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When You Want Dragon's Lair Done Right!
Written by TheDCD on Thursday, November 3, 2005
When it comes to the subject of old-school gaming, I'm all over it quicker than Ted Kennedy topples a Washington bar. I've been into it for some time, and, over the years, I've garnered a few favorites that stick out in my mind. One of those favorites is Dragon's Lair, a 1983 arcade game that's basically an interactive cartoon at best. Produced by the folks at Cinematronics and put together by animators Gary Goldman and Don Bluth, the game turned out to be a whopping success, as gamers would lead the speechless Dirk the Daring through a castle of traps and monsters in order to face the evil Singe the Dragon and rescue the darling Princess Daphne from captivity.
Hey, Dragon's Lair and I go way back, back to the days of a Celebrity Sports Center tournament in '83 and me actually getting told by my dad that he was worried about me spending so much time on it and the homemade guide my friend Steve made. I told him not to worry, as I would eventually move on to Space Ace, released the same year from the same team. Dragon's Lair II: Timewarp came out in 1991 and rekindled my love for the franchise, and immediately solidified itself as a superb sequel with even bigger scenarios and a more dramatic conclusion.
Ah, but ask me how the home versions of Dragon's Lair fared. Whatever. In 1983, Colecovision attempted to release the game in all its arcade glory with their ADAM tape system, and it failed miserably, shortly followed by the demise of the gaming market. Nintendo came back years later, introducing the NES and Game Boy, and they too would see Dragon's Lair come around in some kind of ruptured form. The NES version, produced by Sony Imagesoft, was completely unplayable, attempting to recreate the game's scenarios into a side-scrolling format and completely forgetting to add play control or appealing graphics. The result? Bomb.
But then we come to the Game Boy version, also by Sony, which took a different approach. Instead of focusing on the swordplay that the arcade game is known for, it instead let Dirk travel through level after level, collecting gems and avoiding traps. Sure, it was more fun than the Dragon's Lair game on the NES, but it simply wasn't Dragon's Lair. Collecting blocks is not exactly Dirk the Daring's forte', if you catch my drift.
So would anyone do Dragon's Lair right for the handheld format? Or any format, for that matter? Well, Digital Leisure did release a DVD version of the arcade classic that's pristine, as well as a 20th anniversary arcade game to mark the occasion. But the real surprise came from Digital Eclipse and Capcom, who, in 2001, did the unthinkable. They reproduced the arcade feeling into a handheld format- for the Game Boy Color, no less.
Dragon's Lair was created by Digital Eclipse's team back in 2000, and it showed the dedication the company was putting into the project. The game closely followed the format of the arcade game, recreating the scenarios and allowing you control of your movements. Go the wrong way, a buzz indicated so. Go the right way, and a sort of "token" sound indicated you could continue. But the way the graphics were done, at the time, were astounding, as even the crumbling Dirk skeleton animation made the cut. Arcade perfect it wasn't, but it came closer than any Dragon's Lair port before it, that's for damn sure.
Dragon's Lair, to this day, remains one of my favorite Game Boy Color games, and I'll probably never get rid of it, keeping it alongside my Dragon's Lair lunchbox and autographed poster for some time to come. Granted, I'll beat it to death every time, but sometimes you just have to have an uninterrupted arcade experience in the palm of your hand to reassure our progress. Plus those Giddy Goons are fun to cut up.
See you next time on Into the Past!
