I was 13 when this came out in Italy, me and my friends were crazy about it. We all learned to beat it, and we were competing on who'd beat it the most times within the school summer holidays. Actually, it was just a matter of who'd spend the greatest number of 500 lire coins into it, since after a few weeks we all were able to finish it every time we played, but still it was so much fun. And I remember having a trip to Austria with my parents during that summer, and there was a game arcade in the Prater park where they had Dragon's lair, I started playing, and in a few minutes I had maybe 15 local kids watching me in awe as I played it through to the happy end. I even got an applause, and one of them said to me they never had seen anyone beat the game, I felt so awesome ahah
All the arcade Dragon's Lair game I ever played did not have the beginning "fall through the bridge & swing at tentacles" part. It always started at either the rope swing or "the crumbling go right" room. Only the Jaguar CD version, I'd played, had that part. Also, Dragons Lair finally helped me learn left from right. And they say video games aren't good for the brain.
I bought a bunch of used Pioneer LD V1001s from Active Surplus in Toronto back in the mid 80s. Bought 10 of them for $20 each. They came from Dragon's Lair machines and some Quarter Horse machines. I remember the Dragon's Lair discs as they had the steel back. As the disc was played in CAV mode the metal backing helped maintain the discs angular velocity. Got two players working, stripped the lasers and HV power supplies from the rest.
Watching this video illustrates why Dragon's Lair was more fun to watch someone else play than it was to play yourself. Whether you lived or died depended completely on knowing the script. If you didn't know the script you might as well have thrown your quarters into a lake.
All of the grand memories of my teenage years! I was working at Take Ten as a technician when we received a sit down version of Dragon's Lair. We spent the next day uncrating and setting up this monster, my boss cussing the entire time. Plugged it in and it didn't work. Two more hours of opening every compartment and we finally found the disk, clamped under a shipping strap, loaded it and she made money for about two weeks. After that, every time I heard somebody hit a game case, I knew Lair had screwed up again. The disk had to be cleaned daily and a hard thump still caused skips, with the inevitable "I lost my game" complaint. I found test mode on the logic and saw the graphics in the same format shown in this video for the first time, just before my boss decided to ship Lair to another location in trade for three pinball machines and a second Duck Hunter (I still wish I could have programmed a way to shoot that !@#$ % dog when he laughed at me!!!). Thank you, Media, for the smiles and very warm memories of a misspent youth!
GoldenStateOfMind right, lol....I had my frustrations with this and 'space ace' as well....but I persevered with both and along with the music and times of the mid 80's I'd never change a thing....miss those junior high weekends!
Interesting...just noticed the barrel ride scene (ye boulders/rapids/whirlpools) appears on the disk twice, but the second isn't a mirror image of the first. They are exactly the same as near as I can tell. Strangely, I "remember" a reverse of that scene from the arcade, but it is possible I am remembering it from a different version. Loved the game, once I learned to beat it, used to go to the arcade every weekend and show off, drawing a crowd every time. Thank you for posting this, really brought back some memories.
Unless you grew up playing stand up arcade machines, in arcades that still had analog pinball machines. Or grew up playing a Coleco Vision or Atari, you wouldnt understand the context of what Laser Disc games did to all of us when they came out. I'm sorry generation Nintendo, you missed out on these memories.
Tina Somers There are many versions on many types of systems, Android, P.C., emulators etc availible to purchase. The reason they went away from this type of game development was finacial. It simply cost too much to develop and too many hours to generate. Each stop motion frame was hand painted just like how pre digital Hannah Barbarra cartoons were made old school. There still is a RARE few of these machines in operation. One is on display at the Smithsonian, the others collectors own privatly.
What irks me just a little is when younger gamers complain about the mechanics of gameplay on a laser disc game. When this came out 8bit games were "cutting edge". This was light years graphics-wise compared to 8bit games. Those of us who grew up on 8bit games were blown away by laser disc. Back then the only way to view cartoon-esc media was to watch cartoons on tv at specific times. Saturday morning bowls of cereral and toons. The other way if you were lucky enough, was to watch a VHS cassette. The younger gamers have no idea about "warm booting" a magnetic tape drive game on a Commadore 64 nor have they ever seen a 4" floppy game. I'm glad i grew up in a time when video games became a reality in homes. This industry as a whole gets better and better every year and i am happy to see it grow from the start. Thank you for the memories to all those developers and talented people who made it what it is today.
Thank you for uploading this. It brought back memories. I was too young to play this when it was in arcades, but i remember watching the big kids playing it and i would just gape in awe.
