Producer: Software Projects
Retail Price: £9.95
Author: Paul Hodgson and Andy Walker

Remember the first interactive video machine from the arcades? Well, here's the game, adapted for the Spectrum.

Singe, the dragon with bad breath, has been a naughty boy again. He wants a piece of the action in good King Aethelred's patch - in fact he wants the whole pie. Naturally the king, and all his subjects over whom he rules with peace and enlightenment, are not too keen on big old Bad Breath moving in. but Dragon's aren't brought up to understand the word 'no': their mummies always spoil them. And so they develop antisocial habits, like making off with the king's daughter should lone annoy them.

Singe has picked a bad place for a fight, for the King's daughter happens to be betrothed to the local macho dimbo, Dirk the Daring. Dirk, the King's champion, is always dashing around doing valiant things. Now whilst you or I might just nip down the 'local,' on hearing the news that your other half is about to become a late night dragon snack, old Dirk straps on his sword and trudges off to Singe's lair to do battle with the horrors that await him.

There are nine screens to the game, and each has to be loaded from cassette in turn - an Opus drive version is also available for a little extra money. If you run out of lives, then the tape has to be rewound and things start back on level one. Each level takes about 30 seconds to load from tape.

Section one features Dirk descending into the dank depths on a falling disk. Singe's Air Genies try to blow Dirk off so he plunges to his doom. Dirk must quickly react to which direction the Genie is blowing from and run into the wind.

Next comes the hallway. Timing is everything here, dainty footwork and nifty swordplay are the only way to avoid the bats and the clutching hands.

Next come the flaming ropes. Leaping from platform to rope to rope, timing the jumps to catch the ropes. But speed is a must or the ropes bum away before Dirk has done his stuff. Then comes the weapons room. Again it's a question of well timed moves. After this comes the attack of the Giddy Goons. An extra key has to come into play, as Dirk needs to jump from step to step and despatch the Goons at the same time.

Next comes the tentacle room where some of Singe's early mistakes in meanie making still hang out. Once again, timing is the key. The right move has to be made at precisely the right time. Then it's falling disk time again. Once more it's a question of reacting to the odd meanie breaking wind.

Now things get really tricky. A battle to the death with Singe's evil Lieutenant, the phantom knight on a checkerboard suspended in space. Each time the knight appears, he turns more of the checkerboard into a deadly trap…

After all that, Dirk finally makes it to the Dragon's lair, and then has to dodge from rock to rock, hiding from Singe's flaming breath, while helping himself to the odd bit of treasure he finds. By edging along a thin precipice, Dirk picks up a magic sword and slays the dragon, and trees Princess Daphne.

Or that's the theory...

COMMENTS

Control keys: Z left; X right; K up; H down: L draw sword/jump; ENTER to jump when holding sword
Joystick: Kempston, Interface 2
Keyboard play: rather tricky
Use of colour sparing, but tasteful
Graphics: pretty, with neat animation
Sound: not much
Skill levels: one
Screens: nine

Well, this is quite a faithful adaptation of the arcade game, and thus suffers from most of its weaknesses - sadly it retains few of the original's strengths. The graphics, whilst good, are hardly video disk quality, but the single screen format of the game means there's very little actual gameplay, most of it is just very accurate positioning and incredibly accurate timing. It is frustrating without being addictive. That, coupled with having to load every screen from tape makes this a game I'll not be coming back to regularly.

If you were an avid Dragon's Lair player in the arcades then stay well away from this as it bears little resemblance to the original. Having said that, for your first few goes the game looks quite promising. In fact I finished the first level (and what a hard slog it was too!) then I discovered the Multiload which took all the fun out of playing the game. The graphics are on the whole very good - lovely large characters that move around smoothly and some very nice scenery. Sound-wise this offers less than many of MASTERTRONIC budget titles with only a mere sprinkling of spot effects. I can't really recommend this as I didn't really have any fun playing it.

Everyone I know, who has played the arcade version of Dragon's Lair, has gone 'rave, rave, rave' about it at some lime. The Spectrum version, while remaining true to the arcade on lots of counts, still lacks an element of playability, which makes it unaddictive. I suppose the difficulty level is one of the game's prime factors, as a game like this with such a high price tag has to justify that by the length of time spent playing, which, I must confess, in my case, wasn't very long.

