Dragon's Lair (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- A playthrough of CSG (Sony) Imagesoft's 1990 platformer game for the NES, Dragon's Lair.
Dragon's Lair had a version of some kind appearing on most major platforms throughout the late 80s and early 90s. The PC versions represented a valiant attempt at shoehorning as much of the laserdisc version's gameplay as possible onto a few floppy disks, while the more limited home consoles had versions that adapted the story and action to a variety of 2D side-scrolling platformers. The NES version, however, is not among the better ones.
Dragon's Lair on the NES is not a game for impatient people. That needs to be said upfront. It's clear that the designers wanted to remain as faithful to the style and flow of the FMV original as possible in the conversion, and so the great majority of the game relies on careful memorization and split-seconding timing. The attitude and the ambition that drove the game design should be commended. The ways in which they set about doing it should not.
The original game was notorious for its love of coins. It was brutally difficult until you'd spent enough to effectively memorize each of the sequences since the gameplay relies entirely on trial-and-error. Many people in 1983 were willing to forgive the design, though, as the trade-off for such limited gameplay was the ability to "play" a beautifully animated cartoon.
The NES game largely mirrors this design ethos. The scenes are short and fairly straightforward, and they all rely on your having fore-knowledge of the platform and enemy placements. But, while this was a necessary constraint in an interactive movie, the NES game largely ignores the system's strengths.
The graphics are uneven, but are generally good by NES standards. Dirk's sprite is huge and very smoothly animated (it looks almost as if it was rotoscoped), and the larger enemies and the backdrops have a good amount of detail to them - even if they are all recycled entirely too often.
The problem with the graphics, however, is that they were clearly prioritized over the gameplay. Dirk's lengthy, detailed animation cycles look phenomenal, but the control is painfully delayed and sluggish as result. If an enemy is coming at you from the opposite side of the screen, you'd better start hammering the fire button immediately if you hope to kill it before it kills you. If you have to dodge and weave to get past moving obstacles, you'd better have lightning precision in your button presses - Dirk takes forever to duck, stand, and jump, and since many attacks will kill him in a single hit, you'll often find yourself getting nailed by projectiles since Dirk struggles to move quickly enough to get out of the way.
The game is excruciatingly hard, though it's not quite as impossible or as broken as it first seems. It really does require absolute mastery, though. Once you've nailed down a sequence, you will be able to repeat the steps consistently and get through without taking much damage. Before then, good luck. It definitely will appeal to people that appreciate the level of dedication and skill Dragon's Lair demands, especially since nothing about it is randomized, and to those that enjoy systematically attacking specific sequences until they've found the patterns. Most people will give up long before they even finish the first level, though, and who can blame them? It takes a very particular type of gamer to embrace this sort of design and to embrace the sheer amount of willpower it requires to finish.
I can't say that I'm one of those people, but I can certainly see the appeal. I spent weeks learning the stages by heart before I could reliably beat it. Now that I've finally managed to do it, I can confidently say that I am not likely ever to go back to it again. I was happy to finish it so that I could finally put it to bed and move on to something a bit less archaic and needlessly taxing. The gameplay and the difficulty level remind me a great deal of the SNES version of Space Ace, though I find that game to overall be far more approachable and entertaining.
Who did they expect would appreciate this on a console? I think that on computers it would've found a far more receptive audience
Overall, Dragon's Lair is an extraordinarily acquired taste. Those that cut their teeth on insanely hard 80s PC action games will likely love it to pieces, but most will balk at the punitive design and the unresponsive controls. I didn't totally hate it, but I'd be perfectly happy to never touch it again.
Approach with caution, Dirk. Only you can decide if Daphne is truly worth the effort.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (www.nintendocom...) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
/ 540091756006560
/ nes_complete
Imagine beating this at 7 years old. Probably grew up to invent and then cure a disease.
