Dragons Lair DVD +Movie Reviews

I don't know what you guys are talking about

Lee Dicey | Utah United States | 06/20/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This BluRay version is INCREDIBLE. I have read some of the reviews that people have posted so far, but I find they are quite innacurate.

First of all, it LOOKS amazing. It is crystal clear, and in widescreen format. I don't have a surround sound set up, but it sounds great through stereo. It DOES have the little BEEP and BOOP sounds to let you know if you did the right action, just like the arcade.

Secondly, the concerns of the first reviewers are pretty inaccurate, because their complaints can be fixed by adjusting the 6 or 7 settings that can completely change the gameplay experience. I haven't gone through all of them, but here is what I have found so far:

HOME vs ARCADE: I haven't gone in depth yet, but when I had it on Arcade mode, it didn't start at the moat/drawbridge scene. On Home mode it DOES start there, which is how I'm used to it, so that is how I have it set. I assume that there are other differences in scene order, although aside from the beginning scene, the scenes are random.

EASY vs HARD I starded the game on easy, and it seems like you don't really have to bother that much with timing, and it is more forgiving with mistakes. Hard is VERY time specific, and you can't really make many mistakes before hitting the right button, just like the original. Fantastic. I'm getting my butt kicked. :)

SIGNALS You have an option to turn on visual clues. Haven't bothered with this yet.

There are some other settings like unlimited lives verses 5 lives, and other stuff I don't remember at the moment, but basically they drastically change the playing experience. You can tweak it to be exactly like the Arcade, or maybe taylor it more to the version you like best.

Somebody claimed that the game was not true to the arcade version because if you failed a level, it just skipped it and you never would get to try it again. Well that reviewer jumped the gun because although it skips it right after you die, you eventually must come back to all the levels you died on, and it will NOT let you pass the second time until you finally get them right. This is true when it is on HOME mode at least, but I haven't played it on ARCADE mode enough to know how it handles failed levels.

The timing between clips is great on my PS3. About 95% of the time there is no pauses or anything, but usually, on the scenes where you make a mistake, there is a slight, split second pause before the death scene.

This is the best version of the game available. It made my whole week better just being able to play it in all of it's glory."

One of the BETTER if not the BEST version...

Frank J. Viturello | Lyndhurst, New Jersey United States | 07/01/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Myself being a HUGE fan of Don Bluth's animation, having played the arcade version TO DEATH as a kid, and managing to play just about every home version from the first attempts, (dust off your memory here) the Commodore 64 version by Electronic Arts, the NES, Super NES, & Game Boy versions, if you could call them that, (none of which bore any resembelance to the original laserdisc arcade version) to the early Amiga, IBM PC, & MAC diskette versions (pre CD-ROM) which were basically digitized and compressed versions of the arcade game, to every imaginable CD-ROM version, IBM PC, Sega CD, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, and the PC DVD ROM, I have been searcing for that "holy grail" original arcade version of Dragon's Lair since the game was brought home....So far, there is NO perfect arcade version that gives you the TOTAL ORIGINAL ARCADE MOVE INPUTS AND SCREEN VARIATIONS, however, Digital Leisure has done the best versions on PC DVD ROM, and for home DVD Players with this version, the play is solid, and ALL the animation is in tact. Any other gripes aside, the one second pauses are really not a big deal, because as any fan of the arcade version knows, most of the pioneer Laserdisc players were pretty faulty to begin with...so just consider it a "genuine faulty arcade feature" ;-)...secondly, and what I believe to be the most important reason to own this DVD, is the comprehensive history of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace....this section is compiled from TV news broadcasts and interview sessions with Bluth and company from 83-84, which contains deleted game footage, early production designs, and interviews with arcade patrons with hairdews and outfits that will make you embarrassed to be a child of the 80's! TRULY WORTH THE PURCHASE!"