Encore (rerelease)
£2.99

This was a stunning arcade machine with high quality graphics and sound, but it sadly lacked in playability. Each scene was played by just moving the joystick in one direction at the right moment. If the timing wasn't correct, Dirk, the hero, came to a very sticky end. I spent all my pocket money just trying to get off the first screen, and didn't succeed!

The Spectrum conversion retains many of the arcade machine's bad things, and not many of the few good ones. Graphics, of course not up to the quality of the original, aren't too bad: large smoothly animated sprites and good splashes of colour everywhere plus detailed scenery. Being a 48K only game is the biggest problem. This means sound consists of nothing but the odd beep, and the multi-load takes longer than the actual playing.

Some of Dirk's tasks seem almost impossible. It took me ages to successfully complete the first stage where he stands on a disk and is blown about by the wind. Moving in the opposite direction of the wind keeps him on the disk, otherwise he falls off and plummets to his doom!

Dragon's Lair is a game for people with plenty of patience. You need to persevere with to get any playability out of it. The graphics may be well detailed and colourful - it's surviving long enough to see them that causes the problems!

Software Projects
£7.95

A laserdisk game on the Speccy? You're pulling my dirk. No, it's definitely no joke, this really is Dragon's Lair on the Spectrum. Q. How on earth do you compact 10 million megabytes of graphics and sound, a Walt Disney cartoon and orchestra, onto the small (yet v. humble) Spectrum? A. You don't. You take the scenarios and multiload simplified versions of each. Ah! But does it work, this megagame in a micro machine? Nope, I'm afraid not, but then you can't have everything.

Dirk's adventures in the Dragon's gaff are too hard, basically. I suppose you could say it's an accurate representation of the original in that respect. Oh yes, it's exactly like the coin-op version in another respect too. Your control over the hapless Dirk seems limited to merely guiding his progress, rather than actually having any real control over him. I find this aspect particularly annoying! If you make a game so hard that it doesn't allow anyone but the writers past the first level, there's little point in drawing any other levels, is there? They could be the most brilliant screens in the world, with the most scintillating gameplays, but unless some poor berk can have a fair shot at getting to them, you might as well forget it. The graphics on the bits you can see look really good, but have the feel of straining to appear sophisticated when they're really not doing that much.

If you can be fagged to persist, I'm sure you'll prove me wrong, by discovering the hidden depths to the gameplay and the glory of the final graphic effect. But frankly I think it was a bad idea to attempt a conversion of this magnitude, unless you were sure to produce a workable game. Shame.

BARGAIN BASEMENT

Fixing a leaky tap in the basement, RICH PELLEY stumbled across a few spooky cheapies clogging up the U-bend. So here they are (damp and slightly mouldy)...

Encore
£2.99
Reviewer: Rich Pelley

To think that this one filled up six (I think) disks on the Amiga! Pah! Here it is on the Speccy crammed onto one (long) tape. It's a re-release to tell the truth, and quite possibly one worth having, That depends on whether you subscribe to the 'we couldn't manage one decent game, so here are a few slightly crap ones for the same price' way of thinking.

In case you haven't previously encountered Dragon's Lair, it's a conversion of the massive cartoon-style coin-op that used things like laser disks to good effect. Everyone thought it was really fab, despite the fact that much of the playing time was spent watching the graphics, waiting for a prompt to do something. What we're faced with is a series of 'scenes', in which Dirk the Daring has to make his way through a castle to rescue a princess. Each scene is a kind of mini-game. In the first, you're standing on a disk, which is plummeting down a well (or something). Suffice to say that you've got to hang on for dear life or you're a gonna. Then in the second, you've got to, um, oh crikey... I haven't got that far.

Anyway, I cant say it's my fave game in the whole world, because it's not. Actually I hate it. But I know lots of people who think it's really peachy, so don't take any notice of me. I think I can safely say, though, that the first level is extremely difficult, and from what I've heard the rest are too. It's all undeniably good value, but technically a bit dubious. By all means rush out and buy it (if only to see what it's like), but don't expect to be glued to it for the rest of your life or anything.

Label: Software Projects
Price: £7.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Dragon's Lair was always going to be an impossible conversion to do. The original coin-op was the first ever laser-disc arcade game with fabulous real cartoon graphics and very peculiar gameplay.

Software Projects has managed to get the gameplay right... Nuff said.

Loading the program is a pain because it's a multi-load thing. The structure is as follows: on one side of the tape is the main program. On the other side are the various modules which make up the screens. There are nine parts of the game, and you must return to the beginning every time you lose all your lives. It drove me scatty.

The game itself, like its coin-