Return to the Dragon’s Lair

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

Back in the days when I actually went into work in NYC every day, there was a big video arcade in Penn Station. And I would always stop on my way in to play “Dragon’s Lair,” which was big and new and splashy and right up front, with a television mounted above it so that passers by could see the game play. I have no idea how many quarters I plunked into that thing. And I managed to last longer and longer at it, moving through the set pieces with increasing ease, discovering little tricks along the way to maneuver through some of the trickier bits.

And then, one day, I was playing along. It wasn’t perfect; I’d made a few errors and was on my last life. Suddenly there was a fanfare of music that I hadn’t heard before, and Dirk was perched on a mountain of gold, doing a wild eye take, and there was Daphne, and there was the dragon. And people from around me started shouting, “The lair! This guy’s in the lair! It’s the freaking dragon!” Other players promptly walked away from their games and everyone was clustering around. With only one life, I had no margin for error, and worse, I had an audience. I maneuvered my way through the sequence flawlessly, hurled the magic sword, slayed the dragon, rescued the princess, just like the announcer said at the beginning.

People were applauding. A lot of people. I turned and saw that commuters who had been on their way to work stopped to watch and were showing their enthusiasm. I waved like I’d just hit a walk off four-bagger for the home team.

So now it’s a few decades later, Kathleen has an iPad, and Dragon’s Lair is an app for it. At least once a day now, Caroline comes over to me and says, “Daddy? Could you play Dragon’s Lair?” I take the iPad and maneuver my way through it for an audience of one, who watches raptly every time. And every time Dirk rescues the princess, I flash back to that time at Penn Station when I accomplished that feat for the very first time to the applause of gamers and commuters.

Some things just never get old.

PAD

47 comments on “Return to the Dragon’s Lair”

  1. Ah, sweet nostalgia. I’ve had similar feelings since I bought an Xbox 360 and discovered the many classic arcade games available from the Live Arcade….especially since they are direct emulations of the arcade originals, including the attraction screens and the high score tables.
    .
    The only downside is the discovery that my reflexes aren’t capable of the feats of video game skill that I was once able to pull off. Sadly, I am no longer the Galaga master.
    .
    Chuck

  2. Holy crap! You beat that game?!?!? Off quarters?!?!?

    I wasted all my lives on the very, very first part of the game. Like, the first flash your supposed to aim for. I would always go back every now and then and give it another whirl with the same results…death.

    Can’t believe it’s an app now. It was the height of technology back in the day. Getting old. 🙁

    Though I read a BID where PAD stated at the time he was roughly the age I am now, which was sureal. Ever since I started reading PAD’s writings he’s always been a “grownup.” Reading the article made me realize I am now too. (At dámņ near 33 this realization probably should have come long ago. 🙂 )

    Anyway, Dragon’s Lair…final thought…Don Bluth is the balls, man.

    1. The problem with most video games (including, if I remember correctly, Sinistar) is that it was impossible to “beat” them. You could go to a higher and higher level and wind up the top scorer, but sooner or later, you lose. You just lose at a higher level. That’s what I liked about the Bluth games: You could walk away a winner.
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      PAD

      1. And, as time went on and games got more sophisticated, the “endless” games slowly disappeared and were replaced by ones with endings that, at their best, gave the player a sense of accomplishment. I still pull Final Fantasy III out and play through the final battle just to watch the ending sometimes.
        .
        The exception to the rule, of course, is Tetris. Forget World of Warcraft, THIS is the most addictive video game of all time. I could easily play until Kingdom Come if the world would let me.

      2. I think we need to understand that I was referring to arcade games of the 1980s when referring to the endless aspect. Not games of more recent vintage such as F inal F antsy.

        PAD

  4. I couldn’t even get past the second or third stage of that game. The dámņ fire pit with the swinging ropes always got me. I fared a little better with Space Ace (mainly because my friend told me how to do the beginning), but the skill, or logic, or whatever that was required to play those games forever eluded me.

    1. The trick to the fire pits is the sfx. You make your first move when Dirk says “uh oh” and then you hit the controller to swing to the next rope the moment the creaking stops each time. With a little practice you can literally do it with your eyes closed.
      .
      PAD

  5. I never played Dragon’s Lair enough to get any good at it. I did once get more than twice as far on Donkey Kong than I ever had before, or ever would again. I don’t know how I did it, but it was thrilling.
    .
    And I certainly remmber the thrill of reaching the end of Super Mario Brothers. I did it twice.
    .
    Sadly, I haven’t really played any vido games in recent years, except for Kingdom Hearts. I don’t like sports games, fight games, or shoot-em-ups, so I don’t even know what to look for these days.