We'd have had a cure for cancer by now but for the fact that every single person capable of developing a cure spent their entire life mastering this game. By the time they had completed it, they were 90 years old and on their death bed, in no fit state to work on a cure for cancer. This game is the reason that cancer is a thing. Fuck you, Dragon's Lair for the NES!
Wow, you know, when I was a little girl, use to play this game on dad's old NES system, and I didn't make it much further than James The Angry Video Game Nerd, so actually getting to see the rest of the game was a treat. Thank you so much for this! 👍😀
Np! Glad I could put it to rest for you. Nobody should have this game hanging over their heads! Lol
I couldn't get past the first screen
Love that story :)
Crazy to finally see past that door
"Did I just die by walking into the fucking door?" -AVGN 2007
So, they made a 15 minutes long game and also they made if hard AF and unfair so the players couldn't beat it too fast. Fucking briliant.
sooo, pretty same as an average mobile mmo/gacha game
@groovesan Eh they are pretty long
In fact sometimes TOO long.
2:40 So the rocks kill you in one hit, but the big floating wizard lizard that has its own boss music when it appears just takes a tiny bit of your health. Got it.
His main role is to steal your gold.
ohno
not my *points*
As a kid I remember this being the hardest game in existence. It was an achievement to make it across the drawbridge.
Not sure about existence, I mean there’s always going to be something harder out there somewhere in gaming.
@@speedymatt1236 no it’s literally the hardest game in existence ever.
My friend had this game and I thought the same that it was insanely difficult. He could make it about two minutes maybe a tad farther.
So just in the beginning you fight an enemy harder than nowadays most games' final bosses. Good.
As a kid I couldn't even get past that. I've never been as annoyed with a game other than Fallout 76..
Actually, I think that is the boss because it took a lot of hits to kill it, something you expect from a regular boss.
that’s origin of Dark Souls
@@gailcha6466 dark souls is a fun and easy game compared to this abomination.
I’ve seen harder.
I know it's late, but congratulations on completely understanding what this game is going for where so few people do. Your description is beautiful.
Thanks 😊
I remember renting this game from the video store as a kid and never getting close to passing the bridge level in the opening. Im glad I never wasted money on buying it. Thanks for showing the rest of the game!
There's nothing worse than games where you just have to memorize what to do. The fact that you could beat this game in less than 20 min is crazy.
one of the most frustrating and annoying games ive ever had the displeasure of playing but i gotta give u respec. the pure dedication and trial and error it must have took to complete this video just to give us closure is insane!! thank u
There is a pattern with NES games. The shorter they are content wise=the higher the difficulty to compensate and in a way make for more bang for your buck. This game is so obscenely difficult but here we see it beaten inside of 20 minutes!
whoever designed this game was pure evil. i made it as far as grim reaper, but always died there since the level was just absolutely brutal.
I paid 50 QUID for this game back in the day and I think in total I got to the lift section a dozen times before ending in a section where I died immediately.
That is when I learnt that the Nintendo Seal of Quality had fuck all to do with the actual quality of the game itself.
How the *fuck* did this steaming pile get the Nintendo Seal of Quality?!
@@jonathanwells223 It meant that Nintendo just took a look at the game
Back then the Seal of Quality just meant things like the game compiled successfully and boot at least
i have no idea how you had the patience for this. it's amazing. some of these games you get through...
really snazzy channel. keep it uppppp!
Thanks! :D lol I don't know how I had the patience either tbh
Why is he jumping like he's on the fucking moon!?
Perhaps he's filled with helium.
I can certainly respect what the designers were going for here, but I found it far too punitive and slow to be much fun. Dragon's Lair on the NES is a poster-child for games that are an "acquired taste". It's just not to my taste.
I watched this to see if I wanted to add it to my Christmas list, but the controls seem clunky at best and you spend more time ducking than walking. It reminds me of a cross between Astyanax(character movement) and Castlevania(difficulty) Nice playthrough! I'll probably stick with Kid Icarus or Faxanadu on my list though. Thanks again for letting us see these before buying them! 😎
@@adamsafranek7407 You're much better off with either of those games, I promise you. They're both classics.