Good movie, decent translation, okay game

neil miller | aptos caliornia baby | 02/14/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Lets get this out of the way first, if your looking for an arcade perfect version of Dragons Lair you still haven't found one with this DVD version. There is a second pause EVERY time you make a move whether it is correct or not, and some slight changes have been made since the arcade, such as the falling disk scene and the lightning knight scene. The game has been simplified with a yellow box that tells you when to make a move instead of your own intuition and the in-game flashes that occasionally appear. Also a lot of the levels have less moves per level than the arcade did. I figure that this was to make the pause bearable but all it does is make the game even more simple than it used to be. Also the death scenes will sometimes end so fast that you don't get to see the whole thing. One last complaint is that the scenes are no longer randomly generated as a result of the DVD limitations,(or so the manual says). Besides all these flaws though, if any old school gamers like me wanted this game more for the Don Bluth animation then playing, rejoice because there is a movie mode included which will play the whole game pause free and is the real reason to pick up this classic game."

Another format, another Dragon's Lair port. A beautiful re-r

Jon Folkers | Silver Spring, MD United States | 04/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Would you like to see a cartoon character die in dozens of comically gruesome ways, again and again? Then this is for you!

Are you a fan of former Disney animator Don Bluth ("The Secret of NIMH," and "Pete's Dragon" are most illustrative of his style)? Then this is a must-have!

Are you looking for a cutting-edge game with retro roots to play on your Playstation 3 console? OK, give this a try -- but be careful. If you're under the age of 30 or so, you're unlikely to put up with this old style of game.

This game was a revolution back in 1983 when it launched in arcades. It was simply stunning to see branching digital video in this pseudo-interactive form back then. The novelty wore off quickly when the game's high price and limited replay value came through, though. At fifty cents a play, it was a better deal to watch someone else suffer through the trial-and-error gameplay while you watched the beautiful video.

The game has never looked better. This edition is leaps and bounds over any other edition yet released, and there have been dozens, including platforms you'd never think would work, such as the black-and-white Macintosh on multiple floppy diskettes, the GameBoy Color, and the low-color, screen-door graphics of the Sega CD. Even the original LaserDisc and deluxe DVD editions are trumped here.

Controls are fast and responsive, and the gameplay is true to the original The original scene selection order has been preserved and the controller timing feels accurate to me. You can play with your Blu-Ray remote or a Playstation 3 controller if you're on that system.

Sadly, while it's beautiful and is the best version of the game yet, it's not perfect. The menu items don't work properly on the Playstation 3, which is the most popular BD player at this writing. When you select the "5 lives" option, the machine conveniently forgets this and you have 1 life forever, as if your arcade machine were set on FREE PLAY. That's not a bad thing from my perspective, but it would be interesting for people to simulate just how annoying a quarter-snatcher the arcade version was. The disc seems to request access to the internet, so there's a possibility this could be patched, but I have a feeling this disc will remain as-is unless they do another publication run.

There are ARCADE and HOME options so you can choose to see the shorter clips as originally presented, or as seen in home versions (like the playable drawbridge scene at the beginning). Since there is no effective limit on your lives, you just play until you finish or can no longer take any more. Each scene is presented at least once (sometimes flipped left-to-right) and you can't get to the ending unless you have beaten them all. Pauses to access the disc are imperceptible, much faster than any prior home version running off an optical disc.

The extras are nicely done. There's a "watch" mode in which you can see the solution for each of the screens, as well as the MANY different ways your hero can die. From what I can tell, it's the only way to see the animation where Dirk crumbles to bones, because of the "5 lives" bug above.

There are some interviews and a commentary track with 3 of the game's creators looking bored. I only glanced at the opening, but turned it off when I felt that I could read Don Bluth's mind. He seemed to be thinking "I'm tired of this 25-year-old ****, give me my check so I can go home." Good for the sake of completeness, but I doubt you'd watch it again and again.

There's a lovely clip showing the endgame with graphics from the rasterized Amiga version, the early PC version, the deluxe PC version, the original LaserDisc version, the DVD version, and this new HD version. Each one is added as a stripe on the screen until you see them all side-by-side. The comparison is stunning. When you looked at the fisheyed monitor in the 1983 arcade, you had no idea the game could ever look this good.

Finally, there are some previews of similar games that are coming soon, namely Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. In my opinion, they're completely non-essential because they're so much more annoying. They're so much more annoying because there's a lot more speech in them, which means you get to hear the same silly dialogue again and again and AGAIN! Perhaps they'll be bundled into a value package with a fixed version of this disc in a few years. Given the publisher's penchant for reissuing this content, I think that's a pretty sure bet."

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