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Trying to play through the games in Steam's "Dragon's Lair Trilogy" bundle: Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, and Space Ace! On PC, with the default easy settings--but with lives changed from 3 to 5 (there's infinite continues anyway!), and for DL1, set to sequential home play mode rather than random scene-skip arcade mode.
These have technical problems. They don't have support for my DualSense pad--and even Steam Input ends up failing eventually! Never had that problem before. The UI looks cheap--you can see rough discolored pixel edges on some UI buttons--and tends to be a bit flaky: input clues especially in DL1 stay onscreen too long sometimes, and 1 time the starting menu buttons in DL2 popped up again over the next screen, making it hard to start the game!
Dying means restarting from the beginning of the current scene--not SO bad in DL1 or Space Ace, where the scenes are pretty short--but they're waaaaaaay longer in DL2, so you may have to redo like nearly 50 inputs or something and hope you don't screw up the same one again. ; D
Dragon's Lair eventually froze, and ate my autosave, so...I gave up. : P (It had also black-screened on me once during pre-recording sound testing.)
Having to re-play scenes in DL, either flipped l/r, or just repeated--four times for the elevator clip, for instance--isn't super fun. DL2 doesn't make you repeat its endlessly long scenes, but it DOES flip them sometimes, which is interesting, actually.
DL2 has "treasure" collecting where you have to make additional inputs to grab flashing items in certain scenes. I know where the bow is early on, at least. But it doesn't show those inputs in the input indicator thingy they added in the UI, which is what I'm concentrating on the whole time while there's flashing stuff and craziness going on all around, so if there's some other input I have to do, I'm just not gonna see it.
So I gave up on DL2. = P
DL2 got fancy with more professional voice acting, a much bigger script, way longer and more complicated scenes, fancier FX, etc. (Though Wikipedia says the DL2 budget was $2.3m--lower than DL1's $3m eight years prior.)
But Wikipedia says the market wasn't quite there for it so maybe that's why Space Ace feels a lot lower budget--very spliced together in places, much less dialogue, simpler plot, simpler choreography (maybe? I mean I'm only seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye ; D), and shorter overall running time--even shorter in its entirety than the portions of DL1&2 I managed to get through.
Oh! Wikipedia says for Space Ace: "only by choosing the toughest skill level could the player see all the sequences in the game (only around half the scenes are played on the easiest setting)." I was on the default, "Cadet," which is the easiest. Well heck. [Next episode is me playing through on the highest, "Ace" difficulty!]
These games sure looked neat back in the arcade when I was a kid, but they were too hard and too expensive. I kept re-buying them on home formats over the past two decades (on DVD, PS3 and/or PS4, then finally this Steam bundle in a fire sale)--maybe now I'll finally have them out of my system? ^ _^
A masochistic side of me kind of enjoys this hit-the-inputs exercise while craziness goes on all around. Guess I really like the animation.
At Disney, Bluth had worked on Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, The Rescuers (dir), Pete's Dragon (dir), and The Small One (short; dir). |
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Space Ace on "Ace" difficulty to see all scenes.
The Options typo Arcade Cabinet as "Cabient." ^ D^ |
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Dragon's Lair
Played on keyboard since DualSense pad just didn't work well last time, even with Steam Input! Game didn't freeze this time. : )
(Re: me at 18.25, yeah they do have the dramatic dragon wake-up, it's when he keeps burning you to a crisp!) |
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| | | 11 golden treasures needed to get last two (brief) stages in Time Warp; the ones you have are shown on Pause screen.
Extrapolated from https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/arcade/583965-dragons-lair-ii-time-warp/faqs/26781 :
(l/r could be reversed!)
Singe's Castle
ARROW - UP after swording snake
BOW - RIGHT in chute after snake
KEY - time machine - RIGHT after swording after skeleton
Land Before Time
EGG - RIGHT after getting sword
Dirk in Wonderland
CARD - UP at tiny dragon after card flashes (FAQ said RIGHT, didn't work for me)
Garden of Eden
APPLE - RIGHT at snakes
APPLE 2 - LEFT after 2x sword on ground after snakes
Beethoven
HAMMER - DOWN after some swording as tiny Dirk on piano
BUTTERFLY - LEFT after dodging on flying instruments
Egypt
DAGGER - UP after crash land
HOURGLASS - LEFT after landing on mummy |
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| | | Noticed my laptop's fan was going nonstop in Time Warp menus--used RivaTuner Statistics Server to limit fps to 60 for all three .exes, no more fan cranking in Time Warp menu.
Using DS4Windows for input, after disabling Steam Input. Have to use mouse for menus, though.