Yep
And Just when you thought it couldn't get worse... [Sigh] Here we are...
This game sucks!
End of review!
If I remember the US version (which was developed first) uses a 128KB cart (PRG AND CHR) and stores a crapton of variables in VROM instead of VRAM, and that's why this version runs at below 12 fps.
Hardest game for me as a child. Glad to see it was beatable!
Did I just die by walking through the door?
The Angry Video Game Nerd had a hard time getting past the first stage of the game! He is right that this game is beyond hard. Except for the bat, every you touch kills you.
It's amazing how a game that takes less than 20 minutes to complete can be one of the hardest ones ever made
I wonder how many hours you spend in order to memorize this abomination of a game .
Any ways . Thank you from the deep of my heart
The entire game is 16 minutes, the LONGEST 16 minutes of your life!!!
spent way more than 16 minutes on this demon spawned calamity as a child.
Kudos to you, mate, for beating this game. I like your description for the game, too. You put it very well.
Oh dear... this game........
Anyway, congrats in beating it.
:) Haha thanks
The games you play for our entertainment. Thanks for beating this so I don't have to, I need a drink.
Me too, man. Me too.
The graphics are insane for a NES game.
Thank you for beating this game. I can finally have some closure on it.
As an adult I can now see what they’re were trying to do. It’s extremely trial on error based gameplay like the Arcade game. I can appreciate it for that.
It’s not fun or intuitive like the original arcade game though, it just sucks.
I know it sucks but I found it interesting. I never skip ads when watching your channel. I want as much support coming your way as possible.
I first tried this game out yesterday. I soon realized it could be used as some sort of mindfulness activity, a true exercise in patience.
Hard ass game. Never beat it as a kid. It became notorious in our household.
I always love it when a game needs to come up with something to represent an item of value to pickup and they're like.. oh how about a G! Why a G? It'll stand for Gold! Brilliant!
Dirk's animation is quite good for an 8-bit game! Even... too good? 🤔😮
I just bought this game, even after watching AVGN, and I did make it past the first dragon lol I just wanted to know for sure it had an end. Thank you sir!
You paid actual money for this, after watching AVGN? Boy howdy do I have some bonds to sell you!
This is a poor man's prince of persia
So you can beat this game in 16 minutes... That pathetic even for NES standards lol
I love how the pickups are just lazy boxes with letters in them. Imagine playing Zelda and instead of finding arrows, you just find a box with an "A" in it. Or instead of rupees, it's a box with an "R".
The music is great!!!
Sure the one who invented this game wanted to teach an important lesson: life is hard, unfair and almost totally nonsense, but if you are patient and play hard, you can dodge all the difficulties and get to the end
…And of course, even if you eventually will succeed, you are going to fail and fall many times before it happens
Imagine spending money on this back in the day because you like to have fun and chill playing those novelties.
Forget about how difficult this game is, let’s talk about how ridiculously stupid it is!
The most hardest game ever on NES!
Harder than Silver Surfer?
@@aggressiveattitudeera887 Much harder than Silver Surfer. I really loved that game :)
Silver Surfer is manageable if you have the turbo controller. I know many purist think that using turbo NES controller is "cheating", but for games like Silver Surfer it is excusable.
@@ruko9876 I never really found a turbo controller necessary for it. It's difficult, sure, but I think a lot of people really overexaggerate how hard it is.
+NintendoComplete Well I couldn't beat one board! ONE! (Reptyl's board....GOD!)
How could I not beat that game but beat Metroid?
Man the graphics look incredible, but they amtter none when the game itself is absolutely horrible! Why does it have to be so slow and clunky, with seemingly impossible obstacles?
Am I the only one who thinks channel is playing this game because of Cinemassacre
Nerd should really see this...
