5 ms·

How did this game work? It seems like it was a QTE game with no prompts. Why was it popular?

chowells 4y ago
According to a random Wikipedia article I found, in 1983 the three top-grossing arcade games were Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Dragon's Lair. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_in_video_games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_in_video_games Compare the graphics of those three games. Dragon's Lair was groundbreaking, even if the gameplay was quite limited to account for technological and budgetary limitations.
- leereeves 4y ago
  That's not quite the same thing as popularity. Dragon's Lair was very expensive per minute of gameplay, so it didn't have to be popular to make a lot of money.
  - chowells 4y ago
    This is true, but not related to my point. Dragon's Lair was in arcades in 1983. It looked like nothing else when it landed, and very little else for a long time. That's why it stands out in the history of games.
  - tunesmith 4y ago
    It always seemed to be the most popular game in the arcades I visited. Right in the center, sometimes with a monitor mounted above it so others could watch, ringed with people that were stacking quarters end-to-end on the side to claim the next play session. Seemed like it was that way until Gauntlet came along.
pessimizer 4y ago
Because Don Bluth cartoons are awesome, especially the tons of death scenes animated for this game. Whenever someone made it to a screen that I hadn't seen, I was absolutely giddy and filled with dread over what was about to kill him. The game was bad and consisted of guessing when you should press buttons. Skill was gained through memory and constant application of quarters.
- m463 4y ago
  > the tons of death scenes lol, this is what I remember. I seem to remember turning into a skeleton many times (or ways?).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
qbasic_forever 4y ago
It was laserdisc based with full motion animation graphics. It looked and sounded like _nothing_ else in the arcade. The best graphics in other games at the time were things like Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac Man (i.e. cutesy low resolution pixels and beeps/bloops of sound). Dragons Lair was awe inspiring--you were _controlling_ a real cartoon, like what you might have dreamed of doing while watching cartoons on TV. There were prompts FYI, the button you needed to press would quickly flash and you had fractions of a second to smash it. The whole point of the game was kind of to infer the right action from what was happening on screen too, i.e. if a skeleton is swinging a sword at you then you probably want to jump away from them but not into a nearby pit.
- tmountain 4y ago
  The “prompt” was a very very brief yellow flash on the periphery of the screen in the direction you were supposed to move the joystick. I tried it a few times as a kid but was far too poor to get past the first one or two prompts. The visuals were mind boggling and the gameplay was abysmal, so my friends and I would usually just stare at the demo reel before moving on to a game that would stretch our quarters farther (gauntlet, tmnt, street fighter, etc). Ah, those were the days…!
CharlesW 4y ago
> It seems like it was a QTE game with no prompts. I believe Dragon's Lair was the first QTE-style game, or at least the first popular one. Also, Princess Daphne needed my help, dude.
libraryatnight 4y ago
My memory of it is that it looked amazing. It still does. It's a Don Bluth cartoon short, more or less. But the game itself was frustrating and terrible. Even on easy you had to really nail the inputs or instantly die. It looked so good that even after I learned it was a waste of quarters as a kid, I still occasionally would get baited into playing. I remember the last time I played it was at a restaurant waiting for a table, there was an anteroom before the bar with a cocktail table Pac-Man and Dragon's Lair. After about 20 minutes of waiting I actually thought... "What if it's not bad, what if the machines I tried before were just faulty or abused." as I watched the intro loop from across the room. Nope, same anguish.
- cmgbhm 4y ago
  You’ve summarized my memories of encountering this game at showbiz often. I loved the art. I remember looking it up in college https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gbc/436660-dragons-lair/faqs/10684 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gbc/436660-dragons-lair/faqs/1... and realizing there’s no way I would have ever remembered all that. https://youtu.be/hdumVFgwgP8 https://youtu.be/hdumVFgwgP8 is the complete run. I so wanted to like it. Fortunately that style didn’t survive often.
brandall10 4y ago
