Dragons Lair was an amazing game for its day. At least, an impressive one, anyway, for appearances, if not for gameplay. It used a LaserDisc system to play video clips that the player would react to, making decisions to progress in the game. Think “Quick Time Events” in games like God of War, Shenmue, and others in more recent games – press the correct button at the right time and you progress, time it wrong or press the wrong button and it’s game over (or at least a lost life, damage taken, what have you.)
Simple enough game play that, once you had it memorized, provided no challenge, but in the early 80’s this was an incredible thing to see, if not play – top notch animated video in an arcade machine!
There were, of course, home versions of the game, generally on home computers and, as technology evolved they became more like the arcade experience, to a point now where the games in this style have arcade-perfect home ports available since, after all, it’s just a simple timing game with video playing. Basically a DVD player can run the game perfectly.
Then, there’s the Nintendo Entertainment System port. While the spirit of the game seems to carry over, it just isn’t the same without the video, and of course, The Nerd has to take this game to task.
They took a different direction with the NES port. It actually isn’t bad so long as you can figure out what to do, which is kind of the point.
James goes for a more traditional style, following the previous Halloween themed episodes – giving the game a shot only to get frustrated very quickly. Hey, it’s a Nerd episode, why wouldn’t he get pissed off early on, right?
Dragons Lair on NES doesn’t play like you think it would at first glance. Hell, even if you already know how the arcade game played you still would think this version is a more conventional title. Nope. As shown in the video, the game is basically designed to kill you. The idea, as mentioned above, is that you perform a specific set of actions on each screen to progress, but figuring out what to do is just a frustrating mess. It’s almost like the game is designed to anger you.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: The face says it all.
Well, at least it angers The Nerd, and that’s what we enjoy these videos for, right? To watch a grown man get pissed off at old Nintendo games. Takes us back to our youth, maybe. Hah.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
A solid enough little episode. A bit on the short side, at just shy of 10 minutes, but it pretty much covers what it needs to without being a full “walkthrough” of the game. The episode seems to capture the experience of first trying this game pretty well, and the frustration that comes with learning unique, old games. At the tail end James throws in a few nice jokes, but this is otherwise a straightforward episode. Good, short, to the point, better than average but also nothing special.