When you Continue you lose collected treasures in the current stage and have to be sure to get them again as you play back through. |
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| | | | Oh, it's arrow key and spacebar key assignments in DS4Windows for the input. |
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| | | | In Time Warp, when you do the treasure-grabbing input, you don't have to do the regular play input shown at the same time. |
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| | | | Have to use Window Capture in OBS, not Game Capture. : PP |
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| | | Actually in Time Warp you DO have to do the other input prompt when getting the treasure? Or eh maybe just after the first two? Because with the KEY and later I started pretty much having to die when getting each treasure; I survived one or two accidentally, I suppose by somehow clumsily hitting the required next move input after getting the treasure.
Usually there's a triple ding sound after grabbing a treasure to confirm you got it (otherwise you have to pause to see the treasure inventory, and I tend to take a death when fishing for the small and unreliable pause button in the upper left corner, or when unpausing and being thrown right back into the scene at full speed; also, sometimes when you pause the inventory pause screen comes up, but you're still hearing the scene's sounds going, like it didn't really pause! And I think it didn't but eh who can remember; what a mess this is!). |
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Time Warp Director's Cut:
7:21 - ARROW
7:24 - BOW
7:58 - KEY
14:50 - EGG
29:35 - CARD (UP once card flashes ; P)
35:24 - APPLE
39:04 - APPLE2
41:54 - HAMMER
43:38 - BUTTERFLY
47:17 - DAGGER
49:04 - HOURGLASS
57.55 - Oh that's Dirk's backpack he's dumping out, not Daphne's purse ^ _^
Didn't really expect the game just to freeze at the CONGRATULATIONS message. ; D
The CARD was the tricky one; the FAQ said RIGHT, but that didn't work for me, nor did LEFT (scenes can be reversed, actually I think this one was); also, seemed to have to wait until the card, which unlike other treasures was NOT gold at the start, flashed.
According to the wiki https://dragonslair.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Lair_II:_Time_Warp , the "Director's Cut" version actually uses a SHORTER sequence in stage 7, in which Daphne does NOT transform into a monstrous BANSHEE when the ring is placed on her finger; it's actually a pretty crude cut here because you see the wizard put the ring on her finger, she recoils, he's laughing, then he gets a sword through the arm, the ring is on the floor, and Daphne is just gone. : P
You can toggle between Director's Cut--the default--or Original Mode at the start--so I guess I'll have to do ANOTHER play-through some time, in Original Mode, to see the BANSHEE alternative scene in stage 7!
The wiki says it's a "sentient old time machine" claiming to be the evil wizard Mordroc's brother--but I think it's Mordroc himself who makes the brother reference when he kind of cusses out the machine as Dirk flies in on it to make a grab for Daphne. Oh well there could be another mention by the machine; I wasn't really able to listen to the dialogue that closely while playing!
OH so Time Warp came out in 1990---way after Space Ace, which came out in '84, and was even shown off in '83, just four months after Dragon's Lair had come out. I always thought of Space Ace as having come last...I guess just because it was more futuristic in tone, sheesh. ^ _^
DEVELOPMENT of Time Warp started in '83, right after Dragon's Lair was released--hah well so I wasn't entirely wrong about the production order. : P The Wiki quotes Bluth as saying there were gonna be Blackbeard (this idea was picked up and animated https://youtu.be/LgfKyev_kYs?t=134 by a separate studio for "Dragon's Lair III: The Curse of Mordread," a 3.5 minute 1993 game for 16 bit computers that's about half recycled Time Warp scenes), Henry the Eighth, and Black Bart (Old West) time travel sequences in Time Warp--but the arcade market crashed and production on the game was halted in '84; it wouldn't resume until after the properties of the original publisher, Cinematronics, were purchased by Tradewest in '87.
In the arcade version, no continues were allowed once you were past stage 5, it was just straight to GAME OVER if you ran out of lives!
The wiki says "In the arcade release, even if the the item is collected, the game reverts to an earlier frame, causing the item to appear again and forcing the player to complete the alternate command prompt to proceed. Some modern ports of the game by Digital Leisure (including the Apple versions) have programmed the seamless transition animations back into the gameplay, while other releases have followed the arcade's clumsier gameplay mechanics of repeating the earlier frames with or without the option to re-collect the Treasures unnecessarily." THIS PC/Steam version didn't seem to repeat anything--and THAT was really clumsy 'cause the treasure inputs aren't incorporated into the added move prompts so it's really confusing as to what to input when, exactly. : P
OH all the kids are Dirk & Daphne's children (goodness!): the boys look and are dressed like little Dirks, and the girls are lil' Daphnes! |
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