Dragon’s Lair Trilogy (Switch) Review

I am an 80s baby. I grew up with Duran Duran, Wham!, the real Ghostbusters, Big Trouble In Little China, and tons of other stuff that made the decade great. One of my favorite things? Video arcades. I would spend a lot of my childhood either in arcades, making my parents hemorrhage quarters on whatever I could find available to play, or I’d be trying to get *into* the arcades by way of chores, begging, or making deals with less than savory characters with connections to the criminal underworld.

One game I could not tear myself away from growing up is the topic of today’s review, Dragons Lair, or more specifically the Dragons Lair Trilogy. Back when it was released in 1983, Dragons Lair was a laserdisc game that let you control the action, as it was advertised. Now, upon actually playing it you more or less controlled the scene and not much else, but hitting the correct direction meant success or death and I was fascinated with it.

The Trilogy is a collection of 3 games: Dragons Lair 1, Dragons Lair 2: Time Warp, and Space Ace. Each game is the full arcade version with various settings to make the game easier or harder depending on how much of a masochist you are. In addition to that there’s some great interviews with Don Bluth and the rest of the guys responsible for creating the game. If you like the series enough, they’re an interesting watch and gives you insight to just how much went into these. I personally loved the interviews, but then I like gaming documentaries anyway so this was right up my alley.

If you’re not familiar with the series, in Dragons Lair you play as Dirk the Daring, a clumsy but at times surprisingly skilled knight who ventures into the wizard Mordrocks castle to rescue the gorgeous Princess Daphne, who is trapped in a glass ball and guarded by Singe the dragon, quite possibly the first and most metal of the dragon names.

In Dragons Lair 2, in my opinion, the most cracked out of the 3. In it you play as Dirk again, but this time Daphne’s kidnapped by Mordrock himself, and its an adventure through all sorts of different worlds and time periods to get her back before Mordrock forces her to marry him. This one felt much faster paced and trippier than the last one, as it immediately starts with getting chased by Daphne’s very angry mother, who apparently wants to kill Dirk for letting her get kidnapped again, then somehow ends up in ancient egypt, Alice’s looking glass, and even a sequence where Dirk is battling a housecat while Beethoven is playing his 5th symphony on piano. I actually felt like I was watching a music video during that level.

Space Ace is a space-themed game where you play as Dexter and alter ego Ace, who is chasing after Kimmy who’s been kidnapped by the evil Borf – and that’s Borf, not Barf – to not only rescue her but also keep Borf from using his Infanto Ray on the planet earth, which turns all its targets into babies. It’s bizarre, and I’ve never understood what some writers fascination was with age regression as so many cartoons have used this as a plot device. Anyway, by the start of the game Dexters already been hit by the infanto ray and occasionally energizes to become Ace, who basically grows 50 pounds of muscle instantly to fight enemies before reverting back to the Jerry-Lewis sounding Dexter again.

Each game is the full arcade version with various settings to make the game easier or harder depending on how much of a masochist you are.

There’s not a ton of meat to the games themselves, as they’re each basically one long QuickTime event. You go from scene to scene, hitting the correct button as it pops up, and every right move advances the scene, and every wrong move results in the characters often hilarious death. In Dragons Lair You’ll see Dirk get strangled, lit on fire, drown, electrocuted, and more as he squeals, shrieks, and screams like a chimp. It’s often more fun to be the person watching these games get played than to be the one actually playing it. Tired of dying? There’s an option to just watch the thing in full with or without all the deaths included. This is highly advised with Space Ace because that game moves at such a breakneck pace that I found it extremely difficult to beat. Ironically the controls are more forgiving in that than Dragons Lair.

In general The controls were tight enough. In comparison to the ps3 versions of these games, I felt this collection controlled noticeably better. The version I’m reviewing is on the Switch.

Again, there’s not a lot to this as the games can each be beaten in under 10 minutes if played through with no mistakes. If you’re even thinking of buying this, it’s probably because you have more interest in the games’ animation itself and less for actually playing it. They’re important games that helped inspire tons of other modern games since their release, not to mention it’s another feather in the hat of Don Bluth, who’s responsible for classics like The Secret of Nimh, An American Tale, and the criminally underrated Titan AE. 

And that’s all it really comes down to. You’ll have to decide if the nostalgia this series offers is worth the price of admission. There’s definitely fun to be had with these, but the gameplay is very different from what’s out now and younger gamers will like the animation but think the gameplay is antiquated. But then it’s not really *for* them, is it? I mean Old farts like me will get a smile from it and anybody watching you play for the first time will laugh at poor Dirk. So for me personally, I’m always going to want a copy of these games on hand to go back to.