Dragon's Lair on X-box

aka pseudonym writes "Remember the game Dragon's Lair, the laserdisc based game from the 80's? Well, it is now out for the X-box and other game systems. You can check it out at www.dragonslair3d.com. This looks like the first game that supports the HDTV 1080i resoloution the X-box is capable of. There is a review of the game here. A related slashdot link is here. Aaahhh memories, at least now I don't have to drop a full dollar into the machine every time I want to play this addictive game."

Comments

10 years ago....

[raehl]

This would have been worth $1.

Now, it's a cartoon character running around levels with high-res texturemaps fighting cartoon character monsters.

Maybe good for getting the youngins aclimated to video games, but that appears to be the limit.

Re:10 years ago....

[Anonymous Coward]

Something tells me you are too young to have experienced the original in all its Arcade Glory.

Re:10 years ago....

[bsartist]

Looks like someone's not reading at "-1, Oldest First"...

Re:10 years ago....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty much what I was thinking. Cool idea. Warmed-over execution. The revised cartoon visuals look to be even lower-quality than the original(s). Can someone say dried up venture funding.

dragons layer 3d?

[bigmammoth]

I am probably not the only one who does not see the big deal with this, "so what" dragons layer is in 3d now, not exactly as revolutionary as it was when it first came out. . considering most games that come out for console now a days are 3d action/adventure .. its just using an old license but which has little relevance to the arcade laser disk game

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be reading Slashdot. Go back to fark. And stay there.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Anonymous Coward]

you should know what you speak before you actualy do it.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Anonvmous Coward]

"I am probably not the only one who does not see the big deal with this, "so what" dragons layer is in 3d now, not exactly as revolutionary as it was when it first came out. ."

Perhaps. Like Linux, though, this game's been on every piece of hardware imaginable.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[bsartist]

its just using an old license but which has little relevance to the arcade laser disk game

The new Dragon's Lair 3D is very, very relevant to the original. Each scene is based on one from the old game, and the progression from one scene to the next is nearly identical. Also, the 3d models were built with Don Bluth's help, and the texture maps taken mostly from his original artwork.

You're right that it's not exactly revolutionary, but it's not just an old name applied to a new game. It's the real thing.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[fyonn]

Like Linux, though, this game's been on every piece of hardware imaginable.

even, apparently a dvd. aparently the dvd menuing system is powerful enough to play dragons lair on and someone did port it.

funnily enough I've never played the game but I remember reading reviews for the amiga waaay back when

dave

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Alan Partridge]

well as someone who's played he original, C=64, Amiga and MacOS ports I can assure you that the REAL Dragon's Lair was one of the most pointless, uninvolving and overhyped games in history. If you've ever played one of those late '80's CDi games (Alone in the Dark?) you've already been there and done that 1000x better. Tis new 3D version looks like a run of the mill 3D platformer - so think inferior Jack & Daxter and that probably covers it.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[WowTIP]

It sounds as if it is still using the old "push-the-right-button-at-the-right-moment" controls? The thing that made these games succsessful back in the days were the jaw-dropping graphics and sounds (at the time). The gameplay was too simple imho. I can't really see the point of a remake of these games, when most games that are released today has as good, or better graphics and sound.

I's much rather have a modern remake of, for example, Ron Gilberts old adventures (Maniac mansion, Indy, Monkey Island I & II, etc.), where storytelling, humour and thinking were the main gaming elements.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[quintessent]

It would be interesting to see how it turned out. However, I would be more likely to buy the original, which was beautiful and amazing.

If Disney repainted the movie Peter Pan using 3D models, would people think it had been cured of its obselescence? It would be hard to improve on the original.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[quintessent]

If the EFF ever manages to "free the mouse," maybe some fan will give it a try. It would be intriguing as a "fan film".

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[bjb]

Dragon's Lair was one of the most pointless, uninvolving and overhyped games in history.

Sure, it wasn't that great as an action game, but as pure entertainment that grabbed your attention, your senses and delivered to you an experience that simply wasn't available in 1983, it WAS a great game. Up to the point that Dragon's Lair came out (and woah! 50 a game?!), games were cool, but not THAT cool. Yeah, it was eye candy, but dammit it was a great experience.

Sure, in comparison to other games today (and even 12 years ago) it isn't that great. It is probably more nostalgic than anything else. I played the Amiga and PC CD-ROM (circa 1993?) versions, and yes, they sucked for the most part. However, I'll probably buy this version simply because this one isn't going to remove scenes to fit on 3.5" floppy disks or a MPEG-filled CD-ROM, but they actually ADDED scenes true to the original game.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Fugly]

They're not using the same controls. It's a full blown, free moving 3D title now.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Scooter]

hmm so what IS the point then, if it's identical to the original? Sounds more like a case of old name applied to old game, with laser disc removed.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[bsartist]

It's not identical - it's a new game. It's a full, free-moving 3d environment rendered in real time, unlike the original, which was basically just a series of canned cartoons.

My point was that it's a true update to the original, not just some Joe Schmoe using the name to make a quick buck. Most of the original voice recordings were used, Bluth was involved with the 3d modeling, the original cels were scanned and used as texture maps, etc.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[parliboy]

Then buy the original. They've been selling it on DVD for years.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[susano_otter]

Well, if Peter Pan was originally a gimmicky idea wrapped in a weak story and minimal audience involvement, then yes, a remake that replaced the gimmicks with modern FX, fleshed out the story, and increased audience involvement and interaction with the characters--a remake like that would certainly be a cure. Not a cure for obsolescence (which usually isn't a real concern in movies), but a cure for a bad movie.

Since the original (Disney) version of the movie was not gimmicky, had a solid story, and engaged the audience, such a remake would be a waste of time, and Disney will wisely stick to re-releasing the original on each new media type to hit the market.

Dragon's Lair, on the other hand, was very gimmicky, &c. The idea of the game appealed to me very much, but the space-chimp gameplay prevented me from spending more than 50 cents on it in 30 years. If they re-release it using modern game design principles instead of that stupid laser-disc twitch bullshit, I might just have to get me a new coffee table--er, XBox.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[enrico_suave]

That's kinda funny - using the original voice recordings...

They ran out of money , or so the legend goes, so they couldn't have real voice actors so they used people on the crew.. i.e. daphne's voice was the office secretary, etc...

e.

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[zonker]

well the mouse has been free for a loooong time...

Re:dragons layer 3d?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, it was revolutionary when it came out, and is just a repackage, but I'll take whatever Lair I can get! Besides, do you really see this quality of animation anymore, anywhere?

Ahh yes...

[Hegemony]

This game was so addicting I remember going on vacation to Hawaii and spending more time in the video game room than on the beach. Of course I was 14 at the time.

Hmmm...

[G-funk]

Old game with shitty "interactive movie" gameplay becomes new 3d game with shitty gameplay. Film at 11.

Re:Hmmm...

[Chexsum]

I agree!

I rate games purely on 'playability' which means if one part of it turns me off then the whole game is a flop. For Dragonslair it was boring *very little strategy* compared to alot of high-selling games released in the same year *1990?*.

The graphics and interaction were stunning at the time but theres so many N64 games which have these qualities these days that this story is redundant IMO. /me dons the flame-retardant cloak

Re:Hmmm...

[mav[LAG]]

For Dragonslair it was boring *very little strategy* compared to alot of high-selling games released in the same year *1990?*.

I distinctly remember playing Dragon's Lair - the arcade version - in early 1985. I also distinctly remember wasting an entire semester's allowance on it but that's another story...

Re:Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

What, and if it was released on a Linux platform, it'd be a "fantastic 3d game with great gameplay"?

Re:Hmmm...

[rppp01]

I agree. Addicting? No, I hated this game. Only played it a few times. It was cool for its time- cartoony and all, but damn it, I always died- always died- within about 20 seconds of starting.

I once watched some kid drop something like $10 on this game and I don't remember him getting very far in the game.

Anyone ever 'beat' this game? Man, I always chose Cyberball Tournament over this game- as they were usually pretty close together.

Re:Hmmm...

[Sancho]

Anyone ever 'beat' this game?

Yup. All it takes is one "free gaming" night and a friend to write down the joystick/keypresses for each scene. Of course, the scenes flipped on the horizontal axis periodically, so you had to keep that in mind, but even still...once you knew the sequence of keypresses, you the timing was all you had to work on, and it wouldn't be too long before you could drop in your $0.50 and beat the game, to the amazement of onlookers.

Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Graspee_Leemoor]

Dragon's Lair sucked. It was at the forefront of the "Let's turn videogames into total eye-candy with extremely limited interactivity" movement, which thankfully didn't take off.

I like Don Bluth's work on the big screen, but the way to get cinematic graphics in a game is not by just pre-rendering/drawing them like all those laserdisc games did, then allowing a branching path through the story, but by improving 3d computer graphics to the point where they look as good as real-life/traditional animation.

More interesting to me is the (fairly) recent innovation where traditional 3d graphics are used, but they are shaded and textured to look like cartoons/anime, e.g. Fear Effect, various Simpsons and Disney games.

graspee

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[prockcore]

More interesting to me is the (fairly) recent innovation where traditional 3d graphics are used, but they are shaded and textured to look like cartoons/anime, e.g. Fear Effect, various Simpsons and Disney games.

