Review: Dragon's Lair (HD-DVD) game

First released on Laserdisc back in 1983, Dragon’s Lair stood head and shoulders above the competition in terms of graphics. And despite gameplay being limited to the occasional nudge of the joystick, it proved incredibly popular.

Now it’s back on HD-DVD (you’ll need an HD-DVD player ­ we used a Toshiba HD-E1), and all original animation has been remastered to 1080p.

The storyline is based around Dirk the Daring and his quest to rescue Fair Princess Daphne from Singe the Evil Dragon. Your job is to direct Dirk away from danger or tell him to start fighting.

A small indicator appears in the bottom corner of the screen when it’s time to make a decision, but the big problem is that you’re often simply guessing what action to take.

Sequences are short and if you wait to see what’s about to attack you, for example, by the time you instruct Dirk to move it will most likely be too late. Not that it really matters ­ you’re given unlimited lives.

Worse still, until we progressed a fair way through the game, instead of returning to the start of the stage after dying, the game simply skipped to a completely random stage. Everything then descended into a mess of erratic and disjointed scenes ­ most of which end with the same annoying skeleton scene informing you that you have, once again, bashed the wrong button.

Extras on the disc include the three developers nattering on nostalgically and some split-screen visuals showing how the HD graphics compare to the various other platforms, but considering this is on an HD-DVD we expected more elaborate extras.

In short, those who delighted in playing the original arcade game should stick with their memories and not let them be soured by this release.

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