Arcade laserdisc game icon Dragon's Lair has had a surprisingly semi-active past few years. In 2016, after a failed initial attempt, Don Bluth & Gary Goldman successfully crowdfunded a pitch production for the long-awaited movie adaptation/prequel, which earlier this year actually got greenlit by Netflix as a live-action production (potentially) starring Ryan Reynolds. The game was even featured in a Season 2 episode of Netflix's smash hit series Stranger Things in 2017. Meanwhile, on the gaming front, Dragon's Lair (as well as it's successors, Space Ace & Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp) have seen ports to current hardware, whether it's through Steam, GOG, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch... or even an officially licensed release on the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer from the 80s! Essentially, if you own any sort of modern device that can play games, you can bet Dragon's Lair has been officially released on it, including smartphones. Most recently, however, is New Wave Toys' Dragon's Lair X Replicade unit, which is a 1/6 reproduction of the original arcade machine, right down to playing the 1983 OG version via the DAPHNE emulator & even including (non-working) 1/6 replicas of the laserdisc player & LD that housed the game itself.
However, while the Don Bluth-animated trio of arcade games have managed to remain in the spotlight, there is one game that has, sadly, gone forgotten: The "3D" remake, & the bizarre reworking that said remake would later receive.
Once video gaming started moving over to polygonal visuals during the second half of the 90s, anything well known was either remade or given sequels using polygons, becoming a common sight. Games like Pong, Spy Hunter, Breakout, Frogger, Pac-Man, Tetris, Q*Bert, Street Fighter, & even Worms all went "3D", so it was really only a matter of time before the same would happen with Dragon's Lair. While most would argue that it was an old relic by the start of the new millennium, it actually never really left the market during the 90s, as it was essentially released on anything that had a CD-ROM drive, minus (ironically enough) the PlayStation & Sega Saturn; it even saw a miracle port to the Game Boy Color in 2000. Still, with the 20th Anniversary on the horizon, co-creator Rick Dyer (who was the mind behind the "game" aspect of Dragon's Lair) brought back Don Bluth, Gary Goldman, & John Pomeroy (the minds behind the "animation" aspect), founded a development studio called Dragonstone Software, & all together they created Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair. Originally released in November 2002 on PC & Xbox, the game wound then see release on GameCube the following month, but only in North America at first by way of Ubisoft (PC & Xbox) & Encore Software (GC). Europe wouldn't get the game until September 2003 for PC & March 2004 on consoles, this time also including the PlayStation 2; THQ handled EU publishing for GC & PS2 as "Special Editions". Developed using WildTangent's Genesis 3D engine (which also powered the controversial FPS Ethnic Cleansing...oops), this would be Dragonstone Software's only game, so was it at least a good effort at bringing Dirk the Daring to the third dimension? Also, what was up with Dragon's Lair III?
Princess Daphne is kidnapped by the Singe the Dragon by order of the mad wizard Mordroc. Dirk the Daring, knight of the land, tries his hardest to rescue Daphne, even hitting Singe on the nose once, but winds up getting knocked away, only to see Singe & Mordroc taking Daphne through a portal. Dirk makes a dash to use the portal himself, but it closes just before he reaches it, though a green amulet has managed to pop through to Dirk. Daphne's using the amulet in order to communicate with Dirk, who must now make his way through the castle that the amulet is directing Dirk to enter, so as to rescue Daphne & put a stop to Mordroc.
Whereas the original arcade game was effectively a giant sequence of quick-time events, Dragon's Lair 3D completely reimagines the entire experience into a 3D action/platformer, with some hack-&-slash elements. Some might say that this is "the first time the player actually has direct controls over Dirk", but that'd be incorrect, since the NES, Game Boy, & SNES did have their own games based on the arcade original that allowed full control over Dirk. However, the NES game was painfully slow & not fun to play at all, & the Game Boy game was literally just a reskin of the ZX Spectrum game Roller Coaster, while the SNES game (& the Genesis port that never saw release) was easily the best of the three, though still only decent, tops. In that regard, Dragon's Lair 3D is the best of these "direct control of Dirk" games, if only by default, but thankfully the game itself is honestly pretty good, not just because of the gameplay but also because of just how well it adapts the original arcade game. However, let's move on to the former first.