It's called Cel-Shading.. and that's what this is. This is a redone Dragon's Lair, done in real 3d with cel-shaded graphics.

I'll be checking it out, and possibly (depends on if it's still as annoying as the old "hit UP *now*!" version).

By the way, it's not just for the xbox, it'll be available for the GameCube, the PS2, and the PC as well.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[91degrees]

Yeah, but you should have seen the crowds around that cabinet when it first came out.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[pommiekiwifruit]

It was at the forefront of the "Let's turn videogames into total eye-candy with extremely limited interactivity" movement, which thankfully didn't take off.

Hahaha... that's what Final Fantasy and other PS2 games are about (except without the branching path)... loads of games these days are basically movies with a broken pause button...

</cynic>

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Jace of Fuse!]

loads of games these days are basically movies with a broken pause button...

Or, when considering turned based fighting systems, it's better to say a broken UNPause button.

Turn based. *yawn*

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Captain Pedantic]

By the way, it's not just for the xbox, it'll be available for the GameCube, the PS2, and the PC as well.

Yes, but you forget that everyone here has already bought an MSX-Box so that they can stick it to Microsoft by not buying any games.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Anonymous Coward]

Turn-based rocks! You can actually think about the strategy you want to use without having to worry about characters getting slaughtered in the meantime because the CPU opponent doesn't have to think like you.

The real-time element in Baldur's Gate is what totally turned me off of the game. Nice graphics, storyline, and gameworld, but damn did I hate the combat system. It played out like an RTS. Just sit there and watch your guys duke it out. Boring.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[jargoone]

> Dragon's Lair sucked. It was at the forefront of the
> "Let's turn videogames into total eye-candy with
> extremely limited interactivity" movement, which
> thankfully didn't take off.

It didn't? How, then, do you explain FPS titles, which
are little more than my beloved Wolf 3D with prettier
walls and monsters. Hard to get a higher framerate
than that on an Athlon 1.4Ghz...

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"How, then, do you explain FPS titles"

Play a FPS. Use the mouse to look around, fire when you want to, jump and duck when you want to, completely move freely in all directions.

If you think FPS have limited interactivity like Dragon's Lair then maybe you are not familiar with how badly Dragon's Lair sucked.

graspee

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Sabalon]

While I do remember pumping tons of quarters in a Dragon's Lair game, I will agree that the gameplay is limited to say the least. Press the stick in a certain direction at a certain time, and then do it mirror image later in the game.

Not that I don't like the game, but any game that you can play with your DVD remote has got to be a bit limited in it's gameplay!

Now, Firefox and Mach3 were a better type of laserdisc game - basically a normal game with backgrounds of the LD.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[|/rad|/oder]

So I guess Zork and Adventure sucked too then?

Same gameplay, different media. The 'Choose Your Own Adventure' decision tree is the basis for TONS of games, regardless of genre or media.

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Ian_Bailey]

loads of games these days are basically movies with a broken pause button...

You mean Save Game?

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Yakko]

I stuck it to MS... twice.

Simply put, I voted against them twice (PS2 12/2001 and the GC/Luigi bundle last month) with my wallet, as well as many times coinciding with each game I bought for those consoles (and that translated to $0 for Gates and his dancing monkey boy).

The bad thing wrt Dragon's Lair 3D is that I most likely won't be able to put Animal Crossing down to play it!

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Jace of Fuse!]

You can actually think about the strategy

If that's an issue for you, you're thinking too slow. :D

Re:Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames

[Jace of Fuse!]

The real-time element in Baldur's Gate is what totally turned me off of the game.

As for Baldur's Gate, I had the complete opposite complaint. It wasn't fast enough. Furthermore, I can't believe you honestly played the game if you didn't know you could customize every aspect.

I turned off all pausing, but if you turned on ALL pausing, the game was 100% turn-based. Turn based to a flaw, even. Your characters couldn't fart without the game asking for input.

With everything turned off, the game was real time, which was how I liked it. The only time I had the game ask for input was on a character death, since if somebody died I obviously needed to stop and make some changes.

"Reinvention"

[Yakman]

According to the site it's a "reinvention" of the original. Which is good, because as far as I remember the original was basically a Laserdisc movie where you moved the joystick in a certain direction at the right time and either died or went on to the next screen - hardly the kind of game you'd want to shell out $90-$100 (Australian) on for your console :) Looks like some very pretty cel shaded graphics from the screenshots (incase they're slashdotted) - one of those adventure 3D platformer games like Zelda, Mario Sunshine or Starfox Adventures.

Also, it's not just for xbox as the article title states but for PS2 and GameCube too. In fact the site shows pictures of the PS2 and GC boxes but not the xbox one.

Re:"Reinvention"

[Ryne]

From the article:
for the X-box and other game systems

Btw, I missed that too at first.

Re:"Reinvention"

[Anonymous Coward]

"you moved the joystick in a certain direction at the right time and either died or went on to the next screen"

Sounds like a cartoon cable channel...but instead of selecting an episode of the Simpsons vs one of Ren & Stimpy you get to choose between a few seconds of someone walking down a hallway, or falling into a whole. Well worth the money.
Next.

Re:"Reinvention"

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean falling into a HOLE

has the American education system just totally fucking given up on spelling & grammar or what?

Re:"Reinvention"

[fldvm]

hardly the kind of game you'd want to shell out $90-$100 (Australian) on for your console

No, no, you don't get it this is a feature to keep it true to the original game experience the console edition is overpriced.

Re:"Reinvention"

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a typo - get over it. Oh, and i'm not a fucking American!!!

I just want to know if...

[Suicide]

its just as bad as the old ones where you knew you needed to do a specific thing, such as move right, but had to keep banging on the joystick to the right in the hopes of doing it in the .5 second window the game was actually looking for input...

Re:I just want to know if...

[bogie]

I honestly would be shocked if that were the case and they made a game based only on timing again.

Actually I just posted how the gameplay actually completely sucked. Dragon's lair was fun for spectators to watch but horribly limited in terms of actual gameplay.

Give me the old arcade versions of Tron or Tie Fighter anyday though. Now those games were awesome. :-) Oh yea, remember Rampage too? God that was fun.

Re:I just want to know if...

[Bakaneko]

Rampage was fun, but as someone who bought the version of it for the Playstation a number of years ago, it gets pretty darn old, pretty darn fast.

Re:I just want to know if...

[bogie]

Your right no console version ever compared to the arcade one. I think I still have the Atari 7800 version around somewhere.

The most fun was you and your friends at the arcade and occasionally mistakenly "bumping" your friends out of your way when you wanted to get a powerup.

How about gameplay?

[Zayin]

So, is the gameplay anything like the previous Dragon's Lair games? IIRC it goes something like this:

space - up - right - left - DOH!
space - up - right - right - up - DOH!
space - up - right - right - space - left - DOH!
space - up - right - right - space - right - down etc...

Pretty exciting stuff!

Re:How about gameplay?

[mirko]

?
did you mean "action-button" ?

BTW, in these times, <DOH!> only meant "please insert a DOH-LAR" while with this game this'll rather mean "why the Hell did I spent all these DOH-LAR on this game ? if I resign before getting through, it will have costed me more than the Arcade version, around twenty years ago" ;)

Re:How about gameplay?

[Mr. No Skills]

Plus five of your friends are standing around watching you.

I believe in the end it was neither a good game, nor a good cartoon.

Re:How about gameplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out a step!

space - up - right - left - DOH!
space - up - right - right - up - DOH!
space - up - right - right - space - left - DOH!

space - up - right - right - space - right - down etc...

Re:How about gameplay?

[Anonymous Coward]

You left out a step!

space - up - right - left - DOH!
space - up - right - right - up - DOH!
space - up - right - right - space - left - DOH!
<insert $0.50>
space - up - right - right - space - right - down etc...

Re:How about gameplay?

[VGR]

Then you didn't know how to play it.

Nearly every move in Dragon's Lair has visual cues that tell you what you need to do at that moment. In many cases, the cue was an obvious "flashing" of a place you needed to go, a hazard you needed to heed, or your sword's sheath, indicating it was time to slice something. Not only that, but there were things to indicate where you *shouldn't* move: for instance, the left side of the screen might have flames, just in case you were thinking of moving left.

Dragon's Lair was, in fact, a game of reflexes. Can you keep an eye on the entire screen, monitor all your options, and pick the only safe one in the space of one or two seconds? (Many places had more than on safe option; I wish the crappy Readysoft versions would clue in on this.)

It certainly wasn't like any videogames which had come before it. If you tried to apply the same strategy to Dragon's Lair that you had used with other games, then it's no surprise you bungled your way through it trial-and-error style. Take a close look at the animation. It was all there.

In Space Ace, almost every move was indicated with a flash; apparently Bluth (and Cinematronics?) figured out that less subtlety was called for.

And eye-candy shouldn't be trivialized. This was really *good* eye candy. Bluth's animation is damned good. If the game had used, say, sub-par Ruby-Spears crap, it probably would have died a quick and lonely death. Space Ace had even better visuals. And have you ever seen Dragon's Lair II? The Eden and Beethoven levels have imagery that is comparable to Fantasia!

Review Link my @$$

[SageLikeFool]

That "review link" is just a preview that tells you some of the features and little more... As far as I can tell there are not reviews up on any gaming sites as of yet...

PREVIEW, not a review

[steveha]

The linked article describes the game very generally, because they don't have a copy yet to test. They do have some screenshots.

