Dragons Lair

Game Info

Dragons Lair is one of the grandfathers of video gaming. It saw its debut back in 1983 in arcades and then on something called laser disc, which is way before most of our times. The game was made by one of Disney’s ex-animators who drew the entire game himself, and for the time this game must have blown minds. There is no direct control over Dirk the Daring, a brave knight who is trying to save a princess from a dragon (gripping stuff for 1983). Instead you are prompted with options while watching the animation that plays out like a movie.

The whole game is basically played out as one massive QuickTime event; you get the options of going left right up, down or allowed to attack. With so few options you would think the QT events themselves would be pretty easy, but they are probably some of the hardest we have ever played. The game brings new meaning to the Quick in QuickTime, if you hit a button a fraction of a second too late or two soon it’s over, and you have to restart the sequence. You would think that re-doing the sequence a second time or even a third time would be easy since the combination stays the same, but because the timing has to be so spot on you will easily die one or two times even after having the sequences memorised.

People always used to say that games in the 80′s and 90′s were much harder than games today and this game is a testament to that. When you compare Dragons Lair‘s QT events to the QT events of today it’s like comparing a honey badger to Paris Hilton, although they look about the same they are made up very differently. The one is tough as nails and the other is just kind of a waste of space and should probably not exist. Most QT events in today’s games shouldn’t be there but because Dragons Liar‘s are so challenging it has a little bit of an addictive quality to it. It’s a true test of reaction speed that will have you focusing on the middle of the TV trying to anticipate the next prompt.

The game’s very amusing animations have been nicely converted to fit modern day TV’s, and all though some animated sequences repeat themselves there is still a lot to see. People that want a nostalgia trip back to the good old days, Dragons Lair is an entertaining but short journey. Since only 4 people in South Africa probably owned Laserdisc systems when this game came out it’s a good game to check out to see where the QuickTime event was born. Otherwise we think that gamers have had their fair share of QT events thrown at them over the years so we are going to push the skip button on this one.