Games Only a Mother Could Love 12.11.08: Dragon’s Lair (Arcade)

Posted by Mark Salmela on 12.11.2008

Dragon’s Lair: The epic storyline that represents what a male human being will go through for a simple booty call.

Greetings and salutations 411maniaholics, my name's Mark Salmela and I am the new writer on the block. It's been a long journey, but finally I'm here to spread my wisdom across 411mania. Let me just thank 411 for the opportunity and I look forward to meeting all of the readers as well as the writers on the site. I have a lot of ideas that I plan to spread across 411mania *picture me as an incurable virus, I don't ever die, I just make my host slowly decline*.

Now that my introduction is out of the way, it's time to get the show on the road with what I do best…





You see everyone; one man's trash is another man's treasure. The games that you may find dull, unresponsive, and an all around pile of shit are some of my favorite games of all time. That's not to say I don't like the current games out there *Metal Gear Solid 4 and Pixel Junk Monsters are two of my favorite games released this year*, but I often find myself having more fun with the games of yesteryear than I do the games of today. And that's why I'm writing this column, so I can share my wisdom about the games that I love that you probably never had the chance to play *or more likely didn't want to play*.

Now my primary focus will be on a concept that I wish was still around today, and that's full motion video *FMV*. Sure it's somewhat-present in games such as Need for Speed and Red Alert 3, but those are half assed attempts and for the most part FMV-style games are "poo-pooped" upon in our beloved industry. This doesn't mean that I am not opposed to doing other games *Dragon's Lair isn't a true FMV game* but I want to focus primarily on FMV. After all, what better way to get engulfed in a universe than playing as an actual digitized human being? It worked for Mortal Kombat, didn't it?

So I'm going to start off this week with the game that changed the industry and in my opinion led to the creation of FMV games, and that's Dragon's Lair. Just so everyone knows, most of the FMV games that I will discuss will be the Sega CD ports, since it's my console of choice.



Dragon's Lair (1983, 1993 Sega CD)



Unleashed onto unsuspecting victims in the arcades in June 1983, Dragon's Lair was an incredible success. Players took control of Dirk the Daring as he went on a quest to save Princess Daphne from the evil Wizard *insert name here*. *Edit: Or actually I'm sorry my friend Billy who I played Dragon's Lair with and am pretty sure could write an encyclopedia on Dragon's Lair let me know that the castle actually belongs to Singe the stoned-ass Dragon you fight at the end.* Now I could go on about Dirk being a courageous hero and a true knight in shining armor, but let's face it, Dirk was just some average shmuck looking to get his "winkie wet" with what he perceived as a "babe". It's basically a metaphor for life.

Innovative for its time, players didn't actually control Dirk the Moronically-Daring imbecile, but rather they influenced his actions by pressing in one of 4 directions *up, down, left, or right* or pressing the action button. The game actually played out as a movie, where players would watch a cut scene and whenever Dirk came to a stop or looked as if he was about to get his face eaten off by bats, the user would press one of the 5 buttons *4 directions or the action button* and watch as the results play out as another cut scene. This usually meant that if Dirk was about to get launched into a pit of fire than you had to push the right button to save him, which means that 4 out of the 5 options would result in Dirk the Daring actually getting launched into a pit of fire.


Dirk the Daring is pissed off and he ain't gonna take it anymore!


And that right there is the brilliance of Dragon's Lair, as each time a player makes a wrong choice *they only have a 20% chance of making the right choice*, one life would be removed and after 5 lives the player would have to insert another quarter to continue. So Dragon's Lair is really a trial and error game, as 4 out of 5 times you'd lose one of your five lives and would have to repeat the scene over again. On the other hand if the user was smart enough to write down the correct sequence than you could easily beat the game without losing a life but judging from the Fort-Knox style mint Cinematronics made from Dragon's Lair very few were ever smart enough to figure it out *remember it was the 1980's*.

Another thing that made Dragon's Lair so popular was the graphics. For 1983 there wasn't anything that looked even remotely like this. With former Disney animator Don Bluth at the helm, Dragon's Lair resembled an actual Disney movie in video game form *minus an actual story in favor of numerous fight scenes*.


Dirk could have just gone to the strip club like a normal human being…


I played Dragon's Lair on the Sega CD *I've yet to find an actual arcade machine of Dragon's Lair*. You know a game is going to be awesome when the first thing you see in the game is an actual advertisement for the game *which is weird considering you already bought it since no one rented out Sega CD games*. You think the in-game advertising of today sucks? What if game's like Burnout Paradise has advertisements promoting Burnout Paradise in it? But Dragon's Lair gets away with it for the sheer amount of awesomeness they cram into everything. Every miss-step on the user's part usually leads to an over-the-top and truly brutal death. I mean seriously, the guy gets his face eaten off by bats at one point, this is really brutal stuff for 1983 *only 2 years after Galaga and 3 years after Pac-Man*. Right from the first scene if you don't press the up button at precisely the right moment you're going to be eaten alive by some giant squid monster-thing *it literally took my friends and I ten minutes to beat this part*.

While some people think that Dirk sounds too much like a wimp in this game I like that he is just a common every-day man trying to get some poon when everything goes wrong*who among us hasn't been in that situation before?*. And come on, you'd be screaming too if your body was being dissolved in a giant pit of acid *that's why I stay away from orange juice*.


Can Marcus Phoenix slice an acid monster in half? I didn't think so.


I also feel as if the developers really enjoyed making this game as well. I mean come on, there are just so many innovative and clever ways for Dirk to die in this game, there's no way the developers weren't just sitting in a board room writing all of these down on a chalkboard laughing hysterically. There are points in the game where I'd purposely input the wrong buttons to see how Dirk would die next. From poison gas to fire pits to being crushed by giant marbles, Cinematronics had a blast with Dragon's Lair, and I felt it every step of the way.