No offense, but it's amazing to me the appeal of something like this wouldn't be clearly evident given the time it was released. That game and other similar QTE types of that era give me chills whenever I see one in an arcade still. It seemed like something out of the future. It's one of those things of that era so vibrant that it goes hand in hand with things like ET or Thriller as being especially exciting and memorable. Part of it was the Secret of Nimh connection... unsure if the film was a huge success, but it definitely left a mark on that period of time. To have a game in that animation style, with a hilarious premise, incredible sound system, etc, was a complete sensory overload against the pixellated mess that surrounded it. I remember seeing it the first time during summer of '83 on a family trip to Vegas. They carved out a section with a platform in the middle arcade at the Flamingo Hilton, there must have been 50 people just watching whomever was playing it. From what I recall it was also the first game to cost 50 cents, and you would have to wait an hour or more in line for the honor maybe during the first few months if your arcade was so lucky to have a machine. I remember the first I was able to play it without waiting, must have been around Christmas that year.
- zxcvbn4038 4y ago
  At my local arcade it was months before I could even get close enough to touch the controls. There were always thirty to sixty people waiting to play. They rigged an external tv so people in the crowd could watch. I never saw another game generate that kind of interest.
giantrobot 4y ago
The game's video was full motion NTSC video. It played off a LaserDisc inside the cabinet. Because LaserDiscs have direct access capabilities, when the game needed to play a scene it was just giving the player a time index to play. The logic of the game was keeping track of the current playhead and was expecting certain input at certain timestamps, some element on the screen or the action button would flash and you'd have a fraction of a second to hit the button or the joystick in the right direction. If you didn't you died and the game played one of the many death animations. It was...fun in that it was a gorgeous game compared to other games in the arcade. Unfortunately it usually cost like a dollar in quarters for a single play. You only had two or three lives (I can't remember exactly) and the reaction time was very brief and unforgiving. This was a time when the typical arcade game was a quarter for a few lives and if you were good you could get tens of minutes (or more) of play out of a quarter. It wasn't until years later with the home release that I even saw even halfway through the game. I've never once seen anyone get further than a quarter of the way through the game in an adcade.
- brandall10 4y ago
  Believe it or not I saw someone beat it fairly early on, maybe within 2-3 months, and the crowd was absolutely freaking out when the dragon appeared w/ Daphne in the crystal ball. Not having the internet around at the time I imagine most people thought it was un-winnable. Interestingly enough, while I didn't get particularly far in Dragon's Lair I actually beat Cliff Hanger and got to the final stages of Space Ace. Not much but they seemed a bit more forgiving.
- csa 4y ago
  > I've never once seen anyone get further than a quarter of the way through the game in an adcade. Beating the dragon in the arcade was a complete rush. People watching were thoroughly entertained. Honestly, I think it was more fun to watch than to play.
jackmott 4y ago
[dead]
pmarreck 4y ago
gen x'er here saying the obvious "I guess you had to be there" ;) it was the first QTE game, the first animated game with full NTSC laserdisc graphics, the first game to cost 50 cents to play, and just watching someone else play was entertaining enough so the cabinet ALWAYS had a crowd of people around it. The only other time I regularly saw such a crowd around a single arcade cabinet was when Mortal Kombat came out while I was in college. If you look at other popular arcade games of this era and what they had to offer graphically and sound-wise, you may start to see the appeal of a fully animated controllable game with a movie soundtrack. Most Gen X gamers' memories of this game entail the (also entertaining) death animations. Because it was also FUCKING hard, lol. The hinting of QTE games today is positively luxurious compared to Dragons' Lair. I think it's hilarious that the Daphne emulator has to actually simulate the playback-head delay of the (now nonexistent) laserdisc player to get the timings right, lol. Like it literally has to have a model of the disc itself in its emulation so it can estimate how long it would have taken the playback head to get from wherever it is virtually to wherever it is supposed to go virtually because the game incorporated these delays into its gameplay and simply supplying the right video data as soon as it is requested in naive emulation would make it work too fast, lol
- prox 4y ago
  What’s interesting is that for instance in Taiwan it’s still big (arcades) , I follow an IRL streamer who goes there every now and then.
  - pmarreck 4y ago
    That's pretty amazing!