I loved this game, I wish I never sold the arcade conversion kit i owned. I was one of the lucky ones who beat the game in the arcade. i used to go bowling when I was younger (I hardly bowled after being dropped off on sat morning for my bowling league) I would dump money into Dragon's Lair until I finally beat it. I was good at it, and let's be honest, You loved all the onlookers behind you that could never get through it, but would watch in astonishment when I would beat this game in 1 life all the way to the end. Then one weekend I went in and they had replaced it, or converted it to "Space Ace" which always took my money as well. I quickly went through it and would beat it with 1 life on the hardest level (Space Ace) i first beat "cadet" then the next hardest (don't remember the name) then the hardest (which was all the easier levels + added on scenes.) I always had the crowd of onlookers behind me, it would boost my ego. One day the machine was unplugged when I came in, so I plugged it in and after it would boot up and the intro would start, the sound would be BOOMING across the whole game room. I figured out why every week i went in, it was unplugged...the sound would get louder every week and you could hear it through most of the bowling alley, but always plugged it in to play it... even though it wasn't a challenge to me anymore. One day it was gone. I vowed one day to own it, and when I got my fist job I saved up and bought a Dragon's Lair Machine for $800 25 years ago. I did a conversion shortly after so I could swap out the laserdisc and connect the extra board to play Space Ace. I sold these about 10 years ago after loosing my job. I want to buy another one now that im back on my feet again. Before I sold it, I copied the complete Laserdisc of both games (I still Have the videos) and was just watching them the other day. I just did a search online that led me here. I just thought I would share my story of my experience with this AMAZING game. I love the 80's!!! ~Bryan~
Oh, and mine was a pretty good disc. Mine didn't have any flaws or defects, or artifacts throughout the disc... hard to find nowadays. Although I have a video copy, I would love to find an original Laserdisc of Dragon's Lair, OR Space Ace regardless of the condition for sentimental value. Thanks for sharing this any bringing back my childhood memories.
I was one of the kids that couldn't afford all of those quarters so I watched kids like you i amazement. Can't believe I found it ,because the only thing i remembered was Daryl and daffnys names and that it was a interactive game around 1985. my group of friends discovered this game in a subway shop near Brooklyn college, Thanks for your story
I use to play this game in the amusement arcades in my home town in the 80's ...I hated it because it was frustratingly hard but oh so nice to watch when you got a move right...the amount of money I must have pumped into the machine.
i was like 9 years old when this game was out i played at the store... you gotta be fast when those lights up either joy stick or sword.... i could pass the 3 level...but not yet have a game follow this with live movin action like this was way ahead of its time even now 30 some years later games still dont have this
JoEbYX I found her hilarious because she was acting like such a bubblehead. ;) I personally loved Kimberly from Space Ace better, as she had a brain, lol! ;)
Thank you so much for posting this! I've never seen the actual contents of the disc before. I've seen some of the film elements and some hi-def stuff, but this is cooler.
What a flashback. I had totally forgot that all of the rooms had a reverse image to throw off your memorized reactions. This game cost me more money than any other game up to that point. When something like a chain was up and to the right, it was purely a guess of clicking up or right.
I wonder if this game can be played on a Pioneer Laseractive system. If anyone has a laseractive, with a copy of the laserdisc itself, can someone let me know?
@Unsharpened I beat the game in the arcade but only with help from a book that told you all the moves. I don't know why it skipped over the part at the beginning with the tentacles outside the castle, the Sega CD version keeps that in. (That version is hard to play since there's no sound or anything to show your move worked.)
That was awesome! I played every scene except the fire ropes going left. Tilting Floor and Black Knight(electricity on the floor) are my 2 Faves out of all of them. I have beat this game many times as a kid. I have never seen all the death scenes until now. Very cool.
That would have been hard to do in those days- there was no processing of the image by the arcade game, all video was straight from the laserdisc player. The most awkward part of that was when the screen would go black when the player had to search, most noticeably when you made a wrong move and it went to a death scene.
Oh. my. god. No wonder all my friends spent so much money on this game, it would take someone aeons to figure this out. Thank you for this, now I never have to wonder how it went ever again.
This will however still remind me of the Blackstar character the white knight. He was my favorite Blackstar character. Especially in the very way the Blackstar animation crew members have created him.
Freaking awesome game, most original in the early 80's laser disc player by pioneer and a cabinet big screen TV by Mitsubishi running thru a pioneer stereo system, AAAHHH the life.
The more I see of these games on Laserdisc, the more I wonder how consoles like the NES made their mark. Laserdisc had animation and 3-D graphics in the 80s, well before the Super Nintendo and LONG before the N64. It's like video games took a big step backward before going forward again. Unless I'm missing something...