Screenshots look nice. Dirk still looks the same, i.e. like a 2D animated character. He really was animated last time; now the game is being generated on the fly.

steveha

Re:PREVIEW, not a review

[_ph1ux_]

I dont know about you - but i have no interest in the way dirk looks. Sure, it may be a nostalgia thing for some, but i am loking forward to seeing things that i ahvent seen, I am waiting for a new revolution in gameplay and graphics - I have *no* interest in a 2d character runnign around a 3D environment....

Like the other poster said - maybe for a dollar - maybe not even that much.

Old news, again

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the ported to Mac version that only ran on MacII and LC, cause they had 68020 CPUs. Gosh, I may go and fire it up again....

No way!!!

[tulare]

I was just thinking about Dragon's Lair last week. I once watched some kid burn a pile of Chuck E. Cheese tokens in the game and actually solve it. Dragon's Lair was the only motivation I had for going to Chuck E. Cheese - it certainly wasn't for the quality of the pizza, and sure as hell wasn't to be tormented by those godawful cartoon dancing robotic stereotyped Italians above the dining room - even as a kid I found those offensive.
So what did you get when you wasted hours of your life in front of an interactive laser disk player? A friggin valentine. That was probably the last time I went to Chuckies place. But I still remember the "boink" when you were given the hints, the music swell after you made your choice, and the "die" music :) It was a fun game.

Re:No way!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I go there to pick up the mothers bringing their kids. Man some of those middle age women are HOT. Nothing like taking them in the bathroom of Chuck E Cheese.

Re:No way!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dad? Is that you?

Re:No way!!!

[ceswiedler]

My theory on Dragon's Lair (and Space Ace) was that the games were much more fun to watch other people play than they were to play yourself. I was pretty young when DL came out, and it usually cost too much for me to play (and for a long time, there was always someone playing it). But I watched other people play it for hours and hours.

When I did play it myself years later, I remember thinking..."wow, this isn't as much fun as it looked." When you watch someone play it, you don't realize how little control they have over what's going on on-screen.

Memories?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you possibly have memories of Dragon's Lair 3d which is brand new?

Anyway, check here for info on emulating the original Dragon's Lair (and other classic LD games). Cliffy rocks!

4 in the Morning..

[torre]

Hmm.. its 4 in the morning... and we're still on slashdot .... crap... this would probably be the reason i'm single.. sniff. sniff.

Re:4 in the Morning..

[Kibo]

That's all good, G. Princess Daphne is an LA 10, and has all kinds of time for the listless, friendless loser who really knows how to use his joy stick.

I remember this game..

[REDNOROCK]

Yeah I wasted about $2 on this friggin game, cause I never knew when the movie ended and my part started...

Sounds

[Anonymous Cowdog]

Very nice sound design job on the navbars at the top of the dragonslair3d.com web site.

There's a movie

[tulare]

Link at the bottom of this page. Looks like the 3d version will be a dissappointment. What made the original so interesting was that the animators had the freedom to script each scene more or less as they wanted. As a result, you had lots of time to reflect on your character's goofy looks as he got into and out of trouble, died, lived, and fought. In the new version, it looks like you mostly watch the back of your goofy character as he runs around a modified doom world. I'm sure they have added a couple of special bits to make us remember the original, but for the most part, feh. I'll stick to UT.

Re:There's a movie

[Fjord]

Actually, until I saw that movie, I was more inclined to say "so what." That actually looks pretty cool. Not a $49.99 game, but maybe $29.99

Re:1st

[byran lei]

> does this game really look all that good?
>
Not really. It's certainly *NOT* a reason to run out and buy a PS2,GameCube or even a Xbox. It wasn't all that hot as an arcade game. Most people would play it once or twice and move on to something else like Defender or Pacman. If anyone claims otherwise, they are a liar.

Well fuck-e-doo.

[Anonymous Coward]

break out the disco ball.
dragon's lair...yea that and 4-weel skates and "skate night"...

-an iterim to boredom and torture; whichever comes first.

what's next? that fucking hologram game from disneyland, you remember, the one that was $1.25 a pop just so you can get killed within 5 minutes by that stupid robot you could never jump over to avoid...ah yes, Time Traveler, ...the torture of the '80s continues. someone kill me.

I am just a sober troll. I need some heavy drinking tonight.

Where's the casemod for your C64

[jki]

at least now I don't have to drop a full dollar into the machine every time I want to play this addictive game

Wow - did not all the metal dropped in your C64 have an unwanted effect :))) Here's some screenshots from the C64/128 version. Which imho, was stated of the art in some sense when it first appeared.

Re:Where's the casemod for your C64

[fistynuts]

The C64 (or Speccy, Amstrad etc) versions of Dragon's Lair were definately not state-of-the-art when they came out. Poor animation, awful long loading times, and the 'faithful' press-the-stick-in-the-right-direction-in-0.5-seco nds-or-die gameplay was just terrible.

As others have said, this new 3D version appears to just take the Dragon's Lair IP and make a boring 3D platformer with it. I've got Jack and Daxter, why do I need this?

Re:Where's the casemod for your C64

[jki]

Poor animation, awful long loading times

I guess time has done miracles in polishing the memories related to it then. I only remember the amazingly long loading times - which, on second thought, might be one the main reasons which triggered me into drinking lots of coffee already in the early years :)

Re:Where's the casemod for your C64

[radish]

The Atari ST version was graphically arcade-perfect, alas it came on about 30 floppies which you had to constantly switch, so it became "hit joystick right, change disc, wait, wait, wait, hit joystick left, ..." and so on. Yawn :)

Re:Where's the casemod for your C64

[operagost]

Did it make you swap in a disk and wait, only to find out it was loading your death scene?

*grinD grind* OH NOSE! TEH PILE OF BONEZ AGAIN!! DAMN YUO, DISK 23!

They are running out of ideas

[master_p]

What next ? pacman New Generation ? oh come on!!!

Re:They are running out of ideas

[Pike65]

Actually, I'm writing Pacman New Generation for my ComSci OpenGL coursework along with the 150 other people doing the module.

There was even talk of putting all of the finished projects on the Net in a kind of Phong shaded ghost chasing Pacman orgy . . .

80:ies

[Orre]

Another fine memory of the 1980. Miami Vice, Vanlilla ice. Those where the days.

Wich i was there again (not)

Re:80:ies

[Anonymous Coward]

The horrid 'Ice Ice Baby' was actually released in 1990 along with MC Hammers 'You can't touch this' which in itself was a ripoff of Rick James' 1981 song 'Superfreak'.

Ah playing Dragon's Lair on a hand held beats Xbox

[Darkwraith]

Anyone ever play it on Gameboy.Now that's a real challenge and awesom graphics too :).Damn i hated riding the mine cart on the game.

Not to be a stickler for details....

[fahrvergnugen]

1) That's not a review, it's preview, and it's pretty much copy & pasted directly from the ad copy. Much better previews are available from IGN and Gamespot. Frankly, the lack of advance press on this game has me a bit worried, since it's due in stores in under a week and nobody's even reviewed an advance copy yet.

2) The XBox has 64 megs of memory, shared with video, if I understand it correctly. That means that for the resolution to climb to the 19xx x 1080 resolution the game will run at, texture quality, an extra texture pass o' bumpmaps, or some other graphical goodie had to give. Take this tradeoff as you will. I'll be glad to have something that shows off my HDTV, personally (don't even have a digital tuner yet, and while THPS4's 720p support is nice, this will smoke it), but I can see wanting another coat o' shine on the texture work as well.

Also, what will the effect on framerate be?

I suggest we all reserve judgement until it has enough review scores to appear on gamerankings.

Re:Not to be a stickler for details....

[Jagen]

I dont know about you but i'd much rather watch a 720p signal than a 1080i one, interlacing make it look like pap.

Re:Not to be a stickler for details....

[Sycraft-fu]

Depends on how much stuff you need. You have to remember that the X-box impliments texture compression that on average cuts textures by 1/4 (same as the GeForce 4s, since it's the same basic hardware). You can get a whole lot into even 16MB of memory if you are compressing it 4x, that's 64MB of textures which isn't bad. Also, form the look of it, this game is done in the same cel-shading stule as teh orignal. That means lots of solid colours and not a whole lto of complex textures.

You don't have to have tons of memory necessiarly, you just have to design your graphics a little differently. On the PC we have become accustomed to huge, complex texutres since we get cards with lots of dedicated RAM. That's nice and certianly the best if you are shooting for realism, but that doesn't mean all games have to do it that way.

For example, the GameCube only has 1MB of texture cache on it's graphics chip, and the PSX had only 1MB of total video memory. IT just means your games tend to have more solid colours than texutres.

Also, I doubt the framerate will be a problem. The GeForce 4 4600 can easily handle 1600x1200 at a deceant clip on games that don't use all the advanced pixel shader stuff, I don't imaging the X-box, which is of similar power, will have trouble with 1960x1080, espically since it only have to render at an effective rate of 30fps.

Re:Not to be a stickler for details....

[Brad Wilson]

It's hard to say that the Xbox is of "similar power" to the GeForce 4 4600. The video hardware in the Xbox is a modified version of the original GeForce 3. It has performance advantages to being on a dedicated bus instead of AGP, but I doubt it's capable of keeping pace with a 4600, personally.

