"Dragons Lair: The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight, on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer, finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard, who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the Dragon's Lair. Lead on, adventurer. Your quest awaits!"
Dragon's Lair features the hero, Dirk the Daring, attempting to rescue Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe locked in a wizard's castle. The screen shows animated scenes, and the player executes an action by selecting a direction or pressing the sword button with correct timing. Instead of controlling the character's actions directly, players control his reflexes, with different full motion video (FMV) segments playing for correct or incorrect choices. The comedy of the game stemmed from not only the bizarre looking creatures and death scenes, but the fact that while Dirk was a skilled knight, he was somewhat clumsy in his efforts and was a reluctant hero, prone to shrieking and reacting in horror to the various dangers he encounters.
The Nintendo DS™ version features a plethora of unique features while still maintaining the original game play, quality and style of the arcade release from 1983. In addition to this, the Nintendo DS™ game is the only version in the history of the franchise to utilize the original laserdisc footage from a vintage 1983 laserdisc – all 30.000 frames worth!
Nintendo DS features: - 100% arcade accuracy and true to the original!
- Ability to select number of lives
- Unique “Intermission†giving a split second deserved break from the action
- Volume adjustment for audio effects and video volume
- Hilarious control mechanism by giving voice commands!
- Fully stylus compatible in addition to d-pad
- Support for the Nintendo Rumble Pakâ„¢
- Includes optional “castle†scene from the 1983 European version of the game, which was never made available in the US version of the laserdisc
- Hall Of Fame, high score list with the top 5 players!
“Even though there are a myriad of versions of Dragon’s Lair available today, the DS version is definitely shaping up to be one of the most faithful recreations ever produced. Sure—we all know that nothing compares to standing in front of an actual arcade cabinet and playing the real thing, but if you’re looking for a Dragon’s Lair fix without the laserdisc game maintenance headaches and the high cost, this might be just the ticketâ€David Ellis, GameRoom Magazine (March 08)Actual Nintendo DSâ„¢ Screenshots
About Dragon’s LairDragon's Lair was one of the first laserdisc video games, released in June 1983 by Cinematronics. It featured polished Disney-like animation created by former Disney animator Don Bluth, and for the first time allowed players to control a fully realized character. Most other games of the era represented the character as a sprite, which consisted of a series of bitmaps animated by playing them in succession. However due to hardware limitations of the era, artists were greatly restricted in the detail they could achieve using that technique; the resolution, frame rate and number of frames were severely constrained. Dragon's Lair overcame those limitations by tapping into the vast storage potential of laserdisc, which completely freed the artist, but imposed other limitations on the actual game play. Even by today's standards, Dragon's Lair's graphics are good. The game's enormous contrast with other arcade games of the time created a sensation when it appeared, and was played so heavily that many machines often broke due to the strain of overuse. It was also arguably the most successful game on this medium and is aggressively sought after by collectors. To this day, the Dragon’s Lair game has sold more than 1,000,000 units across multiple platforms including but not limited to Commodore 64, SNES, Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, PC (floppy, CD, DVD), 3DO, DVD, Atari Jaguar and most recently a Blu-ray version compatible with the PlayStation 3.