I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t make it past the drawbridge every time…
Waching this game is e great torture
Character movement/jump reminds me of Prince of Persia DOS.
The graphics are really impressive
Impressive to look at, sometimes it feels like an early Megadrive/Genesis game, but just looking at the way Dirk moves you can tell it's terrible to play.
Even if it was Motivetime developing the SNES game as well, I'm sure they weren't the same people who worked on this one, since that version plays better but looks so *awful*.
Welp... I might as well wait for that Dragon's Lair film that Don is still working on.
Came here because I wanted to know how its beaten due to AVGN :D
Muy bueno, nunca lo pude acabar!!!
I remember buying this thinking I was am getting arcade version. Man I wish as disappointed.
This game reminds me of cinematic platformers such as Flashback or Another World. You have to figure it out by trial and error and memorize enemy and environmental hazard patterns to get past them. In this way, it is faithful to the spirit of the arcade game which could never have been ported to the NES in it's true form. I rented this game as a kid and would have given it a 4.5 out of 10. I didn't think it was great, but it wasn't the worst game I'd played on the NES either. I have a bit more of an appreciation for it now because I respect what they were going for and give it a 5.5 out of 10. I can see how a minority of people might enjoy the game but it is very frustrating. It's a short game if you get good at it, which may be why they made it so difficult. You can't say it is too short if you either can't finish it or have to spend a lot of time gaining the skill necessary to beat it.
Classic example of ramped up difficulty to pad game length.
i note that this is the us version, the pal one is faster and lvl 2 has a giant snake as a boss
It also has rocks that fall on you whilst on the lift making it even harder.. why the region difference dont know.
@@youwish1135 There's regularly differences in the PAL and NTSC versions of NES games. For instance, the PAL version of Battletoads the 2nd player doesn't love control in level 11 and the log section of level 7 is completely removed.
@@DodgeThisBam they also fixed the rat race bug from what I could see.
I recently beat every NES game released in the UK for charity so I'm pretty familiar with PAL NES games
@@youwish1135 If you mean the raising off the ground bug, no, that is definitely still there and used to cost me runs until I replaced my controller (I thought it was a bug with the version I borrowed because it stopped happening when I got my own copy... about the time I got new controllers SMH)
@@DodgeThisBam I actually meant the trick where you can beat up the rat at the first bomb and skip the remaining 2 races. In NTSC this exploit works but think rare fixed for the pal release? Maybe not? Bu to be honest I'm glad I did use a cheap trick to win
Nice. Not two levels in and you're already fighting the Space Pope.
Jugaba de pequeño y aún lo tengo 🥰🥰
Now I know why it is so damn hard, cuz it's a 15 minutes game!
Imagine renting this game for the week-end when you were 7y.o because the cover was badass and then when you figured out it was bullshit your mother didn't want to go back to the video club and to rent another one. Many such cases I'm sure with this game.
Man this game is hard ! Nice job ! 👍
One of the worst NES games I think I’ve ever seen
I sucked at this game when I was a kid lol cool to see someone beat it
This game is hard as ass. Even if you’ve memorized everything, which is painstakingly difficult on its own, it’s still hard to dodge every mace, rock, or projectile because of how slow the character feels. The gameplay is questionable in this game.
However, the game _looks_ amazing. Being an NES game, you’d never expect the character’s animation to be so smooth and lifelike. Of course, this smoothness makes the character about as quick as molasses, but at least the creators of this game have _something_ to brag about. The art is equally amazing, and you can tell a lot of time was taken into making the game look nice, even with the harsh color and memory limitations the devs had. My favorite example of this is the character’s little Don Knotts face at the end, which kinda fits his character.
even the door at the castle's entrance does kill you.
"Rule #1 Get the Knife
Rule #2 Get the Knife
Rule #3 Get the fucking Knife!"
~ King James Rolfe, The Angry Video Game Nerd
Wait. Isn't the second boss a giant snake? It is that on my version of the game! Is there a difference between the scn version and the other versions?