That having been said, the games look excellent on the Xbox, because it's that "one platform only" game writing thing that consoles get and PCs don't. There's still very few games that even begin to scratch the GeForce 3's capabilities. We need to get away from big textures and T&L, and into shader country.

Re:Not to be a stickler for details....

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, 1080i is interlaced, so each "frame" is actually two fields of half the vertical resolution. 720p is actually a higher resolution image than 1080i.

Re:Not to be a stickler for details....

[Sycraft-fu]

No, it is very much a GeForce 4. I was mistaken on the 4600 thing, it's performance is more around a 4400, though faster in a few areas, probably because of the X-box's memory architecture. The "modified GeForce 3" thing came form the GF4 not being out when the X-box was released. A GF4 really is very much like a GF3, the largest difference is that a GF4 has a second vertex shader. It also has other improvements, but nothing like the huge change from GF2 to GF3.

I sucked at this game

[Qender]

I remember playing this game at software etc when I was young. (before that sofware etc was turned into the software section of a barnes and noble)

It started in front of a bridge, and everytime I tried to cross the bridge, a tentacle came up and killed my character. I never got farther than that, no matter what I did, the tentacle killed me.

I had a friend who could play through the whole game.

But I always got killed on the damn bridge.

Stupid game.

Re:I sucked at this game

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm not bad at all games, just the crappy ones.

Action figures

[Ratface]

Damn! Those action figures are kinda cool - especially Princess Daphne ;-)

http://www.dragonslair3d.com/games/game_action_fig ures.asp

Crappy 3d

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely even the crappy consoles have proper shadows these days. What's with the blurry circle? I want accurate shadows damnit. That's what's going to be good about Doom III, I can walk around going "wow, look at my shadow, it's even calculated properly on that monster running at me oh shit *splat*"

Dragon's Lair?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that cartoon with the stupid built in "guess the move" game?

C'mon, people. That was a cartoon, not a game.
technically speaking it was way inferior even to Space Invaders and Asteroids, let alone Pac Man.

It would be so easy to take a movie, build trees and subtrees of different "plot" developments, add a transparent control console and some code to link a pre recorded set of right/wrong moves with the video streams. The next thing would be some Human Interface attached to the gamer (I just wonder what would be the best suited for interactive pr0n movies;)

Blah!

[Anonymous Coward]

My lord how I hated that game.

Shameless X-box plug.

[jonr]

Has Slashdot no integrity? Dragons Lair is going to be released on all major platforms, Playstation, Playstation 2, Nintendo Gamecube, XBox and PC.
Give me a break!

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[h0tblack]

...and the Mac :) The PC version is GM while the x-box and other versions should have some more news coming next week...
There's more info on the PC and Mac versions of the game (although most details will obviously apply to the console ports) at the developers website.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[TrancePhreak]

Well, not the Playstation, just the PS2 and the rest you mentioned.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[NorthWoodsman]

Yeah, cause everyone knows people on SlashDot just love Microsoft...

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[bryanbrunton]

I agree. F*ck Slashdot. Or at least f*ck the Slashdot editor Michael. He has been posting at least 1 XBox article every two to three weeks.

The XBox is an economic anamoly. It wouldn't exist except for Microsoft's ability to leverage its desktop monopoly. The XBox has already lost 1 billion dollars. Its projected to lose another 1 billion dollars next year.

Boycott Microsoft, and purchase a GameCube or PS2.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[Fjord]

Hell, it was released on the Amiga. I still remember countless hours of swapping disks, waiting for a scene to load as it read off the floppy into my 512K of RAM.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[djrosen]

> Boycott Microsoft, and purchase a GameCube or PS2.

So I can have the inferior console and hope and dream that I may have hurt M$ in the Process? There is a time and a place for Hatred, the Xbox is clearly superior why would anyone want a less capable system? Separate your Pro Linux / Anti M$ bashing for something its worth fighting about, this is a losing battle, Xbox ROCKS and XBLive doubly so.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. The hardware may be a bit better than the other consoles, but the software title lineup is still mediocre at best. The PS2 has more good titles. I have a Gamecube and an XBox and I buy 3x more GC software.

XBox Live has potential, but it has yet to prove itself, and there is still time for the other consoles to compete for the online market.

Re:Shameless X-box plug.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I went into an Electronic Boutique today, and saw someething really cool. No only is this game on all the systems, it will play on a DVD player. I don't own any game system, but I do own a DVD player, and I can play the game using my remote. Hooray!

Actually more fun?

[tevenson]

The $10,000 question is : Is this game more fun than the original? Did they improve it in any fashon?

Seems that companies are far more interested in the graphic development rather than the gameplay as of late. I think we all know this is true, but does it matter? Why change something that works.

Re:Actually more fun?

[Qender]

technology vs. fun

This is slashdot, there is no difference.

Re:Actually more fun?

[tevenson]

Not all technology is fun. Unless you are the ultimate geek.

Re:Actually more fun?

[Qender]

Are you talking about this guy?: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/13/023320 0&mode=nested&tid=133

the graphics are interesting

[narkotix]

The graphics from the screenshot to me look very directx8ish...pretty good tho for a tv screen...but considering i dont have hdtv guess its useless to me!

How about Space Ace?

[10Ghz]

That game was a close relative to Dragons Lair. except it was sci-fi, not fantasy. And there was spaceships, not horses and dragons. And they had lasers instead of swords...

Re:How about Space Ace?

[bsartist]

Space Ace was another of Don Bluth's creations - that's why it was so similar to Dragon's Lair. IIRC, they used the same cabinet; arcade owners could convert a DL machine to SA by dropping in the SA laserdisk, applying new decals to the outside, and rebooting.

If DL3D sells well enough, it'd be foolish not to follow it up with SA3D.

Re:How about Space Ace?

[10Ghz]

Space Ace was another of Don Bluth's creations - that's why it was so similar to Dragon's Lair.

I know that. I did say "they are close relatives" ;)

Wait a second

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt the usual trend here "microsoft is evil, avoid xbox" etc?
But hey wait, dragonslair on xbox? lets buy an xbox!
or is it the same as with MPAA? Boo boo bad dvd, region encoding evil evil, oh wait, LOTR dvd released? everyone buy it,now!

gotta love /.'s consistency.. or at least some of the people here

Re:Wait a second

[Anonymous Coward]

You're myopic.

What does XBox have to do with Linux?

What does the work of the Hollywood creative community have to do with the restrictive distribution practices of the MPAA?

It's not a black-and-white world, kid. /., with its many many thousands of posters, is not a black-and-white community. Try bucking the "usual trends" and being a little "unusual" every so often.

Sorry to rock your world.

Re:Wait a second

[Anonymous Coward]

"/., with its many many thousands of posters, is not a black-and-white community."

You are correct, sir. The /. community are a bunch of kikes, jews, commies, and sand niggers.

Re:Wait a second

[buck_wild]

Exactly.

*lip quivers, voice wavering* Can't we all just get along?!?

in those days: Gravitar!

[Anonymous Coward]

In the time Dragon's Lair was popular, I could never understand why: a video enhanced with pseudo-interaction make an interesting game? Nah!

Now, at roughly the same time another game I enjoyed immensely: poor graphics, but deep gameplay: Gravitar!

Can we have a redo of that game please?!

nothin to see folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Game looks like ASS

maybe i am not old enough

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe i am not old enough... but can someone remind me when and why this game was ever good?

oh and don bluth can suck it. [nimh wuz ok]

Re:1st

[Ponty]

I'm glad someone else feels this way. I'm not really into games, but I have a bit of nostalgia for the original Dragon's Lair. Honestly, I was disappointed by the screenshots. It looks like all of the other "walk around in 3d and kill things" games. And the graphics really don't seem all that hot (not that that matters, but if you're plugging the graphics, they should at least be compelling.)

More Videos, Screenshots, etc.

[toopc]

Dragon's Lair 3D Preview

Media Page

on Xbox?

[teyu]

According to the site it is on the Xbox... wow!

and the playstation, playstation2, gamecube, pc ...
I guess those aren't important though.

Pacman the movie

[pommiekiwifruit]

Stranger things have happened.

M$ & /.

[Ektanoor]

First we had /. bashing M$
Then we had M$ fans bashing /.
Then we had /. fans bashing M$ fans.
Then we had M$ fans bashing /. fans.
Then we had M$ fans appraising M$ in /..
Now we have /. appraising M$.
Soon we probably will have M$ /.
Later we will have M$ bashing /.

I really don't care for someone appraising here some real feature from M$ world. However, seeing the comments going after this post, I'm pretty admired that someone made such an golden appraisal for the whacky X-Box, while the thing didn't deserve such focus (According to one comment, Dragon's Lair is multi-platform, the site also shows it).

Frankly it seems that /. is slowly but surely diving into a M$ hype world that doesn't distinguish it from any other mass media outlet. It's sad as it was one of the best forums in the net, apart of some yellow journalism in the posts and Katz prayings.

Re:M$ & /.

[Anonymous Coward]

And why would you think for a moment anyone takes you or your post seriously when you use that juvenile dollar sign??

Got something to say? Great, but at least make a conscious effort to say it without sounding like you're 14 years old.

Re:M$ & /.

[Anonymous Coward]

repost that as something other than an anonymous coward and say that to his face

Re:M$ & /.