+Alex Palmer The problem was these aren't graphics you can control- the game was played by making the right moves at the right time, and if you made the right moves the disc would keep playing, if you moved wrong it would skip to a scene of him dying. You couldn't move freely like in regular games that used real graphics. Nintendo never did a laserdisc game, instead they did "Punch Out" in 1984 which had quite a leap in graphics for its time. (Though that still wasn't much of a game.)
*Laserdisc had animation and 3-D graphics in the 80s, well before the Super Nintendo and LONG before the N64. It's like video games took a big step backward before going forward again. Unless I'm missing something...* ^Laserdisc wasn't affordable outside of Japan where it became commercially affordable. Films and Games like Don Bluth's; Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. weren't cheap at the time at all. Tower Records were notable for selling Laserdiscs of the Star Wars trilogy for example for well over; £100 English pounds i do believe. Even towards the late 90's they only dropped to something like £50 quid or so later on i do remember! Europe and North America suffered when it came to Laserdisc but Japan didn't, thats why it took off there greatly in popularity!
The laserdisc only have a very narrow, predefined set of moves, and they weren't really moves, more like "Hit this button at the right moment". In NES games, you actually moved your character, and a cart could hold a vast "world" in which you could move about freely. Home Laserdisc players were astronomically expensive compared to an NES deck, and tge one used in a DL cabinet also had a port which connected it to a small computer that told the player which scene/track to play at a given time. When you watch this video, you are seeing every single possible move, and every area in the game, and no more. As you can tell, it's quite limited. They tried to bring FMV games like this into the home in the early 90s, hyping it as the future, interactive TV, blah blah blah, but needless to say, the fad died out quick. Most of these 'games' were not nearly as good as Dragon's Lair.
@DuplicatedOnce That's how it sounded on the arcade game. I used to think the left speaker was broken since it hardly had any sound from it. I also have the disc for the game "Cliff Hanger" though that was footage taken from an actual animated movie. Gameplay on that was a joke. (You basically had to guess the right moves for some parts.)
@LeotheTiger1776 That complete show is on the Dragon's Lair Anniversary DVD, and I saw it when it first aired, but it's the most ridiculous game to play based on points- the highest score was based on luck, not skill as they happened to get the scenes with the most moves in them.
@BigDream64 YES. It took weeks to pass that part.past the 1st obstacle,slashed the shapeshifter and then...urrggghhh. bought the pioneer cld1500 in the early 90´s, having one amiga 500(+hdd 3mb ram).the amiga/ldg-version is still the hardest to play! same goes for SPACE ACE on Amiga/LDG. Brutal. later i bought the PHILLIPS CD-i,because of DL, SA and DL2.While playing DL2 i got my lessons of the meaning ´hard to play´. love them all eversince
How come the left is The narrator/Daphne the princess and right everything else? Was this how it was or did the Arcade circuit board had some audio switching? BTW, Do you have other LD games?
@LeotheTiger1776 Cliff Hanger was an interesting case as it used a pre-made film as the basis for the game though the film itself was better watching outside the arcade anyway.
@eyeh8nbc Yep same. The arcade version was selective about what scenes you played to reach the dragon in the end. The only way I played that begining scene with the tentacles was through the sega version, which I beat since I beat the Arcade version I already knew all the moves. Still never played the fire ropes scene going from right to left though. I used to draw crowds who would watch me play at the arcade LOL.
I slayed the dragon 19 times! I had many crowds watch the top monitor, making me feel like a Star...then I grew sick of it lol. Bumped into it years later & couldn't remember how to get through the lava pit lmao
Heck yea M.C Coker! I waited a long time when i was a kid to play this too. And ttttkk2... YES this is the game play!! XBox and Sony should think about re-releasing this game!
Nope, there were no on-screen graphics at all other than what came from the laserdisc. There was an LED display on the machine showing your score and number of lives. Some of the other laserdisc games had overlayed text and/or graphics though.
Honestly I never knew that the 'mirror' versions of areas took up extra space o the disk. I always assumed it was mirrored to alter gameplay while saving space on said disk. The more you know!
this one is much better Dragon's Lair- The Movie (720p), if they had made it flow a little smoother and added a little more dialogue it would have made it perfect
+Alex Palmer I had a copy of the DOS version of Dragon's Lair when I was a kid and it was positively AGONIZING to figure out what it wanted you to do and when exact;y it wanted you to do it. I don't know about this one, but in the DOS version there was a horrible delay before it would play the death or success animations. Basically, the lead-in animation would play then pause for 2-3 seconds while the CD drive would seek to the animation the game wanted. Those couple seconds were *rage inducing* not knowing if you died for the eleventy zillionth time or not. The CD took up permanent residence in my closet in record time.