In terms of controls, of which I'll be using the Xbox version for reference (so adjust for other hardware as needed), you move with the left analog stick, move the camera around with the right analog stick, run while holding the left trigger, sneak around while holding the right trigger (holding R while running makes Dirk go into a roll, which he can do for a surprisingly decent amount of time), A jumps, X is a general action button (attack, using keys, etc.), Y locks on to a nearby opponent (& flicking the right stick switches targets), holding B blocks, and the black & white buttons see Dirk equipping one of two weapons, his trusty sword & a (later acquired) crossbow, respectively. In regards to how it feels to control Dirk, everything is pretty good and Dirk can turn around rather quickly; in some ways, he moves more like a modern platformer than other games of the time, which is cool. Camera control is also rarely a hassle, as it almost never gets caught on walls & the like, instead simply moving closer to Dirk when an obstacle gets in the way. Combat is pretty much just "Mash X & Dirk will just constantly attack", though doing so while standing still isn't a good idea if fighting more than one enemy; blocking, while sometimes useful, often isn't needed. That being said, Dirk can equip, unequip, & even switch between weapons while moving (something not common at the time), and he can attack while standing, moving, jumping, and even when knocked down(!), so you always have a fighting chance. When using the crossbow the game becomes more like a stiff third-person shooter where the right stick controls the on-screen crosshair, though firing is still done with X, which isn't ideal; you can still lock-on, however, which makes things easier.
As for the overall gaming experience, while it definitely doesn't have the polish of other 2002 action/platformers, like Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Shinobi, or (you know) Super Mario Sunshine, Dragon's Lair 3D isn't terrible by any means, though it has its flaws. Probably the biggest is the frame rate, which definitely isn't consistent. It's certainly never unplayable, but instead of simply going for a cap of 30 fps so as to maintain consistency, the game looks to be uncapped, so while the game does tend to hit close to (if not exactly) 60 fps more often than not, there will be sections where the frame rate does noticeably drop, resulting in the occasional stutter in visuals; if you angle the camera is very specific places, you can also just absolutely tank the frame rate. Still, these drops don't really hamper the gameplay much, and my experience might actually be due to the resolution I played it at. You see, the Xbox version of Dragon's Lair 3D is the only one for consoles to actually run at HD resolutions, specifically going all the way up to 1080i, which was the Xbox's limit; this isn't the first HD video game, but it might be the first to be commercially released. In fact, out of the mere seven Xbox games (out of a total 1,001) that support 1080i resolution, only two of them actually display it natively: Atari Anthology & Dragon's Lair 3D; the other five simply upscale from lower resolutions, two of which from 480p! Considering that the only other 1080i native game is a collection of old arcade & Atari 2600 games, that technically makes Dragon's Lair 3D the single original title for the Xbox to go "full HD", and in that case I think it's actually pretty damn amazing that the game runs as (relatively) smooth as it does. Remember, this is a whole three years (almost to the very day!) before the Xbox 360 introduced HD console gaming as a regular thing in November 2005, so to see a small studio like Dragonstone Software do this in 2002 is actually kind of mind blowing; the handful of cutscenes look to be stretched, but the gameplay itself is proper widescreen. I didn't check to see if limiting the resolution to 720p or even 480p helps with performance, however, though that kind of stuff isn't exactly my forte; this blog isn't Digital Foundry, people. Regardless, jumping feels good, movement is solid & reliable, combat is (admittedly) simple but fun, and the different abilities you get over the course of the game helps keep things fresh throughout While it isn't ideal, the admittedly variable frame rate doesn't really impede your ability to play the game, generally, so you won't be losing inputs when things slow down.