According to a random Wikipedia article I found, in 1983 the three top-grossing arcade games were Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Dragon's Lair. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_in_video_games https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_in_video_games Compare the graphics of those three games. Dragon's Lair was groundbreaking, even if the gameplay was quite limited to account for technological and budgetary limitations.

leereeves 4y ago
That's not quite the same thing as popularity. Dragon's Lair was very expensive per minute of gameplay, so it didn't have to be popular to make a lot of money.
- chowells 4y ago
  This is true, but not related to my point. Dragon's Lair was in arcades in 1983. It looked like nothing else when it landed, and very little else for a long time. That's why it stands out in the history of games.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  It always seemed to be the most popular game in the arcades I visited. Right in the center, sometimes with a monitor mounted above it so others could watch, ringed with people that were stacking quarters end-to-end on the side to claim the next play session. Seemed like it was that way until Gauntlet came along.

pessimizer 4y ago

Because Don Bluth cartoons are awesome, especially the tons of death scenes animated for this game. Whenever someone made it to a screen that I hadn't seen, I was absolutely giddy and filled with dread over what was about to kill him. The game was bad and consisted of guessing when you should press buttons. Skill was gained through memory and constant application of quarters.

m463 4y ago
> the tons of death scenes lol, this is what I remember. I seem to remember turning into a skeleton many times (or ways?).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

qbasic_forever 4y ago

It was laserdisc based with full motion animation graphics. It looked and sounded like _nothing_ else in the arcade. The best graphics in other games at the time were things like Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac Man (i.e. cutesy low resolution pixels and beeps/bloops of sound). Dragons Lair was awe inspiring--you were _controlling_ a real cartoon, like what you might have dreamed of doing while watching cartoons on TV. There were prompts FYI, the button you needed to press would quickly flash and you had fractions of a second to smash it. The whole point of the game was kind of to infer the right action from what was happening on screen too, i.e. if a skeleton is swinging a sword at you then you probably want to jump away from them but not into a nearby pit.

tmountain 4y ago
The “prompt” was a very very brief yellow flash on the periphery of the screen in the direction you were supposed to move the joystick. I tried it a few times as a kid but was far too poor to get past the first one or two prompts. The visuals were mind boggling and the gameplay was abysmal, so my friends and I would usually just stare at the demo reel before moving on to a game that would stretch our quarters farther (gauntlet, tmnt, street fighter, etc). Ah, those were the days…!

CharlesW 4y ago

> It seems like it was a QTE game with no prompts. I believe Dragon's Lair was the first QTE-style game, or at least the first popular one. Also, Princess Daphne needed my help, dude.

libraryatnight 4y ago

My memory of it is that it looked amazing. It still does. It's a Don Bluth cartoon short, more or less. But the game itself was frustrating and terrible. Even on easy you had to really nail the inputs or instantly die. It looked so good that even after I learned it was a waste of quarters as a kid, I still occasionally would get baited into playing. I remember the last time I played it was at a restaurant waiting for a table, there was an anteroom before the bar with a cocktail table Pac-Man and Dragon's Lair. After about 20 minutes of waiting I actually thought... "What if it's not bad, what if the machines I tried before were just faulty or abused." as I watched the intro loop from across the room. Nope, same anguish.

cmgbhm 4y ago
You’ve summarized my memories of encountering this game at showbiz often. I loved the art. I remember looking it up in college https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gbc/436660-dragons-lair/faqs/10684 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gbc/436660-dragons-lair/faqs/1... and realizing there’s no way I would have ever remembered all that. https://youtu.be/hdumVFgwgP8 https://youtu.be/hdumVFgwgP8 is the complete run. I so wanted to like it. Fortunately that style didn’t survive often.