This is not the original 1983 coin op arcade version, this is the PC or some 2nd generation version. The arcade version did not have the opening scene on the bridge where Dirk is fighting those tentacles underneath the drawbridge. The arcade coin op version began as the drawbridge gates slammed to the ground after the castle howl at the very beginning.
oldiesmusic76 This IS the original laserdisc used in the arcade game, it has a 1983 date on it and the 2nd side of the disc is a heavier metal substance (not playable) than what was used on consumer discs. The arcade game skipped over the tentacles outside the castle; typically the game would start with the opening shot of the castle and then go black as the player skipped to the footage of Dirk running through the gates. Later when Dirk is riding in the barrel, he passes a sign saying "Ye Boulders" which the game also skips over for some reason. Never knew the reason why they decided to skip over those, but the footage is still on the discs. What you see here is the entire disc played straight through on a consumer player.
Fun fact: Not only was the technology itself fairly unremarkable for the time (considering how slick the game looked, anyhow), it was terribly unreliable. The frequent scanning of the laserdisc required moving parts, something which most video games at the time didn't have. The laserdisc player was thusly prone to frequent breakdowns that required replacement.
@LeotheTiger1776 The film was the second Lupin III animated feature "The Castle of Cagliostro". You can check it out here... /movie?v=3V97CjH-5g0&ob=av1n&feature=mv_sr
I was 13 when this came out in Italy, me and my friends were crazy about it. We all learned to beat it, and we were competing on who'd beat it the most times within the school summer holidays. Actually, it was just a matter of who'd spend the greatest number of 500 lire coins into it, since after a few weeks we all were able to finish it every time we played, but still it was so much fun.
And I remember having a trip to Austria with my parents during that summer, and there was a game arcade in the Prater park where they had Dragon's lair, I started playing, and in a few minutes I had maybe 15 local kids watching me in awe as I played it through to the happy end. I even got an applause, and one of them said to me they never had seen anyone beat the game, I felt so awesome ahah
If this was reddit, Id give you reddit silver.
I used to have dreams of impressing crowds of people like that haha
All the arcade Dragon's Lair game I ever played did not have the beginning "fall through the bridge & swing at tentacles" part. It always started at either the rope swing or "the crumbling go right" room. Only the Jaguar CD version, I'd played, had that part. Also, Dragons Lair finally helped me learn left from right. And they say video games aren't good for the brain.
I miss that beautiful hand-drawn animation style thats been absent for so many years.
You mean cell (celluloid) animation. CGI is drawn with the hand using a light pen.
I bought a bunch of used Pioneer LD V1001s from Active Surplus in Toronto back in the mid 80s. Bought 10 of them for $20 each. They came from Dragon's Lair machines and some Quarter Horse machines. I remember the Dragon's Lair discs as they had the steel back. As the disc was played in CAV mode the metal backing helped maintain the discs angular velocity. Got two players working, stripped the lasers and HV power supplies from the rest.
Watching this video illustrates why Dragon's Lair was more fun to watch someone else play than it was to play yourself. Whether you lived or died depended completely on knowing the script. If you didn't know the script you might as well have thrown your quarters into a lake.
This was a timing dependent game more than anything else.
They really cheaped out (in a clever way) with the ball/half pipe death scene.
All of the grand memories of my teenage years! I was working at Take Ten as a technician when we received a sit down version of Dragon's Lair. We spent the next day uncrating and setting up this monster, my boss cussing the entire time. Plugged it in and it didn't work. Two more hours of opening every compartment and we finally found the disk, clamped under a shipping strap, loaded it and she made money for about two weeks. After that, every time I heard somebody hit a game case, I knew Lair had screwed up again. The disk had to be cleaned daily and a hard thump still caused skips, with the inevitable "I lost my game" complaint. I found test mode on the logic and saw the graphics in the same format shown in this video for the first time, just before my boss decided to ship Lair to another location in trade for three pinball machines and a second Duck Hunter (I still wish I could have programmed a way to shoot that !@#$ % dog when he laughed at me!!!).
Thank you, Media, for the smiles and very warm memories of a misspent youth!
If you have played this game in the arcades, you would know HOW FUCKING FRUSTRATING THIS GAME WAS!
#pissedoff10yearold LOL!
i remember that awful game!
but it brought me back week after week learning how to beat this game....my all time favourite arcade classic!
james stegall More power to you. That game frustrated the hell out of me as a youngster. I didn't have the 'coin' to figure that one out :)
GoldenStateOfMind right, lol....I had my frustrations with this and 'space ace' as well....but I persevered with both and along with the music and times of the mid 80's I'd never change a thing....miss those junior high weekends!
