Dragon’s Lair Trilogy

Genre: Compilation / Arcade / FMV Game

Players: 1

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Review:

Dragon’s Lair Trilogy is a compilation of three Arcade-style FMV Games: Dragon’s Lair (first released in arcades in 1983), Dragon’s Lair II (first released in arcades in 1991), and Space Ace (first released in arcades in 1984). These games were noteworthy at the time for not only making use of full motion video throughout the game, but for the game’s animations being provided by none other than Don Bluth, the legendary animator responsible for classic films like The Secret of Nimh, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. These games have been ported to numerous platforms over the years, making their way to the Nintendo Switch in this HD restoration in 2019.

For those who have fond memories of these games, the high-quality HD restoration is going to be one of the biggest draws of this package, with all of the game’s wonderful artwork brought up to modern standards to be crisp and clean. The presentation is still quite excellent in that the character designs and animation are all top-notch, as one would expect coming from one of the legends of animation.

Having said that, it’s clear that these games were made at a time when game designers didn’t quite know how to make the format of film-quality animation work well with gameplay, and as a result both sides of that coin suffer some. On the side of presentation, the animation suffers some as it has jarring cuts from one scene to the next as players succeed or fail at responding to each “Simon Says”-style button press.

Also, the need for fast pacing in an arcade setting means there’s very little time spared on story and characterization, and even though the characters are voiced, their writing is as one-dimensional and straightforward as possible. Princess Daphne’s bimbo-esque “Save me!” may be somewhat iconic, but it’s also the overwhelming majority of her personality through much of the Dragon’s Lair games. Space Ace’s Kimberly fares a little better in this regard, but not by much – what little dialogue she has is just exposition.

On the gameplay side of things, the animation makes it at times difficult to see just which direction players are meant to press at a given time. This version of the game tries to correct for this issue by providing an on-screen display, but this display just means that players’ eyes are drawn to the bottom of the screen, and the games’ main draw – their wonderful artwork, becomes a distraction from the part of the screen providing absolutely vital information that players need to respond to immediately, and that artwork becomes partly covered by this interface. Oh, and despite the on-screen interface, there are no touchscreen controls.

It also doesn’t help that these games are extremely unforgiving in their gameplay – players have an extremely small windows to respond to multiple prompts they are given, or they lose one of a limited number of lives. The first Dragon’s Lair game actually gives players the options to increase this small window, but it’s still pretty brief. The first Dragon’s Lair also gives an option for the game to proceed past these sequences even if you fail them (the other two games force you to repeat them until you make no errors).

Sadly players can’t opt to play with infinite lives, although they can choose to simply play the clips as a movie. Unfortunately, doing so only makes it clear how disjointed the game’s clips are, and how frenetically-paced everything is. I should note that there are a few other features for those who see this compilation less as a game and more as a museum piece of sorts – each of the games contains extras that include not only the full “movie” of the game, but also the “attract” animations that would play while the arcade game idled, and the first Dragon’s Lair includes a sizable interview with three of the game’s creators, including Don Bluth himself, and Dragon’s Lair II includes an animantic of a planned “pirate” section cut from the final game.

For those who have nostalgia for these games, Dragon’s Lair Trilogy makes for a decent museum trip through that nostalgia, though it does reveal the cracks in its veneer. For those looking at this as a trio of games, this trilogy is an unforgiving, poorly-designed mess not worth playing, and as much as Don Bluth’s animation is lovely, it is so poorly-integrated into the game that it’s just not enough to make it worth the purchase price. My advice? Look up a playthrough of this trilogy on YouTube, you’ll save yourself some money.

tl;dr – Dragon’s Lair Trilogy is a trio of “classic” arcade FMV games, though time has not been kind to them. This package works fairly well as a nostalgic look back at a unique trilogy, but the games themselves are nearly unplayable by today’s standards. If you’re looking for fun games to play and not a historical relic, skip this one.

Grade: D+

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