ray is the first title to fully utilize BD-J technology. An HD DVD version has also been announced by Digital Leisure with an August 15th release date.

Platform ports

Dragon's Lair led to the creation of numerous video game ports for home systems. Since some original sequences did not fit in the ports for those systems, they were re-released only in a virtual sequel called Escape from Singe's Castle. A non-linear arcade interpretation of Dragon's Lair and Escape from Singe's castle with elements of platform and puzzle was made by Software Projects for 8-bit machines in 1986.

The sequence with the drawbridge and eyestalks seen in the attract mode was excised from the original arcade version of the game, but still remains on the laserdisc, playable in fan-made modifications of the program, or in the version of the game released in Europe as well as the Sega CD, PC, DVD, and HD versions.

A platformer adaptation of the game was also made for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super NES called Dragon's Lair.

The Game Boy version (entitled Dragon's Lair: The Legend) in particular has almost nothing to do with the source game aside from Dirk as the protagonist, Mordroc as the villain, and saving Princess Daphne as the objective. In fact, the game is a port of a five-year-old ZX Spectrum game, Roller Coaster, the result being a platform game where Dirk has to negotiate a series of thinly-disguised fairground rides. The later Game Boy Color version, however, is a relatively faithful rendition of the original game.

The Dragon's Lair Deluxe Pack was released for home computers containing all the FMV for all three games. Though it contains all the video including some scenes cut from the North American version of the game, the gameplay was reported as lackluster.

ReadySoft released Dragon’s Lair for the Apple Macintosh on CD-ROM in 1994. A Sega CD version was also released.

DAPHNE, an emulator for laserdisc based games, can emulate the original 1983 version. DAPHNE requires the ROM files plus the original laserdisc to run. Alternatively, an MPEG-2 video stream and Ogg Vorbis audio stream can be substituted for the laserdisc. These streams can be generated from the original laserdisc or from Digital Leisure's 2002 DVD.

Dragon's Lair in pop culture

• Dragon's Lair is featured in the Video Games Live tour
• The Adult Swim comedy Robot Chicken shows Dirk battling a mid-life crisis in the segment Dragon's Lair: The Middle Ages.
• The TV comedy Silver Spoons featured a Dragon's Lair arcade machine in the family room set.
• In 1988 the Italo Disco band Koto published a song "Dragon's Legend" with the text of the attraction mode narration and the sounds from the game.
• A joke is made involving Dragon's Lair and Space Ace in episode XXI of Samurai Jack; an old man tells Jack to take the left route to get to the Dragon's Lair. When Jack asks what is at the right path, he replies, "Space Ace," confusing Jack.
• Dragon's Lair was once a featured game on the 1980s video game based game show, Starcade. The entire episode can be seen in Digital Leisure's 20th Anniversary DVD and PC CD ROM editions.
• The NES version was lampooned by the Angry Video Game Nerd, who mocked the game for its poor movement detection and numerous flaws (i.e. touching a door can kill you).

Screenshots

Dirk the Daring

The Princess Daphne

Singe, the dragon, asleep atop his pile of treasure

Dirk fighting Singe for the magic sword

See also

• Space Ace
• Dragon's Lair II
• Digital Leisure
• Halcyon

References

External links

• The Dragon's Lair Project Your original source for all laserdisc gaming needs since 1997.
• Digital Leisure Website for all licensed versions of Dragon's Lair.
• Dragon's Lair Fans Website Everything about Dragon's Lair, for the fans.
• Dragon's Lair at the Killer List of Videogames
• Dragon's Lair at the Internet Movie Database
• Dragon's Lair at TV.com
• Detailed Info on Dragon's Lair from Cataroo
• Syd Bolton's Dragon's Lair Page contains detailed information on each version
• Dragon's Lair at World of Spectrum
• Dragon's Lair Blu-Ray Review
• Dragon's Lair HD Preview @ IGN Vault Network
• The Dot Eaters Article featuring a history of Dragon's Lair and the 80's laser game craze