[Ektanoor]

Very Interesting to find your post just after being sent into Offtopic (?????????????). Flamebait or Troll I would understand. But Offtopic???

And why you Microsoft jerk point to the dollar sign and don't seem to mind that I use also "/.". Or has anyone considered that shortsigns are no longer used in Internet? Probably M$ was used when you still had haven't seen a display in front of your eyes. And it meant Megadollars Corporation for some in the beginning of the 90's. And besides I ain't 14 years old but I have had 15 years on using Windows. Since its beta 1 version.

And more. I don't want to anyone to take me seriously. It his part to take me seriously or not. My part is to state my opinion like it or not.

And finally. Get out of that Anonymous Cowardish suit and come into the frontline if you have something serious to say.

go-go gadget dick extender!

[Anonymous Coward]

woah lookout penny!

errmm wrong article...or perhaps any of you karmuh whores would like it to be the right article? ha cha cha cha?

Laservideo games

[Nogami_Saeko]

The only one I really got into was Cobra Command (not the other non-laser version).

I really got hooked at it in an arcade in a really run-down section of town when I was young. I got pretty good at it though, got the highscore on the console which was a good highpoint for me.

Interestingly enough, I managed to pick the game up for a PC emulator, complete with MPG-2 video and sound. Pretty cool (but I still can't beat it) ;P

Games and storylines (ot?)

[saihung]

I don't know about the whole engaging characters & complex storylines in games thing. My favorite games have always been completely devoid of any storyline at all. Super Mario Bros had no real story line, but you could spend hours and hours playing it. Gran Turismo, Quake, and a whole bunch of more recent and great games have no real story line. What they DO have is fantastic playability and great graphics. I always found the little vignettes that advance the storyline to be little more than an annoyance, something that I had to wait to finish so I could get back to playing the game. Dragon's Lair sucked because it was nothing BUT movie clips with no game play at all. Give me a guy jumping on turtle shells for no clearly defined reason over that stuff any day.

Re:Games and storylines (ot?)

[MyHair]

I don't know about the whole engaging characters & complex storylines in games thing. My favorite games have always been completely devoid of any storyline at all.

Every now and then a game with a storyline has held my interest. King's Quest 6 jumps to mind as do a couple of the other King's Quest games.

RTS games like Warcraft, Starcraft and Command and Conquer, and turn-based strategy games like Civilization * and S.M. Alpha Centauri have story lines, but I don't think the story line adds any interest for me; for those games the interest is in building towards a goal, whether it be annihilating the enemy, becomming the biggest nation/faction or even self destruction and resurrection. And of course the different strategies for doing the above.

Quake and Doom types generally have stories in the manuals, but I don't care as long as I get to blow sh*t up and either get to the next level or outscore some network opponents.

Dragon's Lair was cool when it came out. The gameplay was annoying at times, and after a while it got old for me because I didn't get very far and therefore saw the same scenes over and over again. It was more fun for me to watch a good player play it and see what happens. I'm not going to pay US$50 for it, but I'll try to catch a demo at the store, and maybe I'll buy it when it drops to US$20. (I'm very patient.) It looks like they're keeping the characters true-to-2d animation while immersed in a 3d world.

Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[teamhasnoi]

When I was a kid, Dragon's Lair was at pizza joint in a tourist town I visited every year. I got to play it once. One dollar went into that game and I never got past the first screen.

I wised up - spent all the rest of my (Mom's) money on Choose Your Own Adventure Books. Sure, one dollar and ninety-five cents was more than Dragon's Lair, but I got as many run throughs as I wanted, and Ma didn't have a problem with buying those.

And the graphics were kick-ass.

I still have a box full of those books, and they are *still* good for car rides.

Re:Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[Artifex]

And the graphics were kick-ass.

If you take good care of them, your kids will think so, too.
Not many games you can pass down to them that they will think are "state of the art." And of course, there's extra fun if you teach them how to map the novels out visually, and it's a small step from there to them programming text games on a computer, either with one of the adventure engines that have entered public domain or BASIC or C or Pascal. =)

Re:Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I wish I hadn't sold my whole collection when I was 13 (used the money to buy some real RPGs, that was a good idea at the time).

Hopefully, someone will scan them all and make an archive so I can play them again. (yeah, I know copyright blah, blah, blah but it's not like we're going to see a Choose Your Own Adventure books revival and be able to buy them again, isn't it?)

Re:Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[codexus]

My all-time favorite CYOA series: The lone wolf series is available for download with the authorization of the author here: http://www.lw-oasis.org/aon/.

Re:Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[aurelian]

I still have a box full of those books, and they are *still* good for car rides.

Do you read them while driving or is that when your mom drives?

Re:Dragon's Lair v.s. Imagination

[ceswiedler]

Speaking of dragons...one of my favorite CYOAs was (IIRC) "Dragon Mountain." The thing I found interesting about it was that if you did one thing, there were no dragons, and you ended up back home. If you did something else, there were real dragons controlled by a mad wizard or whatever. If you did a third thing, the dragons were robotic. The background and world of the story was different depending on what you did. Most of the CYOAs just changed the plot a little.

Years later, when studying Kurosawa's Rashomon, I was reminded of Dragon Mountain. The comparison is a stretch, but it's the same idea of "multiple versions of the same story with different facts, and no story is more right than another."

Not just xbox

[Morgahastu]

Its also coming out for the PS2, Gamecube and PC.

Re:Not just xbox

[FrostedWheat]

Strange how they missed that. The stories are getting oddly pro-Microsoft lately.

Re:Not just xbox

[Anonymous Coward]

it'll play on a regular DVD player via the remote also.

Re:Not just xbox

[buck_wild]

Yes, but to quote the posting: This looks like the first game that supports the HDTV 1080i resoloution the X-box is capable of.

On a side note, are you ALL lame enough to not be able to read the posting, let alone the damn links/article?

How I played Dragon's Lair at the arcade:

[Bob Cat - NYMPHS]

Put 50c in slot.
Move joystick.
Die.
Repeat x 3.
Give up.
Go play Tron for an hour on one quarter.

Re:How I played Dragon's Lair at the arcade:

[Greyfox]

I think Dragon's Lair was one of the first "quarter dump" video games. Manufacturers quickly realized that they could provide you with just enough interactivity and feedback and a high learning curve and essentially solve the "problem" of a guy being able to get good enough to play for hours on one quarter. The solve the final problem that if someone actually DOES spend the money and get good enough to play for a while, he wins after about 15-20 minutes, freeing up the game for another quarter or four. It was also the first game I ever saw that took more than a single quarter.

I think Dragon's Lair marked the start of the decline in the game industry. Once manufacturers wised up and focussed more on getting the gamer to drop another quarter quickly over good gameplay, that was pretty much it. We still see a creative and original game from time to time, but for the most part the coin-op world is a vast wasteland and, for me, not even worth visiting anymore. I still like to fire up the oldies in an emulator from time to time though.

Re:How I played Dragon's Lair at the arcade:

[fldvm]

Speaking of tron where can i get the linux tron game that looks just like the arcade? One of the linux distros had it included but now I cant find it. Is there one for windows?

Re:How I played Dragon's Lair at the arcade:

[Fjord]

Did nobody else buy gaming magazines at the time? There were many that not only showed the moves for each scene, but showed the paths the plot would follow if you did this, or that, or if the knight scene was mirrored (left on right). For $5 you got all the answers.

Who cares???!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, this is Slashdot, News for nerd. If i wanted news for gamers i would go to another site...

Pushing 20 years, any other games?

[Miqlo]

Does anyone know of other games that have managed to reappear on such a vast number of platforms over an incredible 20 years? Ofcourse there's Jeff Minter's remakes of Pong, but that was some years ago.

I sure as hell remember when Dragons Lair was new, and even tho one may easily critizise the complexity of the game play I wouldn't be to quick to reflect that onto playability... it was fun as hell in any case.

Miqlo

Re:Pushing 20 years, any other games?

[Anonymous Coward]

For newer Jeff Minter games, you can allways go to www.llamasoft.co.uk .
He's been quite active lately and making ports of his old games to PC (like gridrunner) and Pocket PC (like Hover Bover) (what did people allways say about Minter working on a platform being the kiss of death.. ? ).
Ofcourse all games are in the old shareware fashion.

Just in case anybody feels nostalgic after reading the article. ;)

Read the frickin post

[Jagen]

I know people often complain that people comment without reading the linked article. But the number of people going "umm, but its also available on PS2, GC etc" is mind numbing, it *actually says* in the blurb at the top "Xbox and other game systems". The reason the xbox got special focus being that it supports an HDTV res previously unused in games.

Re:Read the frickin post

[byran lei]

>got special focus being that it supports an HDTV res previously unused
>in games.
>
>
Guess what? Nobody cares. Dragon's Lair on X-box is a lame game on a even lamer platform.

Re:Read the frickin post

[buzzsport]

Even more interesting is that Amazon.com shows the XBOX version available for pre-order (shipping November 21st) and the PC version (November 18th). No word on the PS2 version (or the Mac for that matter) even though the web site says Fall 2002.

Re:Read the frickin post

[Anonymous Coward]

THANK YOU! Christ, people see a MS object, and they immediately start to fucking go into conniptions. Stop all this knee-jerk shit, you goddamn tree-huggers!

dragons lair on EVERYTHING...

