I was ridiculously excited to play this game– almost as much as the lines of ten year olds that waited to pay 50 cents to play the same game back in 1983. Dragon’s Lair is a gaming icon, a turning point in gaming history, and since I hadn’t played it in any form before, its release on the Xbox 360 Kinect was the perfect excuse for me to give it a try. The difference between myself and those kids in 1983? I paid twenty times as much. Not that I regret it exactly– there is no way you can not revere a game with as much history and influence as Dragon’s Lair. I mean, it’s one of only three games on display in the Smithsonian Institution in Washingon, D.C. (The other two being Pong and Pac-Man.) Those are some serious credentials, and I’m glad to have a more intimate knowledge of the game. The playable character is a humorous knight called Dirk the Daring, who is on a quest to save the barely-dressed Princess Daphne. The princess is being held prisoner by an evil dragon who originally had no name, but later came to be known as Singe. The adventure is short-lived– about thirty to forty minutes. While that’s extremely short for today’s standards, I’m sure it was the perfect length in 1983, especially because then, you had to play over and over in order to memorize the exact moments at which Dirk had to jump, dodge or fight his way out of a given situation. On the Kinect, however, you are provided with a nice little cue signal that lights up at the correct moment. After that, it’s all about your own reaction time. My own father was 23 years old when Dragon’s Lair first come out, and even though he was slightly past his arcade days, the game’s release still stands out in his mind as a monumental event. Created by the former Disney animator, Don Bluth, Dragon’s Lair is so iconic because it was the first of its kind. By using laserdisc technology, the developers were able to overcome the artistic limitations that were imposed on other games of the era. The laserdisc had a much larger storage capacity, which allowed the Dragon’s Lair artists to incorporate more detail and create the first arcade game with completely animated characters. However, these achievements came at the sacrifice of gameplay complexity– and in modern day, where we are used to having the best of both worlds in our games (the spoiled brats we are), these limitations are painfully obvious. On Xbox Live Arcade, the game plays almost exactly the same way that it did back at its original release date three decades ago. When the directional arrows appear on the screen, you have to react quickly in order to avoid obstacles and monsters. With Kinect technology, however, your body becomes the controller. So instead of pushing the joystick from side to side, you have to literally jump, grab and…
