It didn’t take too long for the new to wear off the DL puppy though. The game was able to achieve its stellar look through the use of a laser disc – a primitive ancestor to the CD and DVD – and all of the amazement was actually pre-recorded video. This meant that the exploits of Dirk the Daring (the game’s main character) presented the player with about as much interactivity as a DVD menu. Each scene in the game offers the player a few choices which must be made in response to flashes on the screen with a flick of the joystick or a tap of the Sword Button. One did not so much play Dragon’s Lair as watch it. It got old fast.



In hopes of capitalizing on the memories of, well, gamers like me, Digital Leisure has released Dragon’s Lair HD, a supposedly high-definition recreation of the original Don Bluth film that made the original Dragon’s Lair.

The ploy works to an extent. Moments after popping the DLHD disc into my machine I found myself gleefully reliving the moments of Dirk the Daring’s derring-do and giggling childishly at his many humorous deaths.

Then, five minutes or so later, I realized why Dragon’s Lair was really never all that.