Dragon's Lair, like pretty much every game I'll write about in this column, is best experienced with a group of friends. To avoid getting bored of Dragon's Lair we'd constantly pass the controller around, with each of us wanting the chance to prove we're the king of gaming by saving Dirk the Daring from the cunning and dastardly Frog Queen *I think it's actually a King but that's beside the point*. My friends and I have never actually made it past the giant rolling marbles of doom without cheating but that's because most people underestimate the difficulty of Dragon's Lair *Edit: Another correction by my friend Billy, apparently we made it past the marbles, and after that was the bat scene where we got stuck, but I don't remember. Now we're going to have to go back and play it again *sigh**. Most of the time you only have fractions of a section to input the correct button or else you're screwed, and it must have taken my friends and I 10 minutes of screaming at the royal douche bag black knight before we finally sliced his dumbass in half and moved on *the worst part is that he knows he's an ass too and taunts you with tedious girly snickers as he shoots his lightning bolts at you*. If you ever play Dragon's Lair and can make it farther than my friends and I than we salute you, although that'll only encourage us to play it even more to beat your high score, so please don't try.


No castle is complete without a giant deadly pinball machine inspired by Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.


I won't go into detail describing the entire game, as that's why I've included the YouTube videos, but Dragon's Lair gives one of the most satisfying endings ever in a video game. Because while you don't actually see it happen, you knew Dirk and Daphne did it right on top of the Dragon's corpse, probably doggy style too *that outfit had to be giving her a major weggie*. Dirk blasted his way through the castle in true, mid-evil pimp style and got exactly what he came in for, and that's some unadulterated, too hot for 411mania style sex.

Dragon's Lair is actually accepted as a rather good game *or at least it was at the time of its release*. It was innovative and different for its time and in my opinion led to the creation of FMV style games. Dragon's Lair didn't cause a national shortage on quarters or anything but it was highly successful and spawned numerous sequels. The last game, Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair was a terrible game that even I hated but there is a movie in the planning stages *nothing confirmed yet*. Dragon's Lair is currently available as a DVD or a Blu-Ray movie that can be played on your PS3 or 360 *obviously not the Blu-Ray version* so it's not hard to track down for those who are curious. If you can get it for under $15 and enjoy a good laugh than I recommend picking it up *especially since the vast majority of games I'll be talking about in this column will not be easy to access without the old consoles such as the Sega CD*.

And while we are on the topic of Dragon's Lair, I do want to make mention that my friends and I are the only people we know of who have successfully beaten the infamous NES version of Dragon's Lair without cheating or using assist tools or constant save states. Sorry, but I had to brag. Beating one of the worst games of all time with two of my best buds at 4 am was one of the best moments of my life. By beating Dragon's Lair I feel as if I've banged Daphne as well, and let me tell you, she's a good screamer.





This is from the Sega CD version *which is the version I own*.



Here is part 2 of Dragon's Lair on the Sega CD *which is the same as the arcade version*.



Finally, the epic conclusion to Dragon's Lair.



Games only I can love


Oh noes its digital kitty!1


As I mentioned earlier, I'm a guy who loves games that are so bad they're amazing. As you'll see in the upcoming weeks there are games that have megacritic scores in the 2's and 3's that I would consider to be better than sex *the legal kind, too!*. While we rarely see full-length games that fit this description anymore *now days most games are either awesome or just plain bad*, with XNA available to the public on the Xbox 360 we now have a window for awesome FMV style games to return. I can't promise this section will be included every week, but I'll try to include it as often as possible. Also, since most of the games in this section will be from XNA *because let's face it, XNA has shit for actually good games* you guys will be able to get free trials of every game I talk about here.

So starting off this week is Zombie Smashers X4 Guitarpocalypse! Zombie Smashers is basically a rip-off of Super Smash Bros., with the exception that the controls totally blow. But to make up for the crappy controls are some truly awesome characters such as a pirate rocking out on guitar, a Viking rocking out on guitar, and the headless horseman, who is surprisingly rocking out on guitar. Another thing that makes the game awesome *and makes it this week's pick* are the special moves, which include giant saw blades slashing across the screen as well as an actual digitized cat that raises hell on the screen and unleashes an unbeatable yet cuddly laser beam of death. Oh digitized kitty, you win this round.

There are interesting aspects to the game, such as the ability to regenerate your own health by rocking out on guitar, but it doesn't really matter since it appears that as time goes on you're more likely to get knocked out by the simplest of punches. At the beginning I can have zero health left and someone can be unloading punches on me and I'll be just fine but once we get to the end it doesn't matter how much health I have left, as the simplest of kicks to the stomach will send me flying right off the screen. Throw in the fact that Digital Kitty has a vendetta against pumpkins *I actually have no idea how to get Digital Kitty to spawn, he/she/it just shows up from time to time* and I don't think I've ever won a round of Zombie Smashers.


Just you wait, Streets of Fury is coming to XNA soon!



So what do you guys think? I'm pretty much doing this column whenever I have the free time but I plan on making this a weekly column *probably every Thursday, although I might move to Tuesday's* as long as you guys respond and take to it well. These are games that I truly enjoy *unlike other reviewers who often just talk crap and get angry at these games* and I want to talk about them, but you gotta let me know if you want me to continue doing these *otherwise I'll fade back into obscurity*. I'm open to doing suggestions but I'd like to stick to FMV style games. I do have columns planned out for a few games already *yes, that includes Target Terror* although they're going to have to wait for a couple weeks. As for next week, we're taking a trip to Zombie Island, as I'll be back with the infamous Corpse Killer! Cya next week!