Dragon’s Lair - Review
(ReadySoft, Commodore Amiga Game, 1989)
How well does the arcade classic port to the Amiga?
Dragon’s Lair is a 1983 arcade video game, created by Disney legend Don Bluth and ported to the Amiga by ReadySoft in 1989. And there is no getting around it, it is definitely a Marmite, love it or hate it, kind of game.
You play as Dirk the Daring, a knight on a mission to defeat Singe the evil dragon and rescue Princess Daphne who has been locked in Wizard Mordroc’s castle. Play sees you navigating a series of scenes set in castle locations, whereby Dirk is continually placed in danger and has to evade the threats and escape the area. Complete a scene and you move on to another. Survive them all and you face off with Singe; if you can defeat him the Princess is rescued and the game is won.
So far ahead of its time
The first thing that strikes you is that the game looks and sounds fantastic. The original arcade version was effectively an interactive Disney cartoon played from Laser Disc and was utterly spectacular. I am not over egging it; it was jaw-dropping, infinitely better looking than other games of the time and, in truth, still more aesthetically pleasing than a fair few titles of today.
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While the Amiga port is running fewer colours at a lower resolution and with some of the cutscenes simplified, it still looks astonishing - reproducing with impressive accuracy the wonderful variety of the original’s locations, hazards and monsters that you have to negotiate.
Limited gameplay
However (and this is a big “however”, possibly the biggest I have ever used in a review), the wonderful presentation is significantly tempered by the fact that the gameplay is different to virtually every other game of the time, or indeed since (with the exception of the subsequent Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace sequels, naturally!). You don’t control Dirk in the traditional sense. For the most part you are simply watching video clips and his movements are completely preset. At key moments the scene pauses, enabling you to choose one of five possible actions; moving up, down, left or right, or pressing your fire button to wield your sword.
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If you pick the correct option Dirk evades the danger and the scene continues, but if you choose the wrong one (or misstime the right one), you are treated to a death sequence (unique to that room), and you lose a life. If you correctly time a number of actions in a row you escape the area and move on to the next. The scenes are very short (some can be negotiated in less than ten seconds) which can give progression a stop-start feel.
Clues or no clues
The game does sometimes try to help you - at critical moments a part of the screen may flash, hinting what to do next, but at other times you get no clue. In some scenes the action you need to take is fairly logical (navigating the whirlpools for example), but in many cases it really isn’t. This makes the gameplay uneven, unintuitive and rather frustrating.
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Accordingly, some scenes can only be solved by random trial and error and then, when replaying, that area becomes a simple memory test. This criticism could be levelled at many games of course, but the binary nature of the gameplay here makes you acutely aware of what is going on.
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This means that there is no difficulty curve at all; some levels are relatively obvious and can be cleared on the first try, but others (including the very first) will take many attempts, killing you instantly, mercilessly and repeatedly, as you desperately seek to unlock the magical combination of joystick manoeuvres to progress. Then there are levels that are verging on being utterly impossible; I would suggest that virtually no-one has beaten the Electric Knight without at least a hundred tries, or resorting to a cheat book or watching a playthough. “Offering a challenging and varied gameplay experience” is one phrase that comes to mind, while “Please may I turn the pretty cartoon off and play something that is more rewarding?” is another.
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Considering the game comes on eight disks and a large amount of swapping and loading is required between plays (particularly after the frequent and unavoidable GAME OVER screens) I fear that only seriously committed players will persevere.
Going all the way
Assuming you made no errors, a full play-through of the arcade original took about 12 and a half minutes. To fit the game onto the Amiga a number of scenes were omitted, leaving just 10 and the final battle (at least, that’s all I could find!) so a perfect run through of this shorter version can be completed in less than four minutes. Inevitably, having such a short run time, the game has to rely on thwarting the player repeatedly and often unfairly in order to maintain some kind of challenge.
As good as it was?
Upon release the original arcade game was groundbreaking, with the somewhat limited gameplay hiding well and truly behind the stunning looks and audio. While being a coin eater, I was well and truly wowed, and at the time spent far too much money playing (though death by Mudmen was as predictable as a sleazy saxophone solo cropping up in a 1980s pop/rock ballad!). But upon loading this up on the Amiga, while it did deliver a very pleasant nostalgia hit, I have to confess that the gameplay did leave me cold. If randomly pressing buttons while watching a Disney cartoon gets your juices flowing, then an evening spent texting some friends on a Nokia 3310 while watching Toy Story might well be more enjoyable.