Speaking of which, let's go over how game progression works. Overall, the game has a fairly linear path, as you go through section by section, getting past platforming areas, solving some basic puzzles, & defeating foes; basic action/platformer fare. As you clear certain sections, especially those with boss fights, you come across "Dragon Essences", which allow you to perform new skills at the expense of some MP. The Dragon Ring allows Dirk to perform a spinning slash that spreads out by holding your attack for a period of time. The Dragon Wing allows Dirk to float by holding jump, though it starts the moment you hold, so abandon any ingrained "hold to jump farther" instincts you might have. The Dragon Spirit will automatically recover health at great expense of mana, so its use should be judicious. The Dragon Eye allows Dirk to see doors & paths that would normally be hidden behind walls. The Dragon Scale gives Dirk's armor green scale plating, allowing him to survive extremely hot areas & walk through fire, though lava still kills instantly & enemy fire attacks still do damage. Finally, the Dragon Fire engulfs Dirk's sword with fire, powering it up & even letting Dirk light up dark areas. Meanwhile, the crossbow has three types of arrows it can fire (Steel, Fire, & Magic), each with their own ammo counts, & the D-pad allows the player to switch between Essences & arrow types. Finally, in terms of pick-ups, defeating enemies & breaking open barrels can give either small health or magic recovery or even arrows, while there are a limited amount of health & magic potions that can be held for later use; there are also HP & MP gauge upgrades to find. Also, there are various bits of treasure to grab, usually stuck in hard-to-reach places, though all they do is unlock some bonuses for repeat playthroughs; it's at least an incentive for those who want to "100%" the game. By the end, Dirk has a nice set of options & abilities to choose from, which is really cool to see.
However, while the gameplay is overall solid (if a bit standard fare), what really makes Dragon's Lair 3D so cool is how well is reimagines the original arcade game. While the prior platformer interpretations on the NES & SNES did feature elements of the original (again, the original Game Boy game was reskin of a completely different game), they were really just superficially implemented, at best. This game, however, literally reproduces most of the scenes from the 1983 game, with only about four or five missing, sometimes even enforcing fixed camera angles so as to make the reproduction feel all the more accurate. Dying even reproduces the iconic "Dirk turns into a skeleton" sequence, though a nice touch is that the player can simply press start upon death to instantly reload the last checkpoint. To no surprise, though, the game isn't simply a retread of the scenes seen in the arcade game, since that would make for a similarly short experience as a perfect play of the original (i.e. ~12 minutes); to be fair, this game is only ~3-5 hours long, but that's still much longer than before. Therefore, while the reproductions are definitely the highlight, the majority of the game is actually made up of completely original areas, with the back cover citing "over 250 rooms". While I can't quite say if that's exactly true, as the game only lists around 40 separate areas overall, it is definitely a much larger & imposing castle than before, filled with some cool & thematically fitting original sections. For example, there's "Platform Madness", in which Dirk has to get across an infinite void by traversing various moving platforms, while the "Impossible Room" is a tall mini-hub which requires Dirk to go through different hallways in order to reach higher & lower areas, while also inverting the room itself at points, turning it into a bit of a mini-maze.