[Lumpy]

funny how the headlines and stories here on slashdot are wrong...

It's for the PS2, gamecube, Pc and the X-box...

I'm betting the gamecube version is the best though... damn fine graphics on that cute little thing.

All 3 games are out on DVD

[BiOFH]

You can get all three games on DVD and play em on your puter or DVD player or DVD-enabled-aibo-lunchbox. I got em about 2 weeks ago.

But... I'll probably buy the Gamecube version of 3d as well. :)

Retro gaming is "in"

[Kirby-meister]

Incase you haven't noticed, retro-games seem to be what is "in" at the moment.

Shinobi is back, bottomless pits and all. Contra has made its triumphant return on both the PS2 and GBA (along with a slightly modified version of the Konami Code - also note that Gunstar Heroes still destroys Contra hands down). Rygar is coming to town. Ninja Gaiden is in development. Toejam & Earl III just came out.

So what's next? Moon Patrol Xtreme?

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[jgerman]

Rygar huh? Got a link I liked that game, well except for the fact that you couldn't save.

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[Feathers McGraw]

Incase you haven't noticed, retro-games seem to be what is "in" at the moment.

It's called franchise-building, and it's not limited to video games (I believe that 2002 was the most sequel-laden year at the box office in history). Why bother to come up with new character designs and backstory when you can pick an arcade classic with name recognition that a generation of quarter-pushers who now have disposable income and yearning nostalgia can enjoy?

So what's next? Moon Patrol Xtreme?

Dude, that would be awesome!

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[clarkc3]

thats all well and good, but if I want retro gaming with Dragon's lair, I still have the PC version from 1993 :)

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[archen]

Well it has yet to be seen if the game would be anything like we remember. Most of the games we remember are being turned into something like Tombraider. It's similar in that there's something we recognize, but really it's just another game like Devil May Cry. I know that Ninja Gaiden is going that way, the question is will it have the same crazy sort of storyline? That being said, Shinobi looks like it's going to be pretty cool.

See the frachise building post later in this thread for some more insight.

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[sirinek]

Ugh. Devil May Cry is probably one of the worst offenders of what we call the "movie" game that isnt really a game at all, but just a movie you sit through and controlling and doing YOUR thing is almost an afterthought.

Yuck. No wonder I dont own a console.

siri

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[tchapin]

> So what's next? Moon Patrol Xtreme?

DAMN! You stole my idea!

Todd

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[DaveOf9thKey]

So what's next? Moon Patrol Xtreme?

I sure hope so. I slapped together a breakbeat that samples the original Moon Patrol theme song, and I'd be willing to offer it to the developers dirt cheap. =^)

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[rsborg]

Shinobi does in fact look rather neat, but I think it too, falls prey to the "3d-ization" of it's popular side scroller parent, take a look at some screenshots

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[Fjord]

This isn't that surprising. It's a 3D equivelent of the million side scrollers we played as kids.

I agree with you though, I hate fully linear plot lines. Games like Zelda and GTA (Vice City is awesome) are more my bag because if you get tired of the main quest there are a million side quests you can do for fun and profit.

Consoles have good games that PCs don't, barring emulation. There is also less headache factor (though with the Xbox, it can get PC like because of the hard drive). Consoles also tend to be cheaper than a ninja video card. PCs have a lot of good games consoles don't. PCs have more versatility and better input devices or wont work well on a console (I'm a mouse man for FPSs). They each have their place.

Re:Retro gaming is "in"

[tongue]

So what's next?

I vote for TecmoBowl!

Obviously...

[HawkingMattress]

Microft must have a very big stock of joypad that nobody wants to buy... I can't count the number of joysticks that died on the floor of my kid's room after too long fustrating sessions of "right, left, up, button, down ... etc etc"

This game was very, very fustrating.

For more information

[bdsgeekboys]

Fore more information and old screen captures of the game and the arcade machine itself.

http://www.klov.com/D/Dragon's_Lair.html.

A dollar at a time vs. ... ?

[murcon]

at least now I don't have to drop a full dollar into the machine every time I want to play this addictive game.

No! Now you pay it all up front ($200 for the console, $50 for the game ... did anyone really drop $250 on this game in the arcades?)!

Not even out

[dimer0]

Ships on the 18th of this month. Great detective work, submitter.

What's so cool about Dragon's Lair?

[The Moving Shadow]

I played the original coin-up, and although the graphics and sound were perfect, the gameplay was hell. All action scenes were static and only required good timing when pressing the control buttons. The walkthrough looked something like this "press left, right, right, jump, right, left, straight, left, right and then quickly left again". The feeling only rivaled years later when practicing those fatalities in Mortal Kombat... And we now know how many people were driven insane by that ritual. ;) And then i even forget scenes like this: "Wow, this castle room is beautiful! Giant gold inlaid doors on the left and right! Wow!" *presses left* *dies by falling into pit right after door* "Hmmm, odd, i could have sworn that door looked safe, let's retry...." "Wow, this castle room is beautiful! Giant gold inlaid doors on the left and right! Wow!" *presses left* *dies by falling into pit right after door* "Hmmm, i think i am actually learning something here, let's restart..." "Wow, this castle room is beautiful! Giant gold inlaid doors on the left and right! Wow!" *presses right* *enters room with hostile knights* *fails to press left button within 2 split seconds* *dies* ....

Wribg title

[Anonymous Coward]

Dragon's Lair is out on *ALL* platforms. What's your deal with Xbox? Microsoft paying you anything?

How soon after that ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... did you come out of the closet?

Re:How soon after that ...

[Hegemony]

Funny. Tired, but funny.

Now there's a reason

[oldstrat]

.
Finally a reason to buy the XBOX.
Hacking the over priced console just wasn't enough for me.
I mean look if I want a PC there's plenty out there that can run all the stuff I'd want without hacking.

And hey, if I want Dragon's Lair and Space Ace run on the PC and DVD players... wait a minute, I guess I still don't have a reason to buy the over priced game console.

Re:Now there's a reason

[Anonymous Coward]

overpriced? for $200 you can't even get a good video card for your pc, which won't play doom 3 anyway if it's more than a year old. take about overpriced. anyway, console games are the only games that actually have good play control. unless you want to play yet another sim game, or first person shooter clone.

I liked Dragon's Lair...

[Alien Being]

because it made it a little easier to get a turn at the other games at the arcade.

Sure, I ponied up a few bucks to try it when it came out, but I gave it a quick thumbs down and went back to Asteroids and Defender. I'm really surprised to hear that so many /.ers found DL interesting.

The gameplay on DL was so primitive it reminded me of my little brother's 2XL 8-track based "robot". Enter move, wait for the drive to seek, enter move, etc. As for the graphics, so what. It's not like they were computer generated, not in realtime anyway.

Re:I liked Dragon's Lair...

[MyHair]

I'm really surprised to hear that so many /.ers found DL interesting.

But the girl was HOT. (To a 12-year old boy.) She's the only cartoon character I ever had sexual fantasies about. :-)

somebody mod this up (+1 funny)

[Anonymous Coward]

i just used the last of my mod points on the parent... should have waited a little bit.

Space Ace!

[DirkDaring]

Is Space Ace going to be next?

Don't forget Don Bluth!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget all the Don Bluth "animation"! Please, I cannot stand anime and I am not about to start spouting about any cultural superiority crap. But really, let's be real, Don Bluth's animation sucks! All the characters are these tall, lankey, big headed, stupid looking blobs of orange and red. Everything is saturated beyond belief. I don't think it's so much an artistic style than it is rather artistic ineptitude.

Re:Ah playing Dragon's Lair on a hand held beats X

[Inda]

You mean the mine carts on Donkey Kong Country? They're cool - nothing to hate here. :)

Dragon's Lair in the arcades was a bore though. I hated every second of it.

XBOX Users MUST have the DVD Remote......

[splatter]

in order to run this.

just a heads up.

DP

Integrity?

[tweakt]

Has Slashdot no integrity?

Did they ever?

MicroSoft paying Slashdot for advertisements?

[Viewsonic]

WTF? Especially since this is a Linux based site, you'd think they would keep the XBox crap off here.

Re:MicroSoft paying Slashdot for advertisements?

[redune45]

I think they keep putting xbox on slashdot just becuse it it the nerdiest of the consoles. Look at what you can do with it once it's modded ! It almost does everything that a PC can do !

Space Ace

[jaymz666]

So, can Space Ace be far behind?

GameCube, PS2 also support HDTV modes also... Duh?

[Viewsonic]

So again.. Why XBox? Microsoft putting cash in peoples pockets again? Lame!

Nice marketing ploy.. XBoxers get screwed again.

[Viewsonic]

Nice...... Oh well, I'll just buy the super duper GAMECUBE version ..

GOOD LORD, WHEN WILL PEOPLE SICKEN. . ?!

[Fantastic Lad]

3d games were cool back in the day of Doom and Dark Forces. Half-Life had a cool story. Quake-boy Carmak(sp?) has been reliable in doing cool things with bleeding edge tech. But X-Box?

From the standard driving game to the standard run around with guns game, it seems like every game box release from each major player has simply been an extended parade of slight variations of different texture-maps and ever-so-slightly different rule-sets painted over top the same !#$?! graphics engine. Ya-freeking-hoo! Could I BE any more bored out of my skull?

