In the early 80’s I can remember trying to impress
Eve Jellum and Rachel Campbell by blowing my entire $5.00 allowance trying to
beat the new fancy game "Dragon’s Lair" at the local mall arcade. Wanting to
impress the girls I told them as we walked there that "Sure I can beat the
game" and "No sweat." Well, sure as the day is long, I had never played this
game and my consequent attempts were met with complete and utter failure. Wanting to save face I probably said something about the game’s difficulty
being tuned up or the joystick being sticky. It was a lesson I learned all
too painfully.
Now, fast forward quite a few years and I no
longer need to impress the girls anymore, but my lesson learned has held
strong all this time. If you don’t know what your doing, then don’t pretend
that you do. However, I never did beat that darn game. So when I saw they
were going to re-release the sequel, I was stoked to get my hands on it. Boy
was I ever in for a disappointment.
Dragon’s Lair III looks really bad, and plays even
worse. If you don’t know, the game was designed by former Disney animator
Don Bluth, Don and his team used fancy laserdisc technology to allow players to watch the
game 10 times more then they played it. As you follow the inept adventures of
Dirk the Daring as he tries to rescue princess Daphne, pieces of the animation
will blink yellow for a second indicating that you must press the same
direction. For example, while watching Dirk run across a room of enchanted
items, maybe a barrel on the left side of the screen flashes yellow,
indicating you must press left. If your timing is true, Dirk will leap to the
left and avoid a falling object. Or if a bad guy blinks yellow you must press
the spacebar indicating you want Dirk to use his sword. Again, if the timing
is true, Dirk will wield his sword in your favor.
I really can’t tell you how miserably this game
fails. While playing, the game still stays within a "window" so it feels like
a DOS game. The graphics have a dull luster to it that honestly reminded me
of a pirated game. It really looks like someone recorded the game with a
camcorder and somehow transferred it to gaming media. My four-year-old son
sat on my lap as I played and he asked me why the game looked funny. The
animation would have been better if the developers had cleaned it up, or had a
better digital transfer or any other number of options; the flat look is just
really unappealing.
Lastly, I played the game for quite a while and at
one point I arrived at a scene where no matter what I did, the animation
skipped several frames, and I simply died. I initially thought it may have
been a glitch, so I tried it and tried it, and tried it and tried it and tried
it, and the same thing kept happening. So I quit. But by that time I had
already made my decision about the game.
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Gameplay: 3
Archaic, if the game was any more unfriendly it
would have punched me in the mouth. Besides, you eventually come to a point
where you simply cannot play it anymore.
Graphics: 2
The transfer is absolutely horrendous, the game is
grainy looking and was not given any sort of spit and polish.
Sound: 5.0
It’s got the same voice work and sound effects the
original had. Probably the game’s best feature and it only got a 5.
Difficulty: Easy/Medium
It only takes a couple of tries to beat a scene.
Concept: 4.5
It’s been improved upon over the years, this
version simply has nothing new or redeeming to offer.
Overall: 3.4
I was expecting some of the fun from Dragon’s Lair
3D, I got none of it. The developers clearly are just trying to make a buck
by putting out this version and I’m fairly certain some of them
are embarrassed by the end product.