Again, though, the reproductions really take the cake, with probably the cleverest being the boss fights. For example, the black Robot Knight that electrified the floor is now turned until a three-stage fight, with the electrified floor now becoming a memorization-based jumping section in order to reach the Knight. Meanwhile, the Giant Bat that made a single appearance is now a fight that requires Dirk to eventually climb up to a pair of bells & ring them, so as to knock the Bat down to deliver damage. The iconic Lizard King section is easily the coolest, however, as the game literally reproduces the arcade sequence almost exactly, complete with Dirk having to then fight the King after his weapons are taken by a pot of gold, though now the pot continually steals from Dirk after retrieving his weapons, resulting in the player having to quickly hit the King, all while avoiding the King's attacks. Meanwhile, Dirk is constantly fighting smaller enemies on the regular during the game, from the purple Giddy Goons to bats early on to even the cyclopic gargoyles that were only seen in the attract mode for the prototype, as their sequence was never finished until the 2002 Anniversary Edition release; it's an astounding attention to detail. Not simply content with just recreating the original game exactly, though, Dragon's Lair 3D throws in a cool twist in that the final battle with Singe in the eponymous Dragon's Lair is NOT the end of the game. Instead, it's only roughly the half way point (or maybe a little past it), as after Singe's defeat a brand new original backstory is explained to help give Mordroc's kidnapping of Daphne more of an actual reason behind it, and now Dirk must traverse deeper into the castle in order to eventually reach Mordroc himself. To be fair, Mordroc wasn't actually first introduced until Dragon's Lair II, and fans of the original game would have noticed a bunch of scenes hadn't happened yet by the time you fight Singe, so this twist is really more a way to help make everything more logical & consistent with the lore.
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| The game even references the 1984 animated series by way of Bertram the Horse! |
Visually, Dragon's Lair 3D definitely isn't one of the best for its console generation, but it does hold up rather well, especially the use of cel shading. After Sega's Jet Set Radio introduced the concept to video gaming at large, the idea of shading polygons to look animated became a big thing during the first half of the 00s, & this was just one of many games to do so in 2002, alongside Auto Modellista, Bomberman Generations, the original Sly Cooper, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, & even the PS2 adaptation of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. However, while most cel shaded games of the time went heavy on the titular shading, Dragon's Lair 3D actually goes the opposite, giving Dirk & all of the other characters more of a subdued shading; the environments also get it, but it's even more subdued. The end result, though, is that everyone looks a bit more accurate to Don Bluth's animation than, say, JoJo's game looked compared to Hirohiko Araki's artwork. The main difference is really in the black outlines, which are usually very heavy & thick in most cel shaded games, but here are very thin, which amusingly actually results in it feeling MORE like animation than most other games of this style; everyone only really has one face, though, so don't expect proper facial animations. That being said, two of the treasure-acquired (or code-inputted) bonuses you can load up before a new game are actually two other variants of this visual style. The first is "pencil test", which draws everyone in a stark black-&-white style, as if they were drawn by pencil, and the end result is actually really cool; you can actually see this style briefly during normal play when you hit a foe & they blink momentarily. The other is "smooth shader", which adds a heavy dose of extra shading to everyone, but since the environments don't get either of these bonus variants, this latter version doesn't blend in well; sure, "pencil test" clashes, but that's part of the point.
Since this is based on an FMV game featuring animation directed by Don Bluth, it's only natural that the man himself also directed some new animation to go with this remake. To no surprise, the new animation for the intro sequence is just absolutely beautiful, looking close to, if not exactly like, Bluth's later movies, like Anastasia. After the Singe fight, when the backstory is explained, you sadly don't get any proper animation, but you do at least get a bunch of still frames, which at least do look really nice & maintain that Bluth animation style. As for the ending sequence, it's honestly a big let down. Aside from it being really short, & including a bizarre gag involving Mordroc for no real reason, it looks nowhere near as nice as how the game starts; the character animation is definitely there, but the background just doesn't work. Meanwhile, the music was done by Christopher L. Stone, the same man who did the music for the original game, and whose resumé consists of shows & movies like TaleSpin, the 1990 Swamp Thing TV series, Phantasm IV: Oblivion, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show... and the live-action Fist of the North Star movie; well, that was unexpected. Regardless, Stone's compositions here are overall solid, if nothing that'll remain in your head after you stop playing for the time being. Still, the music does a great job at establishing the appropriate mood, and it is great to see that the man behind the (admittedly few) songs heard in the original game was also brought back to create a more expansive score here; you do hear the same success, death, & revival jingles as the arcade game, too, which is cool. Stone also co-composed the game's ending theme, "He's My Guy" by Julie Eisenhower, which is a pop/rock song about Daphne's love for Dirk set to footage from Dragon's Lair I & II as well as 3D footage that makes everyone dance, & it sounds absolutely like what would have been played over the end credit scroll for a Dragon's Lair movie, had one been made alongside this game; Eisenhower even raps between the choruses, and it's as cheesy as you'd think.