And, good lord, I HATE texture mapped stuff. Everything from Mario to Orcs look so dull and fake-ish and same-o same-o. -Now, handling a Stormtrooper blaster for the first time and stealing the actual plans for the Death Star because Princess Liea NEEDED them, (in an age before Star Wars sucked and Lucas's brain hadn't yet turned to cheese-whiz), was just about the most amazing gaming experience I've ever had. And yeah, sure, I was born in the early 70's, so maybe by today's game-box standards I'm a cynical 30-something year old who's X-Gen opinion doesn't mean squat. (Which it obviously doesn't, since the game companies are reaping in gazillions from their boring-ass 3d 'games') But still. . !

Dirk the Daring will forever be a 2d animated piece of visual coolness from my childhood, where they tried it because simply because nobody had ever done so before. Daring. New. Made with a passion for the art! --But this new, factory-setting-3d-version with a half-assed 2d texture tweek is a waste of time, in my totally un-humble opinion.

Why won't somebody put their balls on the line and write something new and interesting? I've not seen any significant game inovation since the days of MOO-2 and Command & Conquer. --And Voxels, btw, are the height of graphics coolness; they STILL look a million times better than the no-substance, too easy, 3d popcorn being shoved up our sore-spots these days.

The one exception I can think of is the LucasArts release, Grim Fandango. But like Half-life, that was all about the story, and in it's case, kick-ass voice-acting and comedic timing.

Grumble, Grumble.

-Fantastic Lad

Re:GOOD LORD, WHEN WILL PEOPLE SICKEN. . ?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll or Flamebait? The world may never know.

Re:GOOD LORD, WHEN WILL PEOPLE SICKEN. . ?!

[Fantastic Lad]

Troll or Flamebait? The world may never know.

How about, "My Honest Reaction"?

Terribly sorry it offends. Now be off with you. You AC's are like damned fruit flies; harmless, weightless, but somehow indicitive of something rotten.

Hm. Perhaps that's why they always seem to show up whenever my mood happens to spoil. . .

-Fantastic Lad --Don't you dare lay those on me!

Re:Ah playing Dragon's Lair on a hand held beats X

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG... I thought I was the only one to get anywhere in that game. It was good, but the difficulty level was off the scale.

Ahhh, just in time...

[El Camino SS]

This game is going to come out just in time for the new Zelda game to throw it in a coffin, bury it, and say, "Bye bye!"

SUCKED?!

[SPYvSPY]

Hardly. First of all, Dragon's Lair was the shiz-nit when it came out. Second only to the more obscure, but better anime-type laserdisc cabinet game that seemed to be based on Dr. Caligari. (Anyone remember the name? -- 'Time Travellers' or something.) Plus, there was the even-better follow up, Space Ace, which also ruled.

Your point about cel shading being better is just absurd, esp. since there was about fifteen years between the introduction of DL and the first good cel-shaded games (e.g., Jet Set Radio). Yeah, we all hated the lag in DL and the other laserdisc games, (and we hated the insane price point), but that game had the biggest crowds at my arcade for about a year straight, which is saying a lot. Most of the time, we'd just be watching some hot shot who could finish the game on a dollar, so it was more like a movie anyway!!

Your opinion only makes sense if you were born yesterday. For the rest of us, who actually lived in the 1980's, we thought DL was insanely cool.

Re:SUCKED?!

[Graspee_Leemoor]

" For the rest of us, who actually lived in the 1980's, we thought DL was insanely cool."

I did live in the 80s, but not the parallel universe version you obviously did where Dragon's Lair was cool.

In the universe I've been living in, Dragon's Lair was an expensive to play, hardly any interactivity game where it was too easy to die.

And I didn't say that cel-shaded games were better- I said they were more interesting to me.

Also I take exception to your using the word anime in conjuction with Western animation. Don Bluth's work is cartoons, not anime.

graspee

Re:SUCKED?!

[ncc74656]

Your opinion only makes sense if you were born yesterday. For the rest of us, who actually lived in the 1980's, we thought DL was insanely cool.

That's funny...I lived in the '80s, but thought that while Dragon's Lair looked neat, it absolutely and thoroughly sucked as a game. It was an almost certain waste of $1.00 (at a time when most games cost 25 cents) in that I would invariably get "killed" maybe 10-20 seconds after feeding the machine my money.

Re:SUCKED?!

[bev_tech_rob]

I shudder to think how many dollars I spent on that game back then. Eventually I got good enough to finish it on the first try and not get killed. I loved the final scene where you could get a good look at Daphne (grrrrowl!). Yea, the play quality stunk and mainly consisted of timing and patterns, but the video and music were awesome!

Re:SUCKED?!

[bogie]

"we thought DL was insanely cool. "

Yes is was cool.....to watch.

The gameplay completely sucked. You were extremely limited to what you could do and playing a game completely based on timing was boring.

Dragons Lair='s fun to look at, crappy gameplay.

Re:SUCKED?!

[SPYvSPY]

I think that just means you sucked at playing it.

Re:SUCKED?!

[SPYvSPY]

I find it interesting that Shenmue (and Shenmue II), IMO two of the most revolutionary games ever, employ a similar scheme to the timing-based scheme in DL. The Shenmue series is a lot more than just this, but it's actually one of the best parts of the game, again IMO.

Re:SUCKED?!

[buck_wild]

How about 'CliffHanger'?

Yet another in the line of 'Twitch wrong and you're dead' games.

Graphics industry sux

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, nvnews don't accept poor GeForce results. Author "typedef enum" wrote an article showing how Matrox Parhelia-512 beat nVidia GeForce Ti 4600 in benchmark after benchmak. The review was pulled for rewriting and some tabulated comparisons were never allowed as mentioned by the author at Matroxusers forum. The results can now be seen at Beyond3D.

it isn't a review

[Grackle]

The article this item links to is a preview, and it sounds like it was cribbed from a press release hyping the features of the game. There's nothing in it that really describes what it's like to play this new version of the game.

It came on floppies too..

[xchino]

I had this game for my 386. It came on 5 floppies IIRC. Anyone remember this version and remember what the differences b/w it and the laserdisc version? I seem to remember quality being poorer than in the arcade, but I was a young'n then..

Rehash again.

[Echoota]

Can this game just die? It's ok to watch, but it's never been fun to play. I can't believe the mileage they're getting from this piece. They'll still be releasing it in 2050 on the MS BorgBox11.

Re:GameCube, PS2 also support HDTV modes also... D

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing 1080i out on either PS2 or GC. PS2 you're lucky if you can find 480p support. And as far as that being HDTV? Please. Even Fox calls their lame 480p broadcast "Enhanced Definition", to the rest of the HD universe, HD starts at 1080i.

My worst DL memory - Amiga

[Sabalon]

While I remember the ads in compute magazine when it came out on the platforms at that time (PC, C64, Amiga, ST) and how bad the PC looked in 4 colors compared to the rest, I do remember playing the game in college on a friends Amiga...off of floppies.

It would take a long time to load a scene, and if you died, it had to reload the scene from disk. The Dragons Lair itself was spread over a couple of disks and dying was a slow painful process.

How about Metroid?

[Ian_Bailey]

Metroid Fusion for GBA borrows it's gameplay heavily from Super Metroid, while Metroid Prime incorporates a lot of original powers from the orginal games.

Oh, and if you get them both connected via that link-thingy, you can even play the original Metroid

Trouble reading?

[SpiceWare]

out for the X-box and other game systems. ... first game that supports the HDTV 1080i resoloution the X-box is capable of

The reason the X-Box is specificially mentioned is that it's the only system supporting the HDTV 1080i signal.

Re:Trouble reading?

[bryanbrunton]

The reason the X-Box is specificially mentioned is that it's the only system supporting the HDTV 1080i signal.

Bullshit, the reason XBox is mentioned in cause Michael, the slashdot editor, is a shameless XBox fan who is simply making his monthly XBox post.

Re:Trouble reading?

[buck_wild]

So what? When you're King, do things your way.

In the mean time, either live with it or do something about it. (subtext) If you can't do either, stop bitching about it.

Interesting

[j_kenpo]

Thats kind of cool, since they just released the 20 year Anniversary edition on DVD with all 3 games based on this, Dragons Lair, Dragons Lair 2 Time Warp, and Space Ace. I picked it up at the local game store for about 30 bucks. Its still the FMV based version, but it still rocks. It actually plays on the PS2 and the X-Box (I havnt tried the GC or my normal DVD player yet). Thats kind of cool that they are going to make a 3D version of it, although since I just picked this one up I dont foresee me buying it.

What about Jupiter Lander?

[SparkyMartin]

When Jupiter Lander 3D comes out, then I will get excited!

Remember the 3DO?

[Anonymous Coward]

The guy that lived across the hall from me in college had a 3DO. And he had Dragon's Lair on it. I actually saw him win. It's pretty cool at the end.

It was the old Dragon's Lair though. Where there's just animation, and you've gotta push certain buttons at certain times to get the dude to do anything.

Re: Anime...

[SPYvSPY]

The game that I was referring to was actual anime. It was made out of Dr. Caligari.

Original already available on DVD

[iabervon]

This is a new games with the models made from the original, not an exact copy of the original. If you want the original (or either of the similar games), you can get them on DVD; the menu-nagivation mechanism in DVD players is actually just right for these games.

