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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.
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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
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.
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
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.
Finally, it's LaserDisc, not Laserdisk.
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I thought it was better than the cinematic laserdisc games because it was more like a regular video game than a "follow the bouncing ball" like Dragon's Lair and Cliffhanger.
Though I gotta give props to Cliffhanger because the animation was from Miyazaki's "Cagliostro!"
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
- 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....
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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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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!
There was also Firefox. I know it had various scenes from the movie (like the takeoff from Russia, and the landing/takeoff on the ice flow.) I seem to remember that for the most part it followed the same flow everytime - like when you are racing down the ravine.
.. 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
Consider how many teenager allowances it absorbed, that money could have been spent on useful stuff like drugs and beer or acne ointments.
motherfucking WORD. But then again, you gotta laugh a little about the fact that people not only poured tons of money into the game for years, but now some luckey bastard is probably going to spend $25,000 on it.
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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.
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.