Dragon’s Lair
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My older brother’s friend worked at an arcade. He opened up the panel and loaded this game up with credits for me. I still never got close to beating it
Cries in Sinistar. “Run, coward!!!”
Billy Mitchell or Todd Rodgers might claim to.
There was a remaster that was put out a few years ago: steam, gog. It was a nice piece of nostalgia finding it. From playing it on arcade difficulty and comparing it against the easier settings, it was pretty obvious this game was meant to suck up quarters. You just had to have everything memorized.
The only arcade that had that game charge $2 or something like that for each credit. I tried it once and then never again.
It was 50 cents per play at launch.
It’s simple: they didn’t.
It’s seriously so hard. I think I’ve never made it past the second scene
I wasn’t great at Dragon’s Lair, but I got super far on Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp.
The mechanics of that game were more like a very fast choose your own adventure than the traditional move joystick left, spaceship go left mechanics.
Because the graphics were coming off a laser disk, they didn’t generate on the spot. There were predetermined outcomes to every move.
When people figured this out, information started to collect in the magazines, and the game became beatable.
I remember watching a guy play an arcade game back in about 1990, I think it was spy hunter or something but the car could do a jump and side scrolled to the right. Not sure. Anyways, over the course of about 4 hours this guy plunked about $100 worth of quarters into the machine until he beat it.
10-year-old me was, uh, impressed to say the least. I tried playing it but I only had two quarters and lasted less than 3 minutes.
Definitely not Spy Hunter as that game loops and has no ending.
I remember using a cheat on the home computer version for my ZX Spectrum for infinite lives. I got bored after a while because of the fact it never got anywhere, just scenery changes every so often.
Those were the days
It wasn’t that hard if you kept feeding it quarters. It took a lot of trial and error, but having infinite lives means it was eventually beatable.
I grew up in that time frame. Normally people would swarm around the machine and give advice.
Arcades were very social when it came to certain games.
I could never get the game going. Something about putting your quarters in at the right moment. Sucked every weekend I went to try play that game and never could.
If I remember it was either 50cents or a dollar. It wasn’t a quarter when it came out.
To put that in perspective McDonald’s was line three something a value meal and minimum wage was about the same. It wasn’t a cheap game
Even after putting in a dollar it still wouldn’t play. The arcade where I played it had instructions that you had to add your money at an exact time.
Yep I remember specifically at the cade I went to growing up, their Dragon’s Lair machine had a 2nd screen on top of the cap so that the whole crowd could see the action. It was quite a site.
When the small grocery store in my area got Super Mario Brothers there were always 4 or 5 people queue’d up and playing it. That store was a basic grocery story but they did cater to youth with expendable change. Lots of the bulk candies; a few different kinds for 5c, better ones for 10c, good mini candies for 25c… etc
Before or after school, that place always had kids spending some change on something. Once the NES became a household item, that store changed dramatically
The corner convenience store had the magazines right across from the arcade machines. You’d okay a few rounds of street fighter or mortal Kombat, then sneak in a pork at the gaming mags before the clerk would complain.
Sneak in a what now
A four pound ham
Have you tried my three ham omelette? It’s to die for!
Hot games were awesome, they were like new events. Everyone gathering around giving advice and tall tales, trying to secure a spot to play, showing off and being excited when that one kid definitely knew what they were doing, it was a lot of fun.
For us I remember Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Blitz, and Tekken being the major ones. And then the lesser ones like Virtual Fighter, whatever racing game was new, and just because it was completely ridiculous the Aerosmith shooter where you shot discs at bad guys lol
I remember Dan from game grumps being really good at that game.
I did it with a pen and paper over several months
I assume lots of trial and error and following guides from magazines and such. Games like Dragon’s Lair aren’t really meant to be that winnable, they’re just designed to get you to buy as many coins as possible to keep trying.
