Your quest awaits you, there may be hope for the youth yet
I take my reviewing seriously and try to go through it from all angles. As an old-fart, someone who actually was alive and kicking during the arcade boom of the early 80’s, it was truly unfair of me to sit back and love on both of these titles. I needed someone who was born in the 80’s, preferably late, to take a swipe. So whether he knew it or not, our DS Editor Greg Schardein became my test dummy for the youth of today’s reaction to an old classic. Here’s what I found out…
Greg popped over prior to a Digital Chumps cookout last Saturday. He sat down with Dragon’s Lair and played it for nearly two hours. He isn’t a snob by any means, but he knows a good game when he sees it. He started out confused, not really getting the control schemes. After helping him understand that not all games needed 10 buttons to achieve greatness, he started to see where Dragon’s Lair was headed. He started out having fun with the game and fun soon turned into obsession. Before I knew it, he was blowing off cell phone calls, determined to finish this game. He had caught what many of us caught in the 80’s when this classic hit the arcades, he wanted to beat this game. He had no idea why, never questioned himself or his drive, but simply must save that woman from the dragon. This proved to me there was hope.
Adding to this, during the cookout he was dying to show everyone how Dragon’s Lair worked and how fast Space Ace was compared to the first title. Before I knew it, my Playstation 3 was crowded with young folk dying to see both stories played out. As an old-fart, someone who spent too many hours and too much money in the arcade scene, I was happy to see it was still alive and kicking. I didn’t know whether to thank them for appreciating the game or thank Digital Leisure for keeping these titles alive long enough to make gamers of today truly grasp what many considered a revolutionary step in gaming. Regardless, it was refreshing.
What else do you get?
Again, thanks to the Blu-ray format, you also get some really cool features that bring more insight and information to the classic titles. For instance, I had no idea the original concept for Dragon’s Lair involved card flipping. I could understand, for the time, why this would work, but I’m sure glad it failed. I also had no idea that both Don Bluth’s crew and the folks working with him on the programming end had trouble talking to each other about what they needed to make the game work. For people who clearly were ahead of the game on technological side of things, it is amazing the game even appeared during the time it did. Those and the other features attached make this probably the closest you’ll get to actually owning the arcade cabinets. Digital Leisure deserves kudos for this and for sticking to a tough license that probably didn’t do so hot on previous attempts, but is now well worth the price of admission.
Don’t be a snob, don’t blow these titles off, Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair are truly the real-deal on Blu-ray. Finally capture the arcade feeling at home.
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