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Arcade History -- Dragon's Lair #00001
Noah Zoschke writes: "For the 'Buy it now' price of only $25,000, you can purchase the first Dragon's Lair arcade machine, serial #00001, ever made. The bidder states that the machine is in excellent condition considering it has resided in Don Bluth's office, and never been in an arcade. The bid at the time of posting is $4,150."
If it's been in Don's office since DL was created, how did he get it?
Considering the guy's also selling a GE Vintage Wall Clock and National Geographic maps from the 1950's, I'm guessing he's either going through hard times or he's cleaning the closet.
What's your damage, Heather?
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If you bid "right, left, up, left, right, left, right, sword, sword" you slay the bidder and move on to the next bid.
Of course some idiot with a fat wallet may read about the auction on Slahdot and bid the box up, but given the vintage the machine is already way over bid. If the instant buy is $25K the guy probablky thinks he will get $10K at least.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
The seller's email address is an AOL account. Makes the auction lose about 99% of it's legitimacy, if you ask me :)
OTOH, he has 29 positive and 0 negative feedbacks -- most from over 6 months ago, which (while not stellar in the world of ebay) isn't too bad. I'd say he'll deliver, if someone is dumb enough to meet the obscenely-high reserve price!
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
But know there is a new version coming out, and game play is improved (severely limited in previous edition) and it is fully 3D. Goto www.dragonstone.com and check out new 3D Dragon Lair, I know I will use my hard earned cash to purchase it when it comes into my local computer store.
From the auction description:
Created by Cinematronics, it broke new ground in arcade animation and interactivity.
Yep, it certainly broke new ground in interactivity - it was possibly the least interactive video game ever, roughly on a par with The Matrix DVD.
This post is a "3, insightful"!?? Slashdot reader prejudice, inferiority complex, and self-importance has reached a new level. Kuro5hin was right. Oh...let me mod myself fo you: 1, Troll.
"Don't hate me because I'm right...Hate me because I'm an MCSE."
Ebay doesn't even try to stop stolen merchandise from being sold with AID OF THEIR SERVICE. Hope you sleep well, knowing you have a stolen arcade game in your living room.
You are quite right of course-- it is *exactly* as interactive as a DVD. The original was just a laserdisc player that skipped to the right part of the video when you did something. Which made the game more than a little boring. (to me, anyway)
But you can actually get it on DVD:
http://www.digitalleisure.com/pr981106.html
I remember DL. The first of the few laserdisk games that were made. The only other one I remember other than this involved flying a fighter/bomber aircraft. "Take out that bridge!" Anybody remember that game?
You mean the seller, right? Unless the thing's already been sold. In which case, why would you be posting this on Slashdot?
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
According to postings in rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, he's been trying to sell this unit for quite some time now. He's been asking $5k for it. It seems that demand just isn't high enough... but of course, a Slashdot posting never hurts!
To agree with a fellow poster, yes, serial numbers have almost no impact on the value of an arcade game. But in this particular case, this is supposedly *the first* laserdisc arcade game. Gotta be worth something to a laserhead (laserdisc arcade game collector). But not $25k.
You could even write #000001 on the CD and stand up while playing it if you wanted.
________
Finally, it's LaserDisc, not Laserdisk.
- Dragon's Lair
- Warner's mismanagement of Atari
The populace loved the eye candy of Dragon's Lair, but of course quickly tired of its limited gameplay. The games with good gameplay couldn't at the time come up with graphics good enough to lure in the general public. Thus, there was a sugar high, and then withdrawal.The few people that were still interested in gameplay over eye candy were denied their supply. Demand was there, but supply ran out because the dominant player in the industry, Atari (console, home computer, and coin-op), was driven into the ground by Warner mismanagement.
It's like a nuclear missle killed the classic videogame era, and Dragon's Lair was one of the two launch keys. Yup, I want Dragon's Lair #0001.
Some liked Dragon's Lair, some liked Space Ace. My game of choice in this genre was "Cliff Hanger".
The only problem is that it being much, much less popular, it disappeared before I could complete it. I never made it past the Ninja attack (somewhere around story sequence 5).
I did see someone complete it once....
--
Tweet, tweet.
For those who are interested, I found this site a while back, which gives a detailed history of video games through the ages.
http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm
Remember Pong?
--CTH
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
No, it's true. I use eBay frequently to sell stuff, and people with webtv and aol email addresses are the most likely to be clueless.
:)
Though somebody selling a 25k arcade machine prolly knows what he's doing
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
It's not the same. I own that - one of my first CD-ROM's. It is billed as being "the complete arcade game", however it is lacking the one scene where you swing on the chains that are on fire.
