I have a long history of Dragons Lair disappointments...
I loved the coin-op laser-disk original.
Every version since then has never measured up - and for fucks sake this isnt a hard game to get right....
My problems with each edition...
- 3DO edition: Are you fucking kidding me? 1/3 of the footage, horribly compressed, no stage randomization, no score keeping, move timings nothing like the arcade and even worse many moves being different form the arcade and not fitting the scene.
- PC CDROM edition: see 3DO edition
- bastardized console games with the same name like Dragons Lair SNES: WTF is this shyt?
- DVD edition: getting close - but no proper stage randomizer, no score keeper and varying DVD player reaction speeds and seek times make the game go from 'passable' to completely sucky on some machines. They at least got all of the scenes in there, and not all fucked up compressed looking like the CD ROM versions or yore....if you wanted to watch the dragons lair scenes as a movie - this can work. If you want the arcade game experience - this sucks ass.
I pretty much gave up on ever being able to have the same arcade experience unless I just tracked down one of the machines and one of the olde laserdisks for the cabinet
Why is the score tracking important?
Why else do you play classic coin-op with friends over a few beers etc? ITs not to say "I think I got past three screens of Galaga" - its to play single credit games for score and score alone. Dragons Lair isnt some epic adventure game...its basically the worlds first giant QTE battle with pretty artwork or "graphics" if you call them that. You get higher score by completing more consecutive randomized stages and even more score per stage if you can keep going for many moves/stages on a single life. 2 people can play the exact same set of stages and have a different score. This game is lovely and easy for a casual to get into - but you MUST have a bloody arcade authentic scoring system.
Why is the proper arcade stage randomization important?
QTE games where you can just remember all of the moves would get old fast....score games of dragons lair arent nearly as fun if its just a memory challenge. The PROPER arcade stage randomization;
a.) randomly swaps out the stage a player will encounter at certain intervals
b.) mirror a stage at high speeds for maximum trickyness
c.) randomize the moves in a stage (for example, one trip thru the lizardmans maze could be left, left, right - another could be right, right,right) Dragons Lair just isnt worth a shit without this as its a snorefest if its the same stages and moves in the same order every time you play ala every other shitty home version of this game.
So back to the Dragons Lair Blu Ray - finally they fucking got it right. They made use of the Blu Ray Java capabilities and finally delivered ARCADE PERFECT scoring and stage randomization. This version is actually fun to play. (I know there is an HD DVD edition of this too, but I dont know if it has the great score keeping and stage randomization features of the Blu Ray disk - anyone know?)
Great sound + great HD transfers of the laserdisk artwork (looks like its upscaled/stretched for sure but the colors are LOVELY) + True coinop stage randomization and scoring = The ultimate version for fans of the coin-op.
