Reviewed: August 15, 2007
Reviewed by: Roger Cox

Publisher
Digital Leisure

Developer
Digital Leisure

Released: August 15, 2007
Genre: Action
Players: 1

7
9
8
7
7.9

System Requirements

I ended up forgetting about Dragon’s Lair until my last month when my cousin asked me where he could find a copy of it for the original Xbox. It’s amazing that I forgot about this game until now considering there have been at least a dozen variations of the original game on a variety of platforms. Then, last week I got asked to review Dragon's Lair HD-DVD.

The HD-DVD version features a “high definition film transfer” as well as digitally re-mastered 5.1 audio and video commentaries by the creators. It all sounds good, but just how much better can a 24 year old video game get? Here is what Don Bluth, the original creator of Dragon’s Lair had to say:

“I'm amazed at the high definition video.” says Don Bluth, one of the original creators of Dragon's Lair. “Finally, the game looks as good as it did on film. And, the 5.1 audio sounds even better than original. Now whether you have Blu-ray or HD DVD you can enjoy this terrific, high definition version of Dragon's Lair.”

That’s great, but this game is freaking old. This game could rock out to 80’s music, but it’s surprising how good the game looks and plays. If I didn’t know how old this game was, I would have thought it was a newly created game for HD-DVD players.

The nature of the game is memorization. You only have five possible actions; up, down, left, right, and swing the sword. Even though the game prompted your next action with flashes of light overlaid on the colorful background art, these visual cues only allowed for about one second of error and you can never win by reflexes alone. Timing is critical, and if you got too confident and start pressing the remote or buttons too soon you would also die. Only after several dozen (or was it hundreds) of tokens did you finally master the timing and find your "zone". Then you were unstoppable...you were "Dirk the Daring".

The gameplay is simple and at times boring, but what do you expect? You control the main character (Dirk) through dozens of animated action scenes. At critical points in the action you are given a small window of opportunity to interact with the game by moving with the D-pad or swinging your sword with the A button. You can also use the arrows and OK (or Enter) button on your remote control if you are playing on a HD-DVD player. Act too soon or late and you will get to witness one of the many hilarious death scenes.

The action scenes are randomized each time you start a new game, so you never know which one is coming next, and each scene is also duplicated with a mirror image of itself, thus doubling the game's length. If you manage to make it through all the various challenges you will reach the Dragon's Lair and the gorgeous (at least until she speaks) Princess Daphne. You then get to take place in one of the most creative animated battle scenes in video game history.

The biggest fault in the gameplay lies in the hardware we've been forced to play it on since 1983. When Dragon's Lair debuted it was being played on a 12" laserdisc on an industrial laserdisc player (Pioneer LD-V1000 or PR-7820) with amazing seek and random access times. In all previous home versions of Dragon's Lair there has been a significant delay as the computer or DVD player's laser tried to seek out the proper video track and play it. If you play each scene flawlessly, the movie plays out without a hiccup, but if you miss a move or sword swipe the game then it has to load the appropriate death scene.

The HD-DVD version of Dragon's Lair offers the fastest seeks times since 1983 - nearly seamless but not quite. The game seeks information quickly, but it still isn’t like it was on laserdisc.

Another major issue that has been cleaned up, for the most part, were some abrupt and clipped-off endings to several scenes. While a few of these remain in the HD-DVD version (like the final fireball hitting the door after the horse ride), many others have been fixed, creating a much more fluid gameplay experience.

Definitely worth mentioning, this is the first Dragon’s Lair since the 1983 laserdisc to feature ALL of the scenes from the original game including their mirrored forms as well as all the original sounds. In previous home versions there have always been some scenes removed for whatever reason. This game allows you to choose between the original arcade version or the home version as well as integrating those missing scenes like the initial walk across the drawbridge into the castle and the eyestalk creature battle.

This version of Dragon’s Lair does offer Easy and Hard skill modes as well as letting you choose between 5 Lives or Unlimited. Easy difficulty gives you larger “windows” of opportunity to enter the correct move while Hard recreates the rigid accuracy of the original arcade machine. And if you don’t feel like playing the game, you can simply “watch” the game play out (automatically) and learn what to do in the future.

One new feature for the HD-DVD version is a gold circle that appears in the lower right corner whenever an action is required. If you perform the correct action it will turn green and if you enter the wrong move or don't do it fast enough the circle turns red. One thing I do miss from the original arcade version is the strictness of the timing for a lot of commands. Now, if you know you are supposed to swing your sword you can just mash the A button until the indicator turns green.

The game isn’t long; it only takes a few hours the first time through. After that it may only take you an hour or less to beat. Considering this game costs as much as a regular HD-DVD movie, I’d say it’s a good value. If you’re a hardcore gamer who has missed out on this priceless piece of gaming history you owe it to yourself to at the very least, rent it (that is, if you even own a HD-DVD player).