Dragon's Lair (video game)

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Dragon's Lair
Developer(s)	MotiveTime, Ltd.
Publisher(s)	CSG Imagesoft, Inc.
Platform(s)	NES
Release date	NES December 1990
Genre(s)	Action Adventure
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players taking turns
Media	Cartridge

Dragon's Lair, based on the laserdisc game by the same name, is a 1990 platformer released for the Nintendo Entertainment System and developed by the MotiveTime group. Plotwise the game is identical to the original. The decision to make the game a platformer might have been a marketing move or motivated by the NES's inferior graphics capabilities.

1 Gameplay
2 Difficulty
3 Levels
4 References

[edit] Gameplay

The game is a side-scroller with the character's walking pace being relaxed by comparison to other such titles. Dirk can walk, crawl or jump forward and he has an array of weapons that he can discover and use to dispose of enemies. The controller layout is reversed from other mainstream NES titles, with Select functioning as the Pause-button while Start is used for the Candle object (which helps reveal hidden weapons). Also B is used for jumping and A for attacking (the input of the A & B buttons is almost always the opposite in similar NES games).

[edit] Difficulty

First screen of Dragon's Lair (NES)

Due to the game's sluggish pace, and the fact that most enemies are able to instantly kill Dirk with one touch (only the smallest enemies, such as bats, drain Dirk's life bar instead of killing him outright), the game is universally criticized for its high difficulty level (Dirk even dies from walking against a door). Indeed, many find themselves incapable of beating the first section (screen) of the game, a battle with a monster on the drawbridge outside the castle. The game is not unbeatable, but requires the player to learn the timing of the game, which many find tiresome and makes the game almost impossible for novice gamers. An episode of The Angry Video Game Nerd continually reiterated this fact. Theoretically, the game could be completed in as little as four minutes if the player memorized every single move in the game, and manages to execute every jump and attack at the right moment.^[1]

It is to be noted that the Japanese and PAL versions of the game has almost twice the pace of the other versions.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Levels

The Drawbridge
The Dungeon
The Mines
The Reaper's Domain
The Dragon's Lair
The Lizard King's Throne Room (bonus level)

After the Dungeon section the player must go through an elevator stage where the player dodges falling rocks and must jump out at the appropriate floor to enter the next level. The player can not explore freely, but instead jumping on the wrong floor forces him to replay the previous level. The Lizard King's throne room is located at the bottom and can be entered any time to recover all the gold that the Lizard King has stolen from the player. Unlike everywhere else, here, touching the Lizard King leads to an instant death.