WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Dragon's Lair
Publisher: ReadySoft Developer: Epicenter Release: 1993
I guess this is pretty much the grandaddy of the FMV video game movement. I'm going to explain this game a bit because I'm guessing a lot of the younger folk don't know it quite as well as my generation.
Dragon's Lair was released by Cinematronics to arcades in 1983. Players took control of Dirk the Daring, a valiant (but clumsy) knight on a quest to save the lovely Princess Daphne from the dragon's keep. The dragon would eventually come to be known as Singe thanks to the saturday morning cartoon series this game spawned, but in 1983 he remained nameless.
What made Dragon's Lair so special is that it was comprised entirely of full-motion video. Animation, actually, by Don Bluth and his studio. Bluth and his people were former Disney animators, and so obviously the quality of Dragon's Lair was way higher than folks were used to seeing in a video game. Bluth's film credits are impressive, and include stuff like 101 Dalmations, Robin Hood, The Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, All Dogs Go To Heaven, and on and on and on.
The game itself was housed on a laserdisc, the first of its kind. It was ridiculously popular to the point that the internal disc player in the original arcade units broke down pretty frequently. Today there's actually a Dragon's Lair cabinet on display in the Smithsonian.
Game play is comprised solely of what's known today as Quick Time Events – as Dirk entered each new room, players would have to pay close attention to the screen for flashes of light. Then they would push the joystick in the direction the flash indicated (or hit the sword button if Dirk's scabbard flashed). Perform the proper motion quick enough and the animation would continue on; perform the wrong animation or move too slow, and Dirk suffered a quick and often gruesome death. And I'm pretty sure you don't always get a yellow flash when you have to perform certain actions, but I'm not positive.
Obviously, the advent of CD-ROM players on home computers and consoles was the perfect excuse to bring Dirk out of retirement, and so he appeared on almost every disc-based console out there. He also appeared on hardware like the NES and Game Boy, however, though those adventures were only loosely based on the original animation, mostly appearing as more traditional, sprite-based action games. Though it should be mentioned that Capcom managed a pretty impressive FMV version of Dragon's Lair on the Game Boy Color.
When you consider the postage-stamp of screen real-estate the early Sega CD FMV games used, later offerings on the console look pretty impressive. In fact, Dragon's Lair is almost full-screen video. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that most of the backgrounds are completely static – the complete lack of moving video artifacts during most scenes makes me think there was a bit of trickery at work here.
Either way, the only thing holding back the Sega CD version of Dragon's Lair is really the limited colour pallette. Dirk's adventures suffer from a lack of colour and the screen-door effect seen on most SCD games, but for the most part, this is an impressive looking game for the hardware.
As far as game play goes, I don't have much of an opinion on this one. I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but I really suck at Dragon's Lair. I normally can't even get past the opening drawbridge scene (a scene I believe isn't actually playable in the original arcade release).
This is the last FMV title we'll see on WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL for a while. And after three in a row (though three very interesting games, in my opinion), we definitely deserve the break.