As for the voice work, Dragon's Lair 3D also brings back Dan Molina (Fish out of Water in Chicken Little), the film & sound editor who "voiced" Dirk in the original two games, and likewise Molina delivers the same wordless yelps, humming, & sounds that Dirk has always been known for. However, this game does something I seriously never expected: Dirk actually speaks! Now, to be fair, it's a short couple of lines at the end obviously done in Dirk's head, so nothing is actually spoken out loud, but my mind was just blown when I heard Dirk speak an actual sentence. Meanwhile, Daphne gets two credits here, as both animator Vera Pacheco (née Lanpher) reprises the role she had in the original two games, alongside newcomer Darcy Harvier. If had to guess, I'd say Pacheco voices Daphne for the animated cutscenes only, since she was available for those, while Harvier is the voice you hear throughout the majority of the game. Overall, Harvier does about as good of a job as possible, since Daphne was never really created to be a character who speaks a lot, what with her high-pitched & purposefully "airy" voice, to put it lightly; also, you can actually explain the use of two actors in-universe, if you really want to. Finally, Gary Goldman himself voices Mordroc, replacing the late Hal Smith (who passed in 1994), while Christopher Stone himself voices "Hollow", the monster who explains the entire backstory to Dirk after defeating Singe. Surprisingly enough, both do decent jobs, especially since neither are actors, & actually speak quite a bit for their short-lived roles; if you want Don Bluth voicing someone, play Space Ace, since he voiced the villain, Borf. Unfortunately, Michael Rye, who did the narration for the attract modes for the entire "Dragon's Lair Trilogy", is nowhere to be found here, likely due to him apparently retiring after 1996; Rye would later pass away in 2012.
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| Lackluster video quality, uncentered footage, & even white artifacts at the top. Yeah, this is just shoddy. |
So that more or less covers Dragon's Lair 3D, so what the hell is this thing called Dragon's Lair III? To explain this, we have to introduce the company Digital Leisure, which was founded in 1997; it's also part of Dragon's Lair LLC, which handles all licensing to this day. In short, it's the successor to ReadySoft (right down to the same founder, David Foster), which had published various ports of Dragon's Lair & its two successors up through 1996; the company had also made its own similar game, Brain Dead 13. Digital Leisure got its start releasing updated PC ports of the "Dragon's Lair Trilogy", before moving over to DVD player-compatible versions, because that was the hot new format at the time. In November 2004, two years after 3D's initial release, Digital Leisure put out Dragon's Lair III for PC, followed by a DVD player release in 2005 (which is what I'm using for this review), and I hope you can figure out what that likely means. Yes, DLIII is literally nothing more than Digital Leisure taking gameplay footage of DL3D, and turning it into the kind of game it was originally a complete reimagining of; that is pure galaxy brain logic, I tell ya. Taking aside the fact that ReadySoft had already released a game called "Dragon's Lair III" back in 1993, it's really just a terrible "game" all around. Due to it using actual video game footage, you sometimes have to press a direction that's not intuitive at all, like "right" for a door that's shown behind Dirk (due to the camera angle) or Dirk jumping forward when pressing a side direction, and since DL3D is an action game, you press "sword" way, waaaaaaay more often than you ever did in any of the original FMV games; in those, evasion was just as important as attacking, and that's not the case here.