    1. “And I certainly remmber the thrill of reaching the end of Super Mario Brothers. I did it twice.”
      .
      Me too! And yes, it was quite the thrill.
      .
      I think the last video game I played (and finished) was Portal. Really, really excellent game, with comedy that’s funnier than most movies.

  7. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin for the Intellivision. Armed with Platinum armor and weapons yopu would slay the Minotaur and be rewarded with a musical cue that I still hear. It was a Big Event in grad school when one of us first accomplished that.

      3. One of the best gaming experiences in my life, even though I was to little to fully understand the many details

    2. I had Tarmin on my Aquarius computer. That, and the BASIC programs I wrote on that thing, bring back memories of waaaaaaay too many evenings in a damp basement when I was too chicken to talk to girls.

      Dragon’s Lair, on the other hand, was one of the things that made me want to program computers.

      1. You laughed out loud? Would that there was some sort of abbreviation available to convey that so that you didn’t have to type it out…
        .
        PAD

  9. Too bad you were not chosen by aloiens to defend the galaxy after that feat. Or were you?

    (This is a Last Starfighter reference, BTW. Was it life imitating art, or art imitating life?)

    1. Interestingly, the current continuity in Paige Braddock’s Jane’s World (which often features comic references – Jane went through one entire adventure wearing a Fantastic Four t-shirt) is riffing on Last Starfighter, complete with Robert Preston as Centauri.

  10. That’s cool. And a great moment to relive.

    My game was Spy Hunter. One of those you can’t “win”. But I could usually play an hour or so on a quarter.

    1. I forgot “Spy Hunter”. Loved that one too. I don’t think Susan liked it too much, though.

      “Xevious” was an interesting one, too, with some neat hidden power-ups.

  11. I always went in for odd-ball games – my two all-time favourites are “Crazy Climber” and “Bank Panic”.

    If anyone much else had liked “Bank Panic”, Susan and i probably would have been unpopular, since we would play for an hour or more on a single game. And i once had to intentionally lose two lives on “Crazy Climber“, to prevent the score rolling over to zero when the week’s high score was good for a pair of movie tickets.

    Was pretty good at “Donkey Kong” (and the more diverse and more challenging bootleg “Crazy Kong”).

    Never did any good at “Pac Man” or “Mario”.

    Another oddball, less popular game i liked a lot, come to think, was “Mappy“.

  12. What a lovely story. “…or an audience of one, who watches raptly every time.” Aww…

    Dang, I remember that arcade. I think it’s a bar now.

    1. Another case where getting what we want has unintended sad consequences. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could have these games at home?” we would say and now we have them…but those great old arcades, where you could hang out with your friends are gone.

  13. Awesome story. I remember Dragon’s Lair very well — I was never good at it, but I enjoyed watching other people who were.
    .
    My arcade obsession in college was “Rolling Thunder,” which is another game that has an ending. I never got to it, mind you…
    .
    TWL

  14. Dragon’s Lair. Wow. That takes me back. I remember the first time seeing someone beat that game. They had actually gotten a front page article w/photo in the local newspaper since it was the first time that anyone in the area had managed to save the princess (Must’ve been a slow news day in Burlington County).

    Personally, the Black Knight got me each and every time, so I didn’t manage to rescue the princess until I bought the game on DVD.

  15. I’m told that the recent Google playable Pac-Man logo replicated the bug in the original which, when you got to level 256, caused half the screen to go pixely.

    Also told that productivity at Google itself dropped the day the logo was up. Seems there was an internal high score page (to get on, you had to send in a screen shot showing your score, no Photoshopping on one’s honor)…

    2. Actually, it’s not exactly a “bug” – there were 256 screens in memory (0 – 255 is the range of numbers an 8-bit system can represent directly).
      .
      Nobody, apparently, figured that anyone would ever get past 256 levels, so there was a pinter in the program that pointed to the location of the current screen in memory, which incremented by one each time you finished a screen.
      .
      And when you finished the 256th screen … the pointer incremented and pointed to an area of memory that didn’t have a picture in it. What you saw was the video circuitry trying to display a piece of program memory code.

      1. Personally, as a developer – If someone hits something unexpected that you didn’t bother to deal with because you figured no one would ever hit it – it’s a bug.

