So one thing I'd like to use this Cohost for is to do miniposts [You call this a minipost? Oh, you sweet summer child, you. - Ed] on things I've been looking into that I can't necessarily bash out a whole Gaming Hell article on. This might be useful to you because you get to hear me waffle about games, and useful to me because I'm able to get these games out of my system, to sratch the itch and not feel the need to do anything further on them.
Let's see how things shake out on that front, but for now, the first of these will be about the Dragon's Lair Trilogy, played on Switch. I had played Dragon's Lair II in an arcade and seen other people play Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, but never properly played them myself. I have a soft spot for these LaserDisc games (especially Time Gal and the Mega-CD port of Road Avenger) so I figured I needed to experience the first breakout hit in the format, for the culture, you understand.
So the original Dragon's Lair is easy to see as a quick-time event simulator but if you play it as it was in the arcades- with no movement instructions, relying solely on the information you're given- it feels more like an adventure game of sorts, with each room essentially being a puzzle you have to solve with the information you have and one of your five available inputs, but with added timing required. Sometimes you're given flashes or helpful camera framing to nudge you in the right direction, but for a lot of it you're on your own, especially with the way a death will send you to another random scene so you have to work out something new, and fast. It's certainly an interesting way to approach it, and it's a little slower-paced than you'd expect, but some scenes missing the flashing or useful framing make it a guessing game at times... Made worse by the fact some scenes punish stray inputs but not all. Timing and precise inputs are definitely more prominent here than in some later games in the genre, and that may be a plus or minus depending on how you feel about these games.
I think the knowing the background behind the game helps explain it a lot- this interview has Rick Ryer explain the prototype for Dragon's Lair was 'the toilet paper version' that sounded more like an electromechanical choose-your-own-adventure. Add this with the problems he and Don Bluth mention about the animation team and the game design team not necessarily understanding each other's needs, and you get the feeling Dragon's Lair ended up as a compromise- an adventure game dragged, kicking and screaming, into an arcade cabinet. Rick Dyer would later help create Thayer's Quest, intended for the Halcyon home console but which also had to initially compromise by being in an arcade cab (with a membrane keyboard!). With its inventory system and puzzle-solving, it feels more like what the intention of Dragon's Lair was, even if it took rereleases many years later to fully realise that intent.
Moving on, Space Ace, on the other hand, plays to the strengths of the arcade format and goes all-in on fast-paced commands... Maybe a little too fast-paced as the speed is absolutely chaotic, often being difficult to parse exactly what's going on in the animation. However, the flashes are mostly more obvious (the exception being Dexter's gun, which is a little smaller than Dirk's sword) and there's slightly more freedom in that you have branching paths depending on whether you manage to energise and regain Dexter's manhood (teehee) or not. This also has three difficulty settings, which mostly seem to change how long you play for- on the highest difficulty, there's one scene you play which is immediately followed-up by the same scene in reverse. Whoof.
Of the three games, I think this is the most playable personally. It goes at a pretty ludicrous pace, yes, but the theming is fun (I especially like that Commander Borf personally insults you after every death, a nice touch also sort-of seen in Time Gal) and the fact that there's multiple routes in some scenes actually gives you an impetus to replay the game once you're done, there's a surprising amount of path-splits and I imagine it's only time and budget that prevented other LaserDisc games from taking this same route. One annoying thing about this remake in particular is the lack of checkpoints- these were present in the arcade original but can't be found here, so you'll have to memorize long stretches to get to the end.
Also, Kimberley's pretty great, she dunks on Dexter a lot.
Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp came out at the start of the '90s despite being animated in the '80s and is... Absolute chaos. Completely unhinged. The pace is even more breakneck than Space Ace but replaces the multiple paths with 'optional' items you have to pick up, These items are not really optional because if you miss any after beating the hardest section in the game, the gruelling Egypt section, you have to replay scenes with items you missed. Then you have to play Egypt again when you're done. Watch the stream where this happened to me and you can hear the moment my soul left my body!
The fact each scene is significantly longer than the previous games, can have the entire scene reversed plus it stops giving checkpoints near the end and you have a pretty miserable LaserDisc experience, worth watching for the incredible and imaginative animation (the piano scene in particular) but really, really not worth playing. It's just way, way too much, far too overboard... And that's playing with the directions pointed out to me thanks to this rerelease, I've played this on a real cabinet and even with the sound and visual cues, so much is happening so fast you can barely keep up!
It does have this scene of Dirk being tied up and spanked with a flaming sword in the Garden of Eden though.
These games have some stuff in 'em for sure.
Why not on Gaming Hell? Oh, this one's easy, have you seen how many different ports and versions these games have?! I'd feel duty-bound to cover all of them and I think that would just destroy me. I'm not playing fifteen different PC versions of Dragon's Lair or however many there are, sorry!
Fortunately, you can watch me play through all three games if you really want, either on Twitch or YouTube.