The end result is simply a giant bore to play, either because you're simply pressing the same action repeatedly to get through a scene, only for the last press to be totally different & screw you up, or a scene is literally just a single action that requires you to do literally nothing but watch someone else's playthrough of the game both before & after the action itself; the original arcade games were quick & snappy, requiring lots of actions, & this is the opposite. Not just that, but it's actually much longer than any of the original FMV games, requiring the need for passwords between the different levels, which range from six to nearly twenty minutes of footage (including failure states) each! While I play through a game to completion for my reviews, & I did that for DL3D, I tapped out to DLIII after completing only the first level, because it's just that bad. In fact, the only reason I got a screen from the end up above was because I cheated by using VLC to reach the end of Level 1, only for the disc to then give me the password for the final level, for no apparent reason; the entire thing is just absolutely shoddy. Really, the only redeeming aspects are that it includes higher-quality versions of both the music video for "He's My Guy", which acted as the credit scroll footage for DL3D, & the "20 Years of Dragon's Lair" documentary, which is included with DL3D, but split across three parts & highly compressed; here it's a single video & in proper DVD quality.
What's NOT "DVD quality", however, is the footage of DL3D used in DLIII, which is soft, fuzzy, & not even properly centered! Honestly, just forget that this thing exists, because it's an utter embarrassment that never should have been made.
When Dragon's Lair 3D first came out in late 2002, it received somewhat mixed reviews, with some enjoying how it reimagined an FMV game requiring little direct input into an action game with full direct input, while others felt that it simply couldn't match up with others of its ilk; again, 2002 was filled with great examples of the genre. Personally, though, I not only side with the former, but I think it's actually held up better than expected. Sure, it's not on the level of something like Shinobi or a Mario game, and the frame rate performance isn't always ideal, but it more than succeeds at what it set out to do, and it's a good testament to the talent behind it. While Dragonstone Software didn't survive past this game, some of the people at the studio would go on to bigger & more popular titles. Executive producer/project director/lead animator Thomas Konkol would later do animation work for games like Wasteland 2 & 3 and The Bard's Tale 4. Creative director/lead designer/sound editor Wilfred Panganiban would later be an artist for the Command & Conquer series. Technical director/lead programmer Todd Heckel would be an engineer for titles like Alan Wake, Quantum Break, Sunset Overdrive, & Crackdown 3. Finally, lead game programmer Eugene Foss would later join Rockstar Games & become technical director for Grand Theft Auto IV & V and both Read Dead Redemption games. I specifically chose these four, as they were all featured in the documentary & are the first people credited after Bluth, Goldman, Dyer, & Pomeroy. Really, all I'm saying is that there was talent behind Dragon's Lair 3D, and it shows in how fun it remains to play, even after nearly 20 years.
I'd honestly love to see Microsoft work with Dragon's Lair LLC (which literally had its name in Comic Sans for this game!) in getting this game made backwards compatible on the Xbox One & Series consoles. It wouldn't be the first time these companies worked together either, as Mircrosoft assisted Digital Leisure back in 2012 for the Kinect-compatible Xbox Live Arcade version of Dragon's Lair for the 360, which itself is already BC for the One & Series. Aside from being able to then play it at a locked 60 fps, the fact that this (possibly) is the first commercially-released HD video game for consoles feels like reason alone to make it available once again; a full remaster probably can't be done, but making it BC should at least be possible. As for Digital Leisure's Dragon's Lair III, I'm honestly happy that it now commands absurdly high prices on the second-hand market (the DVD version, at least), because it's nothing more than a ridiculously lazy cash grab & should never be played by anyone. However, the DVD version of that CAN be played on an Xbox One & Series console, due to Blu-Ray player compatibility, which is just depressing.
*screenshots shown here for Dragon's Lair 3D are of the PC version from MobyGames.com*
Dragon's Lair 3D © 2002 Dragon's Lair, LLC & Don Bluth
Dragon's Lair III Character Designs © 1983 Don Bluth
Dragon's Lair III Programming © 2004 Digital Leisure, Inc.
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