I had that too, The Pal version has more enemies and the giant snake boss, splash screens for the levels and death animations, THe elevator level also has projectiles falling from the ceiling,
This main character looks, very trained if looking at his appearance but if he is going to move then he looks weak as a lot of grandparents. This is probably the factor which makes the game very difficult. He is strong enough to throw heavy metal axes so fast, however, which is out of logic but the game looks beautiful.
And the way he jump
Wow, I've never seen this game before. It looks pretty easy. I think I'll get it. 👍
Pro-tip: watching this at 1.5x speed makes it almost look like a normal video game.
This game is the bane of the attic's gamer/joueur du grenier's existence.
Apparently, it's easier in 50fps/PAL, as AVGN pointed out. One of the very rare games designed for 50fps/PAL.
Huh, no kidding? I'll have to try it, thanks for the tip!
Well that's not really true, considering that this US version was made first.
Actually that's complete incorrect. It's harder. The PAL version is both faster and contains even more difficult changes for example the first level boss is a giant snake not I individual snakes and on every elevator their are falling instant death rocks to content with. I'm sure theres other changes too
This is more like Dark Castle than Dragons Lair.r
The NES game that made many kids cry or chuck a hissy fit here?! I think it was a combination of both for me here?! Still the game is very memorable for alot of reasons and I do like it's soundtrack quite abit.
I remember playing this as a kid still havent beat it😂😂
Jiminy.
Is this what one plays while waiting for the paint to dry?
I couldn’t even get past the dragon but i still tried for hours
Nobody i knew got past the entrance. 😂
This game is all about beginner's trap and patience. The character's action is so slow that made me feel tedious.
The BGM change when boss fight is started but there was no effect to tell you the boss was defeated and what to do afterwards.
This game is really bad. Still you are able to beat it. Hats off to you sir.
To me, this game comes off as a very telling step towards today's boring games, where entertainment and gameplay has taken a hard beating in favor of animation and "realism" in the way the main character moves. "So much better graphics and realism than Zelda!" they probably thought as they put this game together. I loathe it just watching someone else play it. I was bidding on a pristine CIB version of it here in Sweden, but after seeing this, there's no way in hell I'll buy it. 😂
take a look at physconauts 2
The best is the intro music. Period
Um dos jogos mais dificies que joguei na infância , até que fui longe mas não cheguei no final
10:50 how incredible
This game is like Super Robin Hood but not fun
15:26 Dirk looks like he's getting strangled to death
Why am I in 7th if I never went near this game?? D8,' !!
有野課長がプレイした時は、上昇気流地帯の右から上段にジャンプしても届かなくてイライラしていた。 NES版だとジャンプで届くんだ・・・
Quite literally the worst video game I have ever played in my entire life.
Because you are a bad player
Hi, I’m a video editor of COV(코브) channel. Our channel treats about games. So we want to use your video as source of our video. If you’re okay may i Use it on our video?
Sure, I don't mind as long as you credit where it's from.
Cant even blame you for dying, the controlls delay so bad
Why there were no bats in the first stage?
Odd. I remember my copy giving a time limit to the levels, as well as having level introduction stills and one giant snake as the boss of the entrance hall rather than a large bundle of smaller snakes.
Sounds like you played the PAL version
@@alexcallender Those are quite the wild bundle of changes between versions!
Quick tip on the Grim Reaper it's easiest just to get close and kneel down. He can't hit you. Then just pop up in between his fireballs for a shot or two, rinse and repeat. P.s. I hate this game.
This game makes Covid look good.
Catch it for us, and let's see if your opinion changes.
This is like the OG Cat/unfair Mario and IWBTG. Influenced so many games that piss us off.
Вот это был единственный УЖАС в прохождении игр тех времён😁😁😁 Автор молодец👍👍👍👍
When the game looks better at 2x speed:
Solid play @ 4:48 What actually do you do to get across that open space?