Omg I remember playing this and then getting grounded for swearing at the machine lol
Interesting...just noticed the barrel ride scene (ye boulders/rapids/whirlpools) appears on the disk twice, but the second isn't a mirror image of the first. They are exactly the same as near as I can tell. Strangely, I "remember" a reverse of that scene from the arcade, but it is possible I am remembering it from a different version. Loved the game, once I learned to beat it, used to go to the arcade every weekend and show off, drawing a crowd every time. Thank you for posting this, really brought back some memories.
Unless you grew up playing stand up arcade machines, in arcades that still had analog pinball machines. Or grew up playing a Coleco Vision or Atari, you wouldnt understand the context of what Laser Disc games did to all of us when they came out. I'm sorry generation Nintendo, you missed out on these memories.
I'm glad I'm 39 then!
Sam Scott 39 in August
Tina Somers There are many versions on many types of systems, Android, P.C., emulators etc availible to purchase. The reason they went away from this type of game development was finacial. It simply cost too much to develop and too many hours to generate. Each stop motion frame was hand painted just like how pre digital Hannah Barbarra cartoons were made old school. There still is a RARE few of these machines in operation. One is on display at the Smithsonian, the others collectors own privatly.
What irks me just a little is when younger gamers complain about the mechanics of gameplay on a laser disc game. When this came out 8bit games were "cutting edge". This was light years graphics-wise compared to 8bit games. Those of us who grew up on 8bit games were blown away by laser disc. Back then the only way to view cartoon-esc media was to watch cartoons on tv at specific times. Saturday morning bowls of cereral and toons. The other way if you were lucky enough, was to watch a VHS cassette. The younger gamers have no idea about "warm booting" a magnetic tape drive game on a Commadore 64 nor have they ever seen a 4" floppy game. I'm glad i grew up in a time when video games became a reality in homes. This industry as a whole gets better and better every year and i am happy to see it grow from the start. Thank you for the memories to all those developers and talented people who made it what it is today.
Sam Scott I know where you're coming from.
That "game over" disintegrating scene still creeps me out to this day!!
Thank you for uploading this. It brought back memories. I was too young to play this when it was in arcades, but i remember watching the big kids playing it and i would just gape in awe.
I loved this game, I wish I never sold the arcade conversion kit i owned. I was one of the lucky ones who beat the game in the arcade. i used to go bowling when I was younger (I hardly bowled after being dropped off on sat morning for my bowling league) I would dump money into Dragon's Lair until I finally beat it. I was good at it, and let's be honest, You loved all the onlookers behind you that could never get through it, but would watch in astonishment when I would beat this game in 1 life all the way to the end. Then one weekend I went in and they had replaced it, or converted it to "Space Ace" which always took my money as well. I quickly went through it and would beat it with 1 life on the hardest level (Space Ace) i first beat "cadet" then the next hardest (don't remember the name) then the hardest (which was all the easier levels + added on scenes.) I always had the crowd of onlookers behind me, it would boost my ego.
One day the machine was unplugged when I came in, so I plugged it in and after it would boot up and the intro would start, the sound would be BOOMING across the whole game room. I figured out why every week i went in, it was unplugged...the sound would get louder every week and you could hear it through most of the bowling alley, but always plugged it in to play it... even though it wasn't a challenge to me anymore.
One day it was gone. I vowed one day to own it, and when I got my fist job I saved up and bought a Dragon's Lair Machine for $800 25 years ago. I did a conversion shortly after so I could swap out the laserdisc and connect the extra board to play Space Ace. I sold these about 10 years ago after loosing my job. I want to buy another one now that im back on my feet again. Before I sold it, I copied the complete Laserdisc of both games (I still Have the videos) and was just watching them the other day. I just did a search online that led me here.
I just thought I would share my story of my experience with this AMAZING game. I love the 80's!!!
~Bryan~
Oh, and mine was a pretty good disc. Mine didn't have any flaws or defects, or artifacts throughout the disc... hard to find nowadays. Although I have a video copy, I would love to find an original Laserdisc of Dragon's Lair, OR Space Ace regardless of the condition for sentimental value. Thanks for sharing this any bringing back my childhood memories.
Could you watch movie laserdiscs on it? I have a few other arcade game laserdiscs also that I’ll try to put up here.
I was one of the kids that couldn't afford all of those quarters so I watched kids like you i amazement. Can't believe I found it ,because the only thing i remembered was Daryl and daffnys names and that it was a interactive game around 1985. my group of friends discovered this game in a subway shop near Brooklyn college, Thanks for your story
I loved this game as a kid but I remember it being so hard!