Verdict
I am in two minds as to how to rate Dragon’s Lair. To its credit, as a technical exercise it is really very impressive indeed. The arcade original was remarkable, and to port a version to the Amiga, running from floppy disks (albeit in a cut-down form) is absolutely extraordinary. It looks and sounds amazing and it is an extremely impressive conversion of what was a landmark game for its time. In that respect it is hard to fault…
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…but I have to highlight the enormously limited and frustrating gameplay replicated from the original game which may put many players off, maybe even verging on making the title unplayable. And for me, that puts it firmly at the end of the Marmite scale that says that, despite once absolutely loving the experience, on revisiting it I didn’t get the same buzz at all.
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Many Amiga games still hold their own today. I recently spent an entire evening with a friend playing The Chaos Engine. Some titles age well, but others are maybe best left in the past, and for me this is where Dragon’s Lair sits. It is remarkable at first glance but if you scratch away its glossy exterior you will find only very limited playability under the bonnet. It may have been impressive in 1989, but it is, unfortunately, somewhat less enjoyable in the 2020s.
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Graphics - 95%
The arcade version was utterly stunning and the ‘mig version, while not quite matching that, still looks fantastic.
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​Sounds - 90%
The sound-effects match the action perfectly and compare well to the original.
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Grab-Factor - 46%
If you delve past the drop dead gorgeous looks, even the opening scene will see you die a multitude of times before you finally stumble upon the correct combination of movements to progress. At times the gameplay sets out to annoy and frustrate and that doesn’t make a good gaming experience. ​
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Playability - 34%
Some scenes can be worked out logically and this is a good thing. Others however are simple trial and error, and this lets the game down badly.
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Verdict - 66%
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AG Sept 2023
Featured in Amiga Addict issue 26​
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com
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OnEscapee - Review
(Invictus Games, Commodore Amiga Game, 1997)
When Jonah asked me to review OnEscapee (an apparent unofficial successor to Another World and Flashback) I was somewhat puzzled. It seemed quite an impressive sounding release, yet none of the Amiga Addict team knew much about it, and I had never heard of it. So I had to do a bit of detective work, and after a bit of internet digging I uncovered a timeline that looked like this...
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In the beginning there was Another World, produced by Delphine Software and released in 1991, and it was good. In 1992 came Flashback; Delphine’s follow-up which looked utterly amazing, and the Amiga world went nuts. And then, about five years later, came OnEscapee (pronounced One Escape, apparently) developed by Invictus Games in Hungary and published by Sadeness Software, and, let’s be honest, nobody noticed.
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There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I (and many others) ruthlessly abandoned the Amiga in 1997 (Ed – "you’re fired!") to buy a PlayStation (Grapes – "I’m so sorry!") Secondly, it was only released on CD, targeting just CD32 owners or those that had a CD drive for their A1200, which, to be fair, was not the largest market in the world. So perhaps it was no wonder we all missed it. But now I have a copy and the AA guys want to know if it is worth playing, so let’s fire it up...
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Firstly, it has to be said that despite being produced by a completely different developer, it bears striking similarities to the first two Delphine games. In fact the words: “lawsuit” and: “I’m surprised there wasn’t a” do come very much to mind. It starts with a hugely impressive introduction that runs for the best part of five minutes (but unlike Another World, it can be skipped!). You play as Daniel White who recalls Earth’s first contact with aliens, and explains how healthy humans started to disappear. You are captured and transported in an alien craft, which then crashes following a struggle. You start your game in a junkyard, apparently on an alien planet.
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What follows is an exploration adventure that takes place over a large number of static screens, requiring you to collect items, solve puzzles and (once you obtain the gun) battle various alien creatures. The animation of the main character is fluid, looks great and bears more than a passing resemblance to the earlier games mentioned. You can walk, run, jump, crouch, roll, and climb up or down. Once in possession of the gun you can fire or produce a shield (does any of this sound familiar?).
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First things first, the game looks great and sounds fantastic. With the huge storage capabilities offered by the CD you are treated to a great selection of music, ranging from contemporary to classical arrangements, normally setting the mood perfectly. The game looks stunning for the most part; though while the graphics are beautiful they aren’t particularly crisp, with a slight blurriness making some items hard to see clearly. This is a long title too, really long; longer than double maths on a hot summer Friday afternoon. A full play-though with relatively few errors takes about an hour and fifty minutes. That is seriously impressive; in comparison, the original Another World could be beaten in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Friends (Ed – but why would you want to?!).