  16. I miss those bygone arcade days too, although I cannot count Dragon’s Lair amongst my personal triumphs.

    But I’m sure Peter can attest that there is a much more personal satisfaction being Caroline’s own Dirk the Daring than playing the game successfully for a mass audience.

  17. Have you tried Space Ace? It’s not as satisfying as dragons lair… But still fun! If there’s ever a time where I have surplus funds, i’m definately buying ab x-men arcade game for the living room… Ah.. To play as cyclops in all his shin kicking glory!!!

    1. Grey I was able to beat Space Ace on cadet level. Never got to to Master the other two levels.

      Frankly at the time I preferred Space Ace to Dragon’s lair since it was more science fiction-y.

    2. Yup. I could play Space Ace through at the top level as well. And also get through Dragons Lair II.
      .
      PAD

  18. Wow. Carol Kalish must have been one hëll of an understanding boss, if you could stop and play video games on your way into work. (Or did you just not tell her?)

  19. I remember the Penn Station arcade: I was a little kid who’d watch others playing, rapt with wonder, when my family would be going from NYC to Long Island. I played DRAGON’S LAIR but always lost fairly quickly. “Left! No right! Oh no! Bones!” I have finished several video games, and I could finish the SPLATTERHOUSE game (part 2, I think) all on one quarter.

    I miss the arcade games: people gathering around to watch, folks putting quarters on the top to mark their place in “line,” folks discovering the hidden moves (remember how exciting it was to see someone throw a fireball in STREET FIGHTER?). These days it’s all about console games, which are usually repetitive first-person shooters.

    BTW, for a *great* trip down the memory lane to the arcade, watch the documentary THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFULL OF QUARTERS. It’s bathetic, it’s amazing, and it’s a terrific underdog story (complete with boo-hiss villain).

  21. Never was very good at those, including the CLIFFHANGER one done from the first LUPIN III film. Don’t recall ever losing at the two player SPACE WARS! though. One got to set the game parameters before starting play. From the standard sun-in-the-middle with realistic gravity, to reverse gravity, to something approximating the inertialess drives of the Lensmen novels, to an invisible, hyper-gravity ‘black hole’ in the center. The one drawback was that it was strictly a time-based game with each quarter giving you more minutes. We didn’t mind – much – as it was a whole lot of fun. Not quite the same playing these on a computer at home. The arcade ambiance was a big part of the experience. No such arcades remain here in Ottawa, though. Haven’t for years. One of the [many] reasons why I’ve enjoyed my Japan-side visits over the years, they still had spectacular arcades with floor after floor of games from the latest and greatest on the ground floor to older, half-priced ones three or four floors up. And all in mint, or near-mint condition. Ah, those were the days.

  22. DRAGON’S LAIR will always have a special place in my heart. Took me forever to beat it, but man it was worth it.

    It also is the game that got me into a lot of trouble. The Chuck E. Cheese on the way home from middle school had one. One time, I just went there and spent the entire day playing the game and watching other people play, not coming home until way after dark. Unfortunately, this was well before cell phones and I didn’t call home from a pay phone (used all my money on the game) so my mom thought I went missing and called the police.

  24. I loved Dragon’s Lair. If I could buy any classic arcade game to put in my house, I would choose that one.
    .
    Unfortunately, I’ve never found an accurate home version. Bad luck on my part, maybe?
    .
    Brian, above, mentioned that he had it on DVD. I’m going to have to try and find a copy after I get off work.
    .
    Theno

  25. PAD,

    I just got an iTouch two weeks ago and I am new to the whole world of mp3’s and apps, etc. I can be pretty stingy, but when I saw the “Dragon’s Lair” app I knew where some of my money was going to go.

    I lived in a small town with a small arcade, but it eventually got “Dragon’s Lair” and I would use every quarter I could find on that game. I never beat the game in the arcade and it eventually left, much to my dismay. I really hope the Bluth franchise puts out “Space Ace” and the continuations of “Dragon’s Lair”.

    Congratulations on rescuing the princess for your princess! 🙂

    p.s. I lol’ed myself when I was reading a “Wolverine: First Class” recently and saw Wolverine tearing into someone selling rip-off movies on the street.

  26. Dragons Lair was ok I mean animations were awesome but
    the game that took me away from comic books even was Ultima Online 1997
    and Dark age of Camelot 2001 both of those were super sweet that comic books couldn’t even come close to immersion on interaction.

    I liked Ever Quest 2 for the graphics alone but now my PC only serves as a Internet thingy since lcd monitors make me dizzy.

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