Especially as a hologram arcade game in the 80s
I use to play this game in the amusement arcades in my home town in the 80's ...I hated it because it was frustratingly hard but oh so nice to watch when you got a move right...the amount of money I must have pumped into the machine.
i was like 9 years old when this game was out i played at the store... you gotta be fast when those lights up either joy stick or sword.... i could pass the 3 level...but not yet have a game follow this with live movin action like this was way ahead of its time even now 30 some years later games still dont have this
Ah yes, Princess Daphne. I remember as a preteen wondering if there's something wrong with having certain... thoughts... about a cartoon character.
+JoEbYX I hope you know the answer to that question by now. :)
JoEbYX I found her hilarious because she was acting like such a bubblehead. ;) I personally loved Kimberly from Space Ace better, as she had a brain, lol! ;)
Alex Palmer What is the answer?
Thank you so much for posting this! I've never seen the actual contents of the disc before. I've seen some of the film elements and some hi-def stuff, but this is cooler.
What a flashback. I had totally forgot that all of the rooms had a reverse image to throw off your memorized reactions. This game cost me more money than any other game up to that point. When something like a chain was up and to the right, it was purely a guess of clicking up or right.
I wonder if this game can be played on a Pioneer Laseractive system. If anyone has a laseractive, with a copy of the laserdisc itself, can someone let me know?
This brings back so many fond memories of my childhood...
Cool to see the original version again. I sometimes forget how "original" it looks after playing through the remastered BluRay releases. hehe
@Unsharpened I beat the game in the arcade but only with help from a book that told you all the moves. I don't know why it skipped over the part at the beginning with the tentacles outside the castle, the Sega CD version keeps that in. (That version is hard to play since there's no sound or anything to show your move worked.)
It's so weird seeing a game with this high quality visually made in 1983
This is exactly the way I wanted to watch this game
Cool. This clip has all the "fail" animations, too.
@bennyboyAF It was issued on Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, but cropped to 16x9 from 4x3. (I have the regular DVD, and the compression is horrible.)
I must have spent at least $58,000 in quarters trying to beat this game in '83! Brings back memories. Thanks for the upload.
You can buy the game from Digital Leisure. I have it on Blu-Ray, and it ROCKS
+This one game I never got play, waaaay ahead of it's time.
Shoot, In 1988 when it hit Circus Circus it was $1.50 per play!
I could never get past the first couple stages, always felt like the controller did nothing.
That was awesome! I played every scene except the fire ropes going left. Tilting Floor and Black Knight(electricity on the floor) are my 2 Faves out of all of them. I have beat this game many times as a kid. I have never seen all the death scenes until now. Very cool.
That would have been hard to do in those days- there was no processing of the image by the arcade game, all video was straight from the laserdisc player. The most awkward part of that was when the screen would go black when the player had to search, most noticeably when you made a wrong move and it went to a death scene.
Oh. my. god. No wonder all my friends spent so much money on this game, it would take someone aeons to figure this out. Thank you for this, now I never have to wonder how it went ever again.
@LeotheTiger1776 Was there ever a Space Ace episode of Starcade, or did they have it among other games?
This will however still remind me of the Blackstar character the white knight. He was my favorite Blackstar character. Especially in the very way the Blackstar animation crew members have created him.
This was wonderful thanks so much for uploading it! What amazing memories!!!
Freaking awesome game, most original in the early 80's laser disc player by pioneer and a cabinet big screen TV by Mitsubishi running thru a pioneer stereo system, AAAHHH the life.
It was the 80's!
THATS a princess i wanna rescue!
get lost Mario!
The more I see of these games on Laserdisc, the more I wonder how consoles like the NES made their mark. Laserdisc had animation and 3-D graphics in the 80s, well before the Super Nintendo and LONG before the N64. It's like video games took a big step backward before going forward again. Unless I'm missing something...
+Alex Palmer The problem was these aren't graphics you can control- the game was played by making the right moves at the right time, and if you made the right moves the disc would keep playing, if you moved wrong it would skip to a scene of him dying. You couldn't move freely like in regular games that used real graphics. Nintendo never did a laserdisc game, instead they did "Punch Out" in 1984 which had quite a leap in graphics for its time. (Though that still wasn't much of a game.)
+eyeh8nbc Yeah, looking at the game again, that does make sense. Still great for the time, though.
*Laserdisc had animation and 3-D graphics in the 80s, well before the Super Nintendo and LONG before the N64. It's like video games took a big step backward before going forward again. Unless I'm missing something...*
^Laserdisc wasn't affordable outside of Japan where it became commercially affordable. Films and Games like Don Bluth's; Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. weren't cheap at the time at all. Tower Records were notable for selling Laserdiscs of the Star Wars trilogy for example for well over; £100 English pounds i do believe. Even towards the late 90's they only dropped to something like £50 quid or so later on i do remember!
