Reviewed: October 3, 2006
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
Digital Leisure
Developer
Digital Leisure
Released: June 1, 2006
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Everyone
5
7
8
6
6.9
System Requirements
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
Ah yes, 1983. I had just graduated high school and was hanging out at the local arcades full time. One day they wheeled this new game in through the door called Dragon's Lair, plugged it in, turned it on, and my life was forever changed. Quarters (or rather tokens) seemed to be magnetically drawn to this game. Within two days I had mastered Dirk the Daring and was saving the princess, not only with a single token, but often on a single life. I quickly became known as the "Dragon's Lair Guy" and people would actually give me tokens to watch me play the game. Yes, life was good.
Dragon's Lair spawned a short lived era of laserdisc games including the now-famous Space Ace, and countless others. Even after arcades started to vanish from the local malls, these laserdisc games persisted in their popularity, spilling over into the PC world in the form of chopped up versions on floppy and eventually CD-ROM’s. We saw a brief resurgence of these titles when DVD became a popular standard on the PC, and consoles like the Xbox and PS2 started using DVD’s, and once again, Digital Leisure is back to ride the coattails of the High Definition Generation with Dragon’s Lair HD.
The box boasts about a “high definition film transfer” as well as digitally remastered 5.1 surround sound. It all sounds good on the box, but just how much better can a 23 year old video game get? Here is what the developers have to say:
Dragon's Lair HD is the culmination of over a year of intense restoration work on the game that revolutionized an industry. Using today's most sophisticated film transfer equipment, we dusted off the original Dragon's Lair film master from the vaults at Technicolor Creative Services in California. This was the original negative that was used to create each and every Laserdisc for the 1983 release of Dragon's Lair. The film negative was then carefully cleaned and, through a delicate film restoration process, allowed us to create a newly restored inter-positive of the Dragon's Lair film: something that hadn't been done for over 20 years. Under the strict supervision of the Technicolor staff, each individual film segment was then delicately color corrected between all the cut points in the original animation to make sure the color was consistent and brilliant. The final film-quality video was then transferred to high definition video tape, ready for us to re-create the game with the utmost visual and aural quality.
Once the high definition transfer was completed, we began work on the first-ever five-channel surround-sound version of Dragon's Lair. The original audio was remastered and cleaned to remove any non-natural background audio. Each scene was then carefully analyzed to determine the best placement for each sound and overall consistency. With the stunning visuals and remarkable 5.1 surround sound audio, Dragon's Lair HD is an achievement we are happy to share with you.
Dragon's Lair was a breath of fresh air back in 1983. While most people were playing Defender, Galaga, Q-Bert, etc, here comes this game with amazing graphics from Disney animator, Don Bluth (Land Before Time, American Tail, Titan A.E.). The game featured a trailer with a booming narrators voice and clips from the game that always caused a crowd to gather, first at the game then the token dispenser. The nature of the game was memorization. You only had 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 animation, these visual cues only allowed for about one second of error and you could never win by reflexes alone. Timing was critical, and if you got too confident and started pressing the joystick or button 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 as simple (and boring) as it gets. You control Dirk, the hero, 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 arrow keys or swinging your sword with the spacebar. Act too soon or react to late and you get to witness one of the dozens of horrible, yet humorous 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 only fault in the gameplay lies in the hardware we are forced to play it on. When Dragon's Lair debuted it was being played on a 12" laserdisc on an industrial laserdisc player with amazing seek and random access times. The way the game is laid out today, each animated sequence is its own unique WMV file (about 1600 of them). 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 has to load the appropriate death scene.
Back in 1983 this was seamless, but today, even after two decades of technological advancements, even the 16x DVD-ROM in the system requirements just doesn't have fast enough access. This results in frequent and annoying pauses where the screen will flash to black for 1-2 seconds as your computer scans the DVD for the next scene.
Dumping the entire game to a fast and defragged hard drive will get you pretty close to the original seamlessness of 1983. You can pick and choose which video format and quality you want to copy or you can copy the entire game at the expense of 7.8GB of hard disk space.
Definitely worth mentioning, this is the first Dragon’s Lair for the PC since the 1983 laserdisc to feature ALL of the scenes from the original game including their mirrored forms. 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.
Since the goal is no longer about taking all the tokens out of your pocket, Dragon’s Lair HD offers unlimited continues, so you can easily beat the game in one sitting without having to start from the beginning after you die. There is also a scoring mode, which I never really figured out. It keeps a running score, but resets when you run out of lives and have to continue.
This version of Dragon’s Lair does offer Easy and Hard skill modes. Easy 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.
This is where things get tricky. The game is definitely a high definition transfer, but from what I can tell, that only serves to enhance the flaws and imperfections in the original master, despite any efforts to “clean it up”. Dragon’s Lair HD runs in resolutions previously unheard of including a 1440x1080 4:3 anamorphic version, a 1280x1024 5:4 full screen version of the game, and even as high as 1920x1080 in letterbox, but the quality of the source material looks like somebody dug into their 8mm home movie vault.
There are all sorts of artifacts that you usually associate with film. Flecks on the screen that look like hair or dust and white specks and dots that randomly pop up all over the scene really take away from the HD hype on the box. In fact, I’d venture to say some of the earlier versions might look slightly better. At least at low res these imperfections aren’t showcased with such perfection.
For all of the work that apparently went into this hi-def transfer, the results are less than thrilling, especially given the fact that I am running this game on about $1,500 worth of new video technology. Artifacts aside, the game looks great running at extreme resolutions and in widescreen. Don Bluth is a masterful animator and you can really tell that a lot of time and care went into the creation of this game. The colors are rich and vibrant and the characters are delightful. Even the scarier creatures have a humorous side that makes this game great for kids of all ages.
The sounds and music are better than ever and presented in a 5.1 surround mix for those with the sound card to play it. The booming voice of the narrator gets you pumped up during the opening movie. Dirk doesn't say much other than a few girlish shrieks during some encounters, and the shrill seductive voice of the princess is one you won't soon forget.
As with all of these laserdisc-inspired games, it's all about memorization. Dragon's Lair mixes it up a bit by throwing in mirror images of the scenes, so you need to get your bearings before tapping into those memorized patterns. With unlimited continues you can easily finish this game in less than two hours, and the more you play the faster you can do it. Nothing really changes other than the order of the action scenes, so there is little motivation to replay the game other than to show off your skills to your friends.
Dragon's Lair has made appearances on the PC in floppy, CD and DVD format. This is the first PC version to include all of the scenes the original laserdisc offered, as many of them were cut in previous versions to fit the game on the limited space of those formats.
This version has also been remastered for HD video and surround sound to offer the best visuals since the original, despite the random glitches from the aging source material.
Despite the great looks and sound and even the entertaining, albeit limited gameplay, this game falls short of HD greatness. I was seeing way too many video glitches that I never saw on the Xbox version, and there are still disc seeking issues that create annoying hiccups in the gameplay.
But there is no denying that Dragon’s Lair is a timeless classic, and this latest version is easily the best way to experience it on the PC. Adults and kids alike won’t be able to resists the mesmerizing visuals and the memorizing gameplay.