brandall10 4y ago

No offense, but it's amazing to me the appeal of something like this wouldn't be clearly evident given the time it was released. That game and other similar QTE types of that era give me chills whenever I see one in an arcade still. It seemed like something out of the future. It's one of those things of that era so vibrant that it goes hand in hand with things like ET or Thriller as being especially exciting and memorable. Part of it was the Secret of Nimh connection... unsure if the film was a huge success, but it definitely left a mark on that period of time. To have a game in that animation style, with a hilarious premise, incredible sound system, etc, was a complete sensory overload against the pixellated mess that surrounded it. I remember seeing it the first time during summer of '83 on a family trip to Vegas. They carved out a section with a platform in the middle arcade at the Flamingo Hilton, there must have been 50 people just watching whomever was playing it. From what I recall it was also the first game to cost 50 cents, and you would have to wait an hour or more in line for the honor maybe during the first few months if your arcade was so lucky to have a machine. I remember the first I was able to play it without waiting, must have been around Christmas that year.

zxcvbn4038 4y ago
At my local arcade it was months before I could even get close enough to touch the controls. There were always thirty to sixty people waiting to play. They rigged an external tv so people in the crowd could watch. I never saw another game generate that kind of interest.

giantrobot 4y ago

The game's video was full motion NTSC video. It played off a LaserDisc inside the cabinet. Because LaserDiscs have direct access capabilities, when the game needed to play a scene it was just giving the player a time index to play. The logic of the game was keeping track of the current playhead and was expecting certain input at certain timestamps, some element on the screen or the action button would flash and you'd have a fraction of a second to hit the button or the joystick in the right direction. If you didn't you died and the game played one of the many death animations. It was...fun in that it was a gorgeous game compared to other games in the arcade. Unfortunately it usually cost like a dollar in quarters for a single play. You only had two or three lives (I can't remember exactly) and the reaction time was very brief and unforgiving. This was a time when the typical arcade game was a quarter for a few lives and if you were good you could get tens of minutes (or more) of play out of a quarter. It wasn't until years later with the home release that I even saw even halfway through the game. I've never once seen anyone get further than a quarter of the way through the game in an adcade.

brandall10 4y ago
Believe it or not I saw someone beat it fairly early on, maybe within 2-3 months, and the crowd was absolutely freaking out when the dragon appeared w/ Daphne in the crystal ball. Not having the internet around at the time I imagine most people thought it was un-winnable. Interestingly enough, while I didn't get particularly far in Dragon's Lair I actually beat Cliff Hanger and got to the final stages of Space Ace. Not much but they seemed a bit more forgiving.
csa 4y ago
> I've never once seen anyone get further than a quarter of the way through the game in an adcade. Beating the dragon in the arcade was a complete rush. People watching were thoroughly entertained. Honestly, I think it was more fun to watch than to play.

jackmott 4y ago

[dead]

pmarreck 4y ago

gen x'er here saying the obvious "I guess you had to be there" ;) it was the first QTE game, the first animated game with full NTSC laserdisc graphics, the first game to cost 50 cents to play, and just watching someone else play was entertaining enough so the cabinet ALWAYS had a crowd of people around it. The only other time I regularly saw such a crowd around a single arcade cabinet was when Mortal Kombat came out while I was in college. If you look at other popular arcade games of this era and what they had to offer graphically and sound-wise, you may start to see the appeal of a fully animated controllable game with a movie soundtrack. Most Gen X gamers' memories of this game entail the (also entertaining) death animations. Because it was also FUCKING hard, lol. The hinting of QTE games today is positively luxurious compared to Dragons' Lair. I think it's hilarious that the Daphne emulator has to actually simulate the playback-head delay of the (now nonexistent) laserdisc player to get the timings right, lol. Like it literally has to have a model of the disc itself in its emulation so it can estimate how long it would have taken the playback head to get from wherever it is virtually to wherever it is supposed to go virtually because the game incorporated these delays into its gameplay and simply supplying the right video data as soon as it is requested in naive emulation would make it work too fast, lol

prox 4y ago
What’s interesting is that for instance in Taiwan it’s still big (arcades) , I follow an IRL streamer who goes there every now and then.
- pmarreck 4y ago
  That's pretty amazing!