Europe and North America suffered when it came to Laserdisc but Japan didn't, thats why it took off there greatly in popularity!
is it on PlayStation
The laserdisc only have a very narrow, predefined set of moves, and they weren't really moves, more like "Hit this button at the right moment". In NES games, you actually moved your character, and a cart could hold a vast "world" in which you could move about freely.
Home Laserdisc players were astronomically expensive compared to an NES deck, and tge one used in a DL cabinet also had a port which connected it to a small computer that told the player which scene/track to play at a given time.
When you watch this video, you are seeing every single possible move, and every area in the game, and no more. As you can tell, it's quite limited.
They tried to bring FMV games like this into the home in the early 90s, hyping it as the future, interactive TV, blah blah blah, but needless to say, the fad died out quick. Most of these 'games' were not nearly as good as Dragon's Lair.
@DuplicatedOnce That's how it sounded on the arcade game. I used to think the left speaker was broken since it hardly had any sound from it.
I also have the disc for the game "Cliff Hanger" though that was footage taken from an actual animated movie. Gameplay on that was a joke. (You basically had to guess the right moves for some parts.)
I wonder if they still have the original animation reel. They should remaster it in HD.
This Version Is Way Better Than The NES Version
Great Game
So good to see the ending again. My laser disc is corrupted and doesnt show the successful ending correctly. Thanks for this.
At like 0:40 why does the voice only come from the left channel? :(
@LeotheTiger1776 That complete show is on the Dragon's Lair Anniversary DVD, and I saw it when it first aired, but it's the most ridiculous game to play based on points- the highest score was based on luck, not skill as they happened to get the scenes with the most moves in them.
@BigDream64 YES. It took weeks to pass that part.past the 1st obstacle,slashed the shapeshifter and then...urrggghhh. bought the pioneer cld1500 in the early 90´s, having one amiga 500(+hdd 3mb ram).the amiga/ldg-version is still the hardest to play! same goes for SPACE ACE on Amiga/LDG. Brutal. later i bought the PHILLIPS CD-i,because of DL, SA and DL2.While playing DL2 i got my lessons of the meaning ´hard to play´. love them all eversince
How come the left is The narrator/Daphne the princess and right everything else? Was this how it was or did the Arcade circuit board had some audio switching?
BTW, Do you have other LD games?
@LeotheTiger1776 Cliff Hanger was an interesting case as it used a pre-made film as the basis for the game though the film itself was better watching outside the arcade anyway.
I managed 12:30 mins before the dying jingle got on my nerves lol, thanks for sharing this classic.
@eyeh8nbc They certainly could have went with both on the same disc or such if we wanted to choose what ratio to go with.
@eyeh8nbc Yep same. The arcade version was selective about what scenes you played to reach the dragon in the end. The only way I played that begining scene with the tentacles was through the sega version, which I beat since I beat the Arcade version I already knew all the moves. Still never played the fire ropes scene going from right to left though. I used to draw crowds who would watch me play at the arcade LOL.
If this game were released today, it would receive a T rating because of the "violent" death scenes.
where to get the laser dic images of dg2? need to burn in a cd, or can it run in hd from daphne?
I slayed the dragon 19 times! I had many crowds watch the top monitor, making me feel like a Star...then I grew sick of it lol.
Bumped into it years later & couldn't remember how to get through the lava pit lmao
Heck yea M.C Coker! I waited a long time when i was a kid to play this too. And ttttkk2... YES this is the game play!! XBox and Sony should think about re-releasing this game!
Nope, there were no on-screen graphics at all other than what came from the laserdisc. There was an LED display on the machine showing your score and number of lives. Some of the other laserdisc games had overlayed text and/or graphics though.
this game was awesome for it's time
i dont get it, how do the controls work? this looks like an awesome movie instead of a game. i can't tell where the gameplay is.
Now this video reminds me more of the game I remember in the arcade from my childhood. No one could get very far.LOL
Honestly I never knew that the 'mirror' versions of areas took up extra space o the disk. I always assumed it was mirrored to alter gameplay while saving space on said disk. The more you know!
Does anyone know what the "turn into bones and fall apart" scene was used for?
When you lose all of your lives, and this scene plays during the game over sequence.
i lost all my coins trying to save that hot princess
I daresay they brilliantly cut a lot of corners on this one.
It´s just my impression or this game looks a lot like The Divine Comedy - Dante´s Inferno (the novel not the game)?