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So it looks and sounds good. It’s heavily based on a couple of games that were already cemented into Amiga history. And, coming on CD, it is absolutely huge. So far, so good. But, unfortunately, there’s a problem, and there is no getting around it, it’s a biggie.
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IT ISN’T VERY MUCH FUN.
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There – I’ve said it. For me, looks aren’t everything - it’s all about the gameplay, which, in this case, ranges from “meh” to unpleasant, to completely horrific, for a number of reasons.
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Firstly, if you are playing with a joystick or a joypad you will find it slightly unresponsive. It is only marginal, but this is enough to annoy greatly, as some of the required movements require almost pixel perfect accuracy and timing. You will die a lot, and often it won’t be your fault, which is irritating. It is better playing from the keyboard, but who plays an action game without a joystick?
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However, the annoyance with vaguely sluggish controls is nothing to the blind incandescent rage you feel when you are thwarted by a number of completely unpredictable and unavoidable deaths. Periodically something that can’t be seen will kill you without warning. So this isn’t really a game of skill, it’s largely a memory test, and I dislike games like this quite a lot. I want to work things out and react, not to achieve progression through blind trial and error.
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But that’s not even the worst part of the game. The most annoying element is that some puzzles will stump you, completely and utterly. It could be claimed that they require a degree of lateral thinking, but there’s lateral and then there is simply illogical, counter intuitive or just crazy-stupid. Let me give you a few examples (and these are just from the first couple of levels).
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You start in a junk yard. You are pursued by an alien craft that will blast you (and eventually kill you) if you stay still. You eventually make it as far as a tree stump that completely blocks your way. There seems no way past it. What you need to do is to stand still and let the alien craft shoot you, catapulting you over the obstacle. Of course it does. Obvious really isn’t it?
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In the second level you find your route hindered by a large gap that you can’t jump. To progress you must shoot your gun randomly to the left. This causes a rock fall that conveniently fills the gap. However, even if you stumble upon this completely left-field solution, if you don’t retrace your steps the exact instant after you shoot (and with pixel perfect timing despite your lagging controller) you are killed by the rock fall. Ho-hum, back to the beginning we go again.
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You progress a bit further and find a weird green bush blocking your path. To get past you need to shoot at it and it runs away, because, of course, it isn’t a bush, it’s a bush shaped alien. You know – one of those bush shaped aliens you have never encountered before and had absolutely no idea existed.
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Then there are the push-button puzzles where you have to resort to pushing the buttons randomly until you hit lucky, as you have no clue what you are actually trying to achieve.
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And this goes on, and on, and on. A puzzle that is logical only after you know the solution, actually isn’t logical at all. It’s just bloody annoying.
I found this deeply frustrating, predominantly because it is so unnecessary. Absurdly difficult puzzles and unforeseen sudden-death was a tactic used to elongate the very short games of the 80s and early 90s. But this isn’t a short game. With no errors a play through takes nearly two hours, so there is no need to constantly impede the player unfairly. It says everything that the original game came bundled with a large hint book/walkthrough.
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You get the feeling that nobody bothered with any play testing, or if they did, the play testers already knew the way through the game before starting. I genuinely struggle to believe that someone playing this for the first time, with no hints or walkthrough, would find it fun (or indeed would get anywhere!).
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So, OnEscapee sounds amazing and looks great (though some perspective can be confusing at times) and it is a seriously long game. But it is so annoying, with too many ridiculously obtuse puzzles and unforeseeable instant deaths that I fear that only the most committed players will see more than the first couple of levels.
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Perhaps it’s just as well that most of us missed it.
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Graphics - 85%
OnEscapee is beautiful, but some perspective issues confuse and there is a blurriness that makes working out what some things are more difficult than it should be.
​Sounds - 96%
The CD storage is used to the maximum and the game music is both varied and stunning.
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Grab-factor - 50%
An incredible introduction sets things up but the first level will kill you repeatedly with you having no real clue what you are supposed to be doing. The marginal lag when using a joypad doesn’t help either.
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Playability - 30%
Some may enjoy this. I didn’t. Obtuse puzzles and too many unforeseeable deaths made it a frustrating and irritating experience.
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Verdict - 65%
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AG Feb 2023
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Featured in Amiga Addict magazine, issue 14.
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© Words and pictures copyright grapeswriting.com