So, I guess they were protecting the obviously lucrative market of selling old arcade games!
Ed Rotberg (creator of Atari's Battlezone, Blasteroids, and many other games) recently auctioned off a couple of his prototypes, and HE had an AOL mail account. Kinda makes this statement look ridiculous to me.
Brian Deuel
Pinballs Plus
http://www.pinballsplus.com
"You're getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic."
"Thank you, Master Control"
-Sark and the MCP
No, it's really not funny. It hasn't been funny the last 5,000 times people have done it. It's about as funny as "all your base are belong to us" is now. It's funny the first couple of times but then everyone starts to say it and then it becomes lame.
.. a guy I used to know who'd sail Thistle #1 (a thistle is a racing dinghy, 17 feet long, three-man crew, horribly overpowered). Once when he signed up for a race, the RC person said, "boat number"?
"One" he replied.
"Uh, no, I mean the three- or four-digit number on your sail" she said.
"One" he replied.
She looked at him and asked, "Is your boat like all these others?"
He answered, "No, ma'am, all these boats are just like mine."
-- Guges --
Are you kidding? That's probably when the seller got, and now has to sell it because his own dot bomb is in the toilet, and he needs the money for name brand ramen, not the generic store brand.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I know this is gonna come off like a troll but I don`t care,
...
I always thought Dragons Lair sucked, by todays standards it would be called an interactive video
and marketed to children. It wasn`t any more of an arcade game than that one where you shock
yourself while smoke pours outta uncle Fester`s ears. It was a complete waste of quarters.
Arcades are dead! And someone should take a chainsaw to that machine and put it outta it`s misery.
Consider how many teenager allowances it absorbed, that money could have been spent on useful
stuff like drugs and beer or acne ointments.
Also at least there was some kinda decent program behind games like Pac-Man, Galaxian,
Even if the AI wasn`t the greatest you can still respect what the programmers were working with
at the time.
I can`t imagine that Dragons Lair consisted of much more than a shitload of rom packed with
video and a very simple little routine. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
Yo mama`s like a shotgun, two cocks and she`s ready to blow.
Try this instead.
I know the guy who's auctioning this machine, and I will tell you that not only is this auction for real; that machine is for real, I've personally seen the serial number, and played that actual machine, it does work and it's in amazing condition considering the age of the beast...
This game has a few features that are unique to the other Dragon's Lairs out there. For one, it has a control panel with instructions on it, a feature not found on the other Dragon's Lairs. For another, the side art on the side of the machine appears to be a different shade of green. And of course, since the machine has sat in Don Bluth's office, that is also an appealing aspect. There may be other subtle differences not readily available from the photographs.
One thing to point out though is that this is not the first ever Dragon's Lair created. There were various prototype cabinets with different control panels/marquees created and there were also prototype laserdisc created with different footage. Pictures of this prototype stuff can be seen on the Dragon's Lair Project .
I don't know any serious laserdisc game collector who wouldn't love to have this game sitting in their home. But I also think you'd have to be a fool to spend $25k on the game. I think it's worth $3000 at most, and last I checked the bidding was up to $5000.
A quick word on the ports of Dragon's Lair : In my opinion they are not very faithful to the arcade and I would encourage people to avoid the temptation to describe the Dragon's Lair ports as being "just like the arcade!" The CD-ROM and DVD ports are more like new games that use the same footage as the arcade. As near as I can tell, the creators of these games did NOT have an arcade machine available for reference.
Feel free to visit my Dragon's Lair emulation project.
Dragon's Lair an artform?!? A cool game? Man, that game sucked!You spent 20 minutes admiring the graphics and $2 to realise that losing wasn't your fault. Pretty graphics do not a arcade game make;Give me 'Pong' or 'PacMan' or 'Galaga'.Not Dragon's Lair.
Any if anything ever was a money-making scam, it was this piece of snobbish software.
There is no such thing as 'world peace'.
Well, it is three hours until the end of the auction, and very few people are probably going to read this message, long after it has scrolled off of the Slashdot front page.
I saw a twice retracted bid for $10k, which made me highly suspect that the reserve was at $10k. Sure enough, it was, and with a bidder with SOME feedback history, and who bids on Fendi money holders. (To most everyone else out there, Fendi is a ritsy Italian brand.)
Looks like this thing is finding a new home. And possibly making a page in arcade history. No vintage arcade game has EVER gone for this kind of money.
He're an informal slashback:
The last bidder was the person described in my previous message. His 'winning' bid went unchallenged. And, as mentioned, this is the most a vintage arcade game has gone for, ever.