Developer: Motivetime Publisher: CSG Imagesoft Release: 12/29/90 Genre: Platformer
If you grew up with the NES than you were accustomed to arcade ports that differed from the source material. In some cases this was for the better. Contra is a far better game at home than in the arcade and Double Dragon 2 might as well be a new game. Sometimes they were dire; I am not particularly fond of Tiger Heli but the Nintendo version is just……ugh. And then there is Dragon’s Lair. If you have any false hopes of some valiant attempt at bringing the legendary arcade game home forget it. This is not that game; it is something far, far worse!
For its NES debut Dragon’s Lair follows the same story but changes the gameplay to a side-scrolling platformer. I will give the developers credit for wisely doing something different. But they make every bad decision possible and create one of the worst games on the system. Dragon’s Lair is the type of game that will make you hate video games. I thank god I never bought or rented this back in the day. I saw footage of it on Video Power and that was enough to know it was bad. But seeing it does not prepare you for how bad it truly is.
The first thing you will notice is the sluggish controls. Dragon’s Lair runs at a subpar framerate that makes everything feel like molasses. Dirk is a highly animated sprite, probably in a nod to the arcade game. But that also means every one of his actions is slow. There is bad input delay and you have to prepare your actions in advance. The simple act of turning around or even jumping feels like a process. Unfortunately the game asks for a level of precision that the controls cannot provide.
Most will give up here and it is the first screen!
Chances are you will die repeatedly trying to get past the first screen. As you slowly trudge across the bridge you will more than likely try to jump and collect the G icon and inevitably die once you land and the walkway crumbles. Try to ignore it and walk across and the sea dragon will spawn and kill you. Try to leap over it and enter the castle and the door will kill you. The solution is to spawn the dragon, walk back to the start and crouch and throw daggers to kill it. Sounds simple doesn’t it? You have no idea how hard these simple actions are and it actually gets worse.
The following levels introduce even more frustrating elements. You have a life bar but it means little. Most enemy attacks kill you in a single hit. Even attacking continuously will deplete your health! Nearly every object or hazard results in immediate death. Every level is a tedious game of trial and error as you stumble into every trap, die, and then progress and repeat the process. That would not be so bad in itself if it did not feel as though the designers reveled in killing you in assholish ways. Crawling under a spike to avoid death? How about we make the floor collapse just for fun. Think you’ve made it to the exit? Nah, you’re going to get killed by an off-screen enemy. Now imagine this pattern repeating for the entire game. Doesn’t sound fun does it?
I am struggling to find anything good to say about the game. It is admirable how closely they mirror the arcade game despite being a 2d platformer. For the most part Dragon’s Lair recreates some of the better moments from the coin op with limited success. The enemies are there but the circumstances are different. The sprites are some of the largest on the system and animate well; probably too well which is why the game feels sluggish. The backgrounds are detailed and even the music is decent. But with no continues and rare extra lives the game is a chore to play.
Surprisingly the Japanese and PAL versions of the game are much better. The game has a stable framerate and actually feels good to play. Dirk moves at a normal pace which does wonders for the controls. There are added splash screens between stages which mimic the scene transitions from the arcade. There are more enemies as well and it livens up the otherwise drab levels. The level design and other awful design decisions still exist which means the game is still a chore to play, it is simply tolerable. I still would not recommend it.
In Closing
Bad games like Dragon’s Lair were a dime a dozen on the NES. But even with that in mind it is easily one of the worst games on the system. There are no redeeming qualities here; it simply fails on every level. Playing through Dragon’s Lair for this review was a tiring endeavor, do not make the same mistake.
