Dragons LairSYSTEM: Atari Jaguar
CD
DEVELOPER: ReadySoft (Don Bluth)
PRODUCER: ReadySoft
PRICE: Very Cheap now!
RATED: Kids to Adults
I remember when this was first released in the arcade. I must've been about 15 or 16 years old (I'm now 30). For it's time, it was totally amazing. The graphics were cartoon like, and it was seemingly perfectly animated. There were always large crowds around Dragons Lair. We thought that this was the wave of the future (Remember, back then the arcades were filled with games like Gyruss, and PacMan).
Dragons Lair was a great game for it's time. Probably one of the best games around. It dominated arcades for many years after it's release. It was hard to play at first, but once you got used to it, it soon became second nature. It generally relied more on remembering patterns, then on actual puzzle solving. The was a fair amount of reflex reaction involved too.
The story was fairly simple, you play "Dirk the Daring", who is out to rescue the princess Daphne from the evil Dragon Singe. You move from room to room, solving that rooms particular puzzle. You must figure out a series of moves to complete the room. Once you made the correct pattern of moves, your character would react in a cartoon like animated series. If you were right, you go on to a new room. If wrong, you get to witness Dirks untimely death.
Even by today's standards, the animation is top notch. This was, and is the games strongest appeal. As far as gameplay goes, it was good for it's day, but a decade and a half later it stinks. Dragons Lair is very repitious, and will tire most gamers easily. I know it was meant to be an exact port, but I wish they had chosen to create a new game for 1997, and had this game included as a bonus. Even if they had decided to include a save feature, it could've been improved. Instead, they choose to give a perfect port (which it is), but absolutely nothing new to bring it up to todays standards.
The Jaguar CD had great possibilities. Atari let us down yet again with this system. I bought mine, in hopes that Atari would at least try to compete with the upcomming 32 bit systems. It seemed like they would've since they claimed their 64 bit system was as powerful as the new Sony and Sega systems. Instead, all we got was a handful of CD games released. Most of those couldn't even compete with the regular Jaguar games. I mean, get real Atari. Did you think you could actually compete with exact ports of 15 year old games? Did you think that game players are dummies? You could've tried a little harder! I guess you deserved to fall.
RATINGS
GRAPHICS 90%
SOUND 85%
GAMEPLAY 50%
ORIGINALITY 60%
REPLAY VALUE 50%
OVERALL 67%
