Dragon's Lair (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
259A playthrough of Data East's 1993 action-platformer for the Super Nintendo, Dragon's Lair.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Dragon's Lair began life as an absolutely stunning FMV action game in the early 1980s, and was a marriage of cutting-edge technology with world-class talent. It offered film-quality animation under the direction of ex-Disney animator Don Bluth on Laserdisc, and it wowed people the world over. The interaction was limited, but it left quite an impression.
Ten years after the fact, multiple "renditions" of Dragon's Lair had appeared on several different platforms, all adapted to the limitations of each machine. While some (PC, Amiga, Atari ST, et al.) adapted the animation to low-color sprite-based graphics, others, like the games found on the SNES and NES, recreated the Dragon's Lair as a series of 2D platforming stages.
If you'd like to see the original DL game, you can find my video of the Sega CD version here: https://youtu.be/tQLQ9AZd5Og
The SNES and NES games were both developed by a studio by the name of Motivetime. Before you run screaming from the SNES version, though, let me assure you that while it is by no means a great game, the SNES version of Dragon's Lair is in all ways a huge improvement over the NES game.
It suffers from some of the same issues - cheap enemy placement, ridiculously hard platforming, and a general lack of variety do still afflict this cart. But, though it is an extremely difficult, the SNES one is quite a bit more manageable than the NES one. The controls are far less sluggish, for starters. They're stil awkward, but Dirk won't plummet to his death quite as often from botched jumps and crumbling floors, and his attacks are better suited to hit enemies from several different angles. There are still some big difficulty spikes that happily furnish infuriating moments for the player - the underwater barrel sections being chief among them - but the bosses are far easier and overall, this is a far more reasonable challenge.
The graphics and sound aren't great, but they're nice. The animation is a bit awkward and the stages are a bit dull with their repetitive themes,simple tile patterns, and ugly gradient fills, but Dirk and the bad guys are all easily recognizable, and the sprites are quite a bit larger than you'll find in most other SNES platformers. The music is pretty good, but the style feels a bit out of place. Rather than the epic swells of strings and brass that you might expect, it tends to be somewhat low-key and a bit on the depressing side.
Overall, Dragon's Lair is a game that is fun if you have the patience for it, but it doesn't last very long and it isn't terribly memorable. It's a big step up from the NES game, but it never becomes more than serviceably mediocre. Still, it might be an interesting novelty for die hard fans of the interactive movie.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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