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Dragon's Lair on X-box

Posted by michael on from the follow-the-flashing-tiles dept.

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."

14 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. dragons layer 3d? by bigmammoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:dragons layer 3d? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    2. Re:dragons layer 3d? by WowTIP · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --

      --

      "I'm surfin the dead zone
      In the twilight, unknown"
  2. Re:10 years ago.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

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

  3. Hmmm... by G-funk · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    --
    Send lawyers, guns, and money!
  4. Laserdiscs were a losing branch of videogames by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

  5. I just want to know if... by Suicide · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

  6. Not to be a stickler for details.... by fahrvergnugen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
    1. Re:Not to be a stickler for details.... by Brad+Wilson · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

  7. Games and storylines (ot?) by saihung · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  8. Read the frickin post by Jagen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:How about gameplay? by mirko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ?
    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" ;)

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    Trolling using another account since 2005.
  10. Retro gaming is "in" by Kirby-meister · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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?

    1. Re:Retro gaming is "in" by archen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.