You do NOT need the DVD remote

[devorama]

You DO need the DVD remote to play the already released

Dragon's Lair or

Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp,

but you do NOT need a DVD remote for the upcoming release of

Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair.

Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm I do hate to point this out but

This is no BFD

A SNES, 3DO, Amiga, and Atari

Versions exist (have existed)

LONG BEFORE NOW

Not to mention:

A MacOS and Windows port

(Dragons Lair 2)

BFD

Killer game none of your tards remember

Dragon's Lair?

[jparp]

With so many badass games being released, I find it odd that "Dragon's Lair" made it to the front page of slashdot.

Does anybody really even like that game?

So what?

[RatBastard]

So Dragon's Lair is old? Is it fun? That's the only thing that matters. So it doesn't use all of the eye candy special effects that the XBox can produce? Special effects won't make a bad game better and lack of special effects won't make a good game bad (badly done effects are a different matter but I digress).

Personally, I am glad that they are making oilder games available for consoles. One of the most played games in my house is the Atari Archive Pack (Asteroids, Tempest, etc...) on my Dreamcast. None of these games use any 3D (hell, most of them barely use color!) but they are all fun and that is all that matters.

Re:So what?

[Bakaneko]

This comment is (probably) unintentionally funny.

Heh, the original Dragon's Lair was ALL about eye-candy. That was its ONLY selling point. A knee-jerk reaction about how "all the old games were good because they were about gameplay and not graphics" falls on its face and HARD when applied to that game.

my take...

[Scaebor]

Well, in my opinion, anything related to laserdisc can't be bad, right guys? guys...?

Daphne, Laserdisk Emulator for Unix

[fferreres]

I haven't seen anyone pointing out you can play the original Dragons Lair on Linux using . Works on Windows too. You just need to buy the DVD from Dragons Lair Project....or if you are lucky enough, plug in an original Laserdisk :)

Does anyone actually remember the game?

[Junior J. Junior III]

It was pretty, with graphics far beyond the capability of other contemporary games, but the gameplay sucked. You had to press the joystick in a specified pattern with precise timing in order to get the "you didn't die" animation sequence to play. It really wasn't much of a video game, just a crappy way to select which video clips to watch in what order to create a pseudo-interactive narrative.

Hmm, pretty graphics, shite gameplay. No wonder it's on XBox now. It's a natural fit.

Beta

[Scrameustache]

Wow!

Excuse me, but I was supposed to be lead tester for the PC version of that game last year, I saw an alpha, and never heard from it again...I was told by the higer-ups at the company (I'm not naming names) that there were "contract issues" and that they had dropped the game entirely.
X-box you say? Well...figures...

Man, the testers were bummed we lost that one.

Heck, it's available for ordinary DVD players

[catslaugh]

I've seen the original game as something you can play in an ordinary DVD player, using the menu navigation buttons in place of the arcade game console.

Re:GameCube, PS2 also support HDTV modes also... D

[Fjord]

The PS2 only supports 480p in HDTV. The 1280x1024 resolution is only got the RGB output. It is kind of odd that the title is "Dragon's Lair on X-box", though. I can see adding the 1080i stuff where it was, but the title is pretty X-box centric.

Also, don't all games support 1080i (similarily don't they all support 16:9) since they are all rendered?

Gimme Sinistar!!

[EvilStein]

Cool.. then I want "Sinistar" back. It's too damn hard to play with a MAME setup. Crazy ass game..

I wish there was an arcade in the Bay Area that had that game.

Retro games are cool, until you play them as an adult and realize "This game sucks!" I can think of 2 good examples: "720" and "Gauntlet." I thought Gauntlet was cool until I grew up and learned it was just a quarter-eater. 720 was cool until I grew up and realized that the game would send those damn bees after you when it wanted to get rid of you. I hate those bees...

Re:Gimme Sinistar!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sinistar has already been made, by THQ I think. There was a 3d shootemup version where you had to collect crystal by shooting asteroids make sinibombs, and blow up the sinistar. Unfortunately, I don't think you ever get to shoot up a 3d version of the original. Instead you get other version of some nasty behemoth. They also included some powerup items too which did add nicely to the selections of guns and such. It had a very visceral quality, but that's what made it good. Perfect if you just want to drop all the (most of the time) nice simness, and get down to business.

They also included a full emulation of the original:)

when is Fall?

[chump daddy]

This sometimes amuses me, sometimes annoys me. Americans always seem to announce their games in seasons.

Have they noticed that the seasons of the world are at different times? And Fall is not called Fall everywhere. It's called Autumn down here.

When will they start realising that it's more useful to a global audience to put a month or a quarter?

How does everyone else feel about this? Being based in the States, you don't notice these little things, but it's frustrating for the rest of us.

Re:when is Fall?

[Ziviyr]

I'm in the states and I have no clue what seasons are going by. It really annoys me.

Re: Anime...

[Bakaneko]

Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro" (at least in English) one of the bazillion Lupin III movies, which was one of the first projects of Hayao Miyazaki, of Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castlie in the Wind, Nadia: Secret of Blue Water, Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa, etc etc fame.

Not a game

[PaddyM]

"as if they are controlling an interactive, 3D cartoon"
surprise surprise. That seems to be all they can make these days. Interactive cartoon movies.

Gee, wow! That DVD works in xBox?

[Hyped01]

Space Ace and Dragons Lair (unless Ubi's plans changed, and I already own Space Ace which was released this way) are DVD's. That's all - hence any system capable of playing a DVD is compatible. A disk format change for GameCube (or the requirement for the DVD add-on) and viola! Multi platform video game!

I've already played Space Ace on DVD Player, PC, xBox and more - same disk, but on all cases, there are unnacceptable (to me) pauses between selected sequences.

So... unless their plans changed, DL is just another DVD just like the recent Space Ace release (at least that's what the "Coming Soon" announcement that came with Space Ace claimed).

Rob

No shadow still

[CyberTech71]

As far as games development has come, we're still looking at an interactive movie, are we not?
Dirk still doesnt even have a shadow.
I must admit that I threw more money into the Chopper Attack game (very similiar laser disk based interactive movie) than I ever did into Dragons Lair, but it still looks the same as it did years ago. Is that development?

Um.... No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gamecube also supports HDTV and most PCs support resolutions higher than HDTV.

trust me, it's gonna suck

[marksilverman]

Whenever they take a classic game and they made it 3d it sucks. Remember Prince of Persia? One of my all time favorite games. Prince of Persia 3d sucked. There were various 3d versions of Pac-Man, all of which sucked. Lode Runner 3d? Sucked. Pitfall 3d? Sucked!

The only exception is Castle Wolfenstein 3d.

Re: Anime...

[SPYvSPY]

Right. That's what I meant. What was that game called?

Flaming Pits?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the xbox website:

Incredible new gameplay and features.
Using a magic amulet as his guide, Dirk must accomplish challenges such as jumping over flaming pits and climbing ropes

Oh goodie! Flaming pits and climbing ropes! Truly, the producer's imagination knows no bounds.

I think I'm gonna go rent some anime DVDs now...

Re: Anime...

[Bigboote66]

> > Actually, it was made from "The Castle of Cagliostro"
> Right. That's what I meant. What was that game called?

The game was Cliff Hanger (The guy in the game was referred to as "Cliff"). The great thing about it compared to Dragon's Lair was that you had a "hand action" button and a "foot action" button, and that whenever you died, some text appeared at the bottom that said "You should have gone left" or "You should have pressed hand". It was much longer than DL and you didn't have to spend so much money on it to finish.

I only ever saw it at one arcade, which incidentally had another laserdisk game I never saw anywhere else Star Rider- a racing game with sprite racecars superimposed over laserdisk background. It was ingenious - the laserdisk simply played at a rate according to the speed of your racer, and the tracks you raced on were surreal and impressive. They had names like Crystalopolis & Cubitania.

-BbT

I couldn't get past the farging bridge

[mmuskratt]

At 50 cents a pop in the 80's, and with an irritating action delay, the game was never really entertaining to me anyway. People who got through to the end of the game had to have spent at least $50-$60US...not the kind of cash I had to spend on a video game in High School. I guess spending the same amount on a console game isn't any fun for me, either. The beauty of these games was in the simplicity...making it 3D doesn't seem to help much.

Re:GameCube, PS2 also support HDTV modes also... D

[Anonymous Coward]

PS2 supports 720p and 1080i in HDTV, although there hasn't been a released game yet to support these, only 480p like Tekken 4.
I use PS2 linux in 1080i, using a standard PS2 component cable, to view my digital photos on an HDTV in gimp or XV and it looks awesome, although it can only do 16 bit color in this mode.

YES!!!

[SPYvSPY]

THANK YOU! Cliff Hanger was it. And I played Star Rider, too, and it was my favorite game for a while there.

It's been out for a long time - Atari Jaguar

[Bill Kendrick]

Dragon's Lair (and also Space Ace) were both available for Atari Jaguar as CDROMs. Not exactly the highest quality, but it's the same game as was in the arcade. :^)

Original Dragon's Lair Available for your DVD plr

[evil_lonnie]

I don't know if this is widely known, but the original Dragon's Lair is available to play on your DVD player (no Toshiba's tho) from a company called Digital Leisure. A buddy of mine gave it to me, so I have no idea where to buy em. try www.digitalleisure.com (no, I don't work for 'em)

Last Post!

[alpg]

Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Dijkstra

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...