Dragon's Lair

I remember playing Dragon's Lair around the time of 1984 at Barry Island in Wales it was actually the same arcade that the fictional charactor Nessa played by Ruth Jones in Gavin and Stacy worked in the show.

I recall seeing the aracde for the first time and was blown away by the

amazing animation!! it was near the Spy Hunter Arcade another great game.

Looking at the graphics it seemed to good to be true was this really a game!! I was used to buying home computer games for my Dragon 32k and Commodore 64k and being impressed with the cassette cover artwork portraying the game and always disapointed how the game looked on the screen nothing like the cover!

  The animation was mainly done by Disney's Don Bluth which took 6 years to draw! the voices were the actual animators too. I was also blown away by the price per go £1 !! thats a fortune back then when most games were 10p I could buy an ice cream and bag of chips for a £1 back then!

I still had a go and straight away was totaly confused at the game play or lack of I should say!

To anyone that hasn't played this game before it runs of a laser disc, its actually just a series of video animation clips you have to push buttons and move the joystick in the correct direction at certain points during the fast paced scenes. The timing has to be pretty precise from what i recall you get a time frame of a second and most of the time you just die. If you hit the control in time it moves to the next scene where straight away you have to a gain make a split second decision. The game is extremely hard! if i remember correctly the next time you have a go the scenes are not in the same order so the next time you are learning again. very frustrating

i've not played this game since 1984 but

the animation and sound is timeless on this game, a really work of art

 Its one of those games if you did played it back then you will never forget it

I don't think it was as popular in the UK as it should of been due to laser disc reliability issues, the cost per play and the lack of game play that confused many.

still its a ground breaking game that has stood the test of time

DVD version fot his game are available on ebay for under £10 well worth buying a copy

i'm looking forward getting to run on my arcade, its very tricky to setup!
it is now available on the iphone/ipad but reviews say it is a bad port and nothing like the arcade version