Dragon's Lair (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ต.ค. 2024
- 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.
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![Dragon's Lair [NES] :: SPEED RUN (05:51) (Eu) by KartSeven](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/63JKJPtZ344/mqdefault.jpg)
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!
"Did I just die by walking into the fucking door?" -AVGN 2007
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
This is one NES game I do NOT have in my collection. I need to get it.
I couldn't get past the first screen
Love that story :)
Crazy to finally see past that door
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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
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
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.
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!
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.
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!
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
Hardest game for me as a child. Glad to see it was beatable!
Did I just die by walking through the door?
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.
Oh dear... this game........
Anyway, congrats in beating it.
:) Haha thanks
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 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.
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.
It's amazing how a game that takes less than 20 minutes to complete can be one of the hardest ones ever made
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? 🤔😮
Why is he jumping like he's on the fucking moon!?
Perhaps he's filled with helium.
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 first tried this game out yesterday. I soon realized it could be used as some sort of mindfulness activity, a true exercise in patience.
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.
Hard ass game. Never beat it as a kid. It became notorious in our household.
Kudos to you, mate, for beating this game. I like your description for the game, too. You put it very well.
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!
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".
Thank you for beating this game. I can finally have some closure on it.
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?
Muy bueno, nunca lo pude acabar!!!
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
The music is great!!!
Classic example of ramped up difficulty to pad game length.
Jugaba de pequeño y aún lo tengo 🥰🥰
Imagine spending money on this back in the day because you like to have fun and chill playing those novelties.
Welp... I might as well wait for that Dragon's Lair film that Don is still working on.
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
The graphics are really impressive
This game makes Covid look good.
Catch it for us, and let's see if your opinion changes.
even the door at the castle's entrance does kill you.
So you can beat this game in 16 minutes... That pathetic even for NES standards lol
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,
Now I know why it is so damn hard, cuz it's a 15 minutes game!
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*.
Forget about how difficult this game is, let’s talk about how ridiculously stupid it is!
Waching this game is e great torture
Character movement/jump reminds me of Prince of Persia DOS.
I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t make it past the drawbridge every time…
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.
This is a poor man's prince of persia
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.
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.
The best is the intro music. Period
Nice. Not two levels in and you're already fighting the Space Pope.
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.
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 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
I couldn’t even get past the dragon but i still tried for hours
Solid play @ 4:48 What actually do you do to get across that open space?
This game is the bane of the attic's gamer/joueur du grenier's existence.
Nobody i knew got past the entrance. 😂
Cant even blame you for dying, the controlls delay so bad
Nerd should really see this...
Pro-tip: watching this at 1.5x speed makes it almost look like a normal video game.
I remember buying this thinking I was am getting arcade version. Man I wish as disappointed.
Came here because I wanted to know how its beaten due to AVGN :D
I can't believe this game exists. However did it get the greenlight?
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.
10:50 how incredible
Great-looking game for NES
I remember playing this as a kid still havent beat it😂😂
Man this game is hard ! Nice job ! 👍
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!
Why am I in 7th if I never went near this game?? D8,' !!
Wow, I've never seen this game before. It looks pretty easy. I think I'll get it. 👍
First time I saw the US version full run, very impressive
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
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Sure, I don't mind as long as you credit where it's from.
I think the biggest problem with dragons lair on the nes is that it’s trying to replicate the fmv arcade game while also being a side scroller action game at the same time
While impressive to see a modified version of dragons lair on nes it does come across as confusing to some
Surprisingly enough the game boy color is also an 8 bit system and the dragon’s lair gba port was actually a port of the fmv game rather than a modified version disguised as a side scroller
I think if the dragons lair nes port was more of a traditional side scroller instead of trying too hard to do both it could be forgotten granted, but it also wouldn’t have this much negative reputation
This game is like Super Robin Hood but not fun
Um dos jogos mais dificies que joguei na infância , até que fui longe mas não cheguei no final
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?
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.
looks cool
The PAL version is more fast than the US version
Why he just walk casually through all that danger lol, it's like he does this every day for a 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
There was an NES version?
I never got pass the second stage. The two doors with the guys throwing rock. Up to this date. He got me so mad since the player moves sooo slow.
In my whole damn Life, there was no way to beat that f"""""N dragon in the Bridge from the beginning...
I feel so stupid xDDD
When the game looks better at 2x speed:
You make it looks a way way way way easy...
casually walk back to the beginning of the level to defeat the enemy