Dragon’s Lair

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    Games like are why I’m not super upset about modern monetization practices. Extracting large amounts of money from children is nothing new

  • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    I grew up in that time frame. Normally people would swarm around the machine and give advice.

    Arcades were very social when it came to certain games.

    • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yep I remember specifically at the cade I went to growing up, their Dragon’s Lair machine had a 2nd screen on top of the cap so that the whole crowd could see the action. It was quite a site.

    • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hot games were awesome, they were like new events. Everyone gathering around giving advice and tall tales, trying to secure a spot to play, showing off and being excited when that one kid definitely knew what they were doing, it was a lot of fun.

      For us I remember Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, Blitz, and Tekken being the major ones. And then the lesser ones like Virtual Fighter, whatever racing game was new, and just because it was completely ridiculous the Aerosmith shooter where you shot discs at bad guys lol

    • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      When the small grocery store in my area got Super Mario Brothers there were always 4 or 5 people queue’d up and playing it. That store was a basic grocery story but they did cater to youth with expendable change. Lots of the bulk candies; a few different kinds for 5c, better ones for 10c, good mini candies for 25c… etc

      Before or after school, that place always had kids spending some change on something. Once the NES became a household item, that store changed dramatically

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I could never get the game going. Something about putting your quarters in at the right moment. Sucked every weekend I went to try play that game and never could.

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 year ago

        If I remember it was either 50cents or a dollar. It wasn’t a quarter when it came out.

        To put that in perspective McDonald’s was line three something a value meal and minimum wage was about the same. It wasn’t a cheap game

        • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          Even after putting in a dollar it still wouldn’t play. The arcade where I played it had instructions that you had to add your money at an exact time.

  • DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    There was a remaster that was put out a few years ago: steam, gog. It was a nice piece of nostalgia finding it. From playing it on arcade difficulty and comparing it against the easier settings, it was pretty obvious this game was meant to suck up quarters. You just had to have everything memorized.

  • xyzzy@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    The same way you beat any game in the 1980s and early '90s: lots of pattern memorization based on trial and error. In the arcade, that means lots of quarters.

    Once a game like Dragon’s Lair was memorized, you could play through the entire thing on only a couple quarters, to the astonishment of arcade bystanders.

    Kids and teenagers had more time back then because smart phones and Instagram and YouTube didn’t exist. People underestimate what a huge time sink those can be.

    No one had Internet access. You could play a game, play an instrument, read a book, go to the mall and the arcade and maybe catch a movie, go outside, or watch whatever happened to be on the 3-4 network TV channels (or possibly cable if your family had the money). And TV back then was mostly terrible.

    So if you had $10 in your pocket, that was an entire afternoon of entertainment at the arcade and movie theater.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you had it down you could beat Dragon’s Lair (and Space Ace, and the other Laserdisc games) with a single credit. IIRC there is no randomization within each scene; the only element of randomness was which out of a set of three scenes could play stemming from completing the previous scene. Once you’ve seen them all they always play out the same way. Further, each scene is only played once per complete game.

    • Mantis_Toboggan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      As a child in the 90s, I remember Saturday and Sunday afternoons being incredibly boring if we didn’t go out. TV was shit (still is), and on rainy afternoons you were basically locked at home.

      By the late 90s, at age 10, with no internet access in my county, I was mapping ways to beat the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. I remember scheming for hours, using Farore’s Wind to take me to the beginning of the dungeon and jumping to the platform on the 2nd floor. This way, I was not using the only key I had on the middle pillar, which is what almost everyone got stuck on.

      But yeah, I remember the tail-end of this at that time and starting a whole new game to try this out. And it worked. Still proud of 10 year old me. It’s interesting but I hadn’t felt boredom in a really long time.

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I grew up in that era.

      I probably dedicated 1000 hours playing the same 4-5 NES games.

      I remember playing the original Zelda with self-impose challenges like get hit and start over. I had so much time to kill.

  • Kabutor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    you try to not play any arcade if you haven’t seen anyone else play first, that cost you money :) My experience with Dragons Lair is that it was a nice game to watch, and a bad game to play, it was expensive and as someone else said in the thread it requires you to memorize the movements, it was never random

      • WaxedWookie@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        As an interactive method of storytelling, I think they’re fine (but not my thing). I think the problems really emerge when you try to combine them with the revenue-driving elements of an arcade machine - the challenges need to be designed to kill you so you’ll keep paying rather than giving you choice or staking you in to the story further.

  • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    The only arcade that had that game charge $2 or something like that for each credit. I tried it once and then never again.

  • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    I remember watching a guy play an arcade game back in about 1990, I think it was spy hunter or something but the car could do a jump and side scrolled to the right. Not sure. Anyways, over the course of about 4 hours this guy plunked about $100 worth of quarters into the machine until he beat it.

    10-year-old me was, uh, impressed to say the least. I tried playing it but I only had two quarters and lasted less than 3 minutes.

    • UKFilmNerd@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Definitely not Spy Hunter as that game loops and has no ending.

      I remember using a cheat on the home computer version for my ZX Spectrum for infinite lives. I got bored after a while because of the fact it never got anywhere, just scenery changes every so often.

  • obrenden@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    My older brother’s friend worked at an arcade. He opened up the panel and loaded this game up with credits for me. I still never got close to beating it