The novel is text, with a few maps, so I'm not sure what you mean by "it looks like" the novel.
Zadamanim
If you read the novel, you will understand, my friend. I strongly suggest that you read it.
HarvestDude
yes, who could forget the canto wherein Dante rides upon a flying, empty suit of horse armor
@LeotheTiger1776 There were plenty back then like Ninja Hayate or Super Don Quix-ote.
mother of QTE, this is hard as hell
this one is much better Dragon's Lair- The Movie (720p), if they had made it flow a little smoother and added a little more dialogue it would have made it perfect
Yeah, I realized that when I downloaded the Dragon's Lair game for the iPhone last week
This guy sounds a lot like Homer Simpson when he screams.
May I use some of the scenes?
I bet that death animation (and resurrection) got old pretty quick...
+Alex Palmer Yep, accompanied by pounding on the game saying "I MOVED RIGHT, THE STUPID CONTROLLER JUST DIDN'T WORK!!!"
+eyeh8nbc LOL I've done that with my games more than once, especially the handheld ones. The buttons on the portables just wore out too fast.
+Alex Palmer I had a copy of the DOS version of Dragon's Lair when I was a kid and it was positively AGONIZING to figure out what it wanted you to do and when exact;y it wanted you to do it. I don't know about this one, but in the DOS version there was a horrible delay before it would play the death or success animations. Basically, the lead-in animation would play then pause for 2-3 seconds while the CD drive would seek to the animation the game wanted. Those couple seconds were *rage inducing* not knowing if you died for the eleventy zillionth time or not.
The CD took up permanent residence in my closet in record time.
my right ear enjoys the video
"Cliff Hanger" is very easy if you watched that Lupin III film by Hayao Miyazaki.
Dirk,when he died have Lumpy's from Happy Tree Friends scream
Love this game..spent hundreds of dollars..well worth it though..
This is not the original 1983 coin op arcade version, this is the PC or some 2nd generation version. The arcade version did not have the opening scene on the bridge where Dirk is fighting those tentacles underneath the drawbridge. The arcade coin op version began as the drawbridge gates slammed to the ground after the castle howl at the very beginning.
oldiesmusic76 This IS the original laserdisc used in the arcade game, it has a 1983 date on it and the 2nd side of the disc is a heavier metal substance (not playable) than what was used on consumer discs. The arcade game skipped over the tentacles outside the castle; typically the game would start with the opening shot of the castle and then go black as the player skipped to the footage of Dirk running through the gates. Later when Dirk is riding in the barrel, he passes a sign saying "Ye Boulders" which the game also skips over for some reason. Never knew the reason why they decided to skip over those, but the footage is still on the discs. What you see here is the entire disc played straight through on a consumer player.
oldiesmusic76 It all depended on the difficulty level as selected by the owner of the game. Know your arcade games, or STFU. ;-)
+HooVooLoo Bloo Then you’d have no reason to make your informed comment.
+eyeh8nbc Thanks!!!
+HooVooLoo Bloo Stupid troll. YOU are wrong. READ eyeh8nbc's response. 100 times more classier than your trash.
I felt that Disney would've release this game if they still had Don Bluth as their lead animator.
Fun fact: Not only was the technology itself fairly unremarkable for the time (considering how slick the game looked, anyhow), it was terribly unreliable. The frequent scanning of the laserdisc required moving parts, something which most video games at the time didn't have. The laserdisc player was thusly prone to frequent breakdowns that required replacement.
That was at the very end of the game when you had no more lives left.
lots of thanks
so a game over screen?
Your last Dirk got killed and there are no liver remaining - GAME OVER ! ! !
this IS the gameplay!
@LeotheTiger1776 The film was the second Lupin III animated feature "The Castle of Cagliostro". You can check it out here...
/movie?v=3V97CjH-5g0&ob=av1n&feature=mv_sr
Yes! Is Don Bluth animation.
It's completely based on quick time events.
Maybe i'm just sadistic but seeing him get fucked up,is the funniest shit ever...LOL.
I love this game!!!!!!
They do and they did.
5:55 I would always die on purpose so I could hear him go "AAHHWHOOOO!!" and LMAO! :-D
This Dragon sure as hell wants this guy dead way more than Ganandorf does of Link.
Talk about giving the bad guys equal time.
Stranger Things 2 brought me here
no no no, fuck off
On behalf of everyone who was a kid wasting quarters in arcades in the '80s: fuck this game.
I hope this guy is in the next Smash Bros
Don Bluth is now making a feature film Dragon's Lair. See his project at this link below.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/donbluth/dragons-lair-the-movie
:) i remember this game....
I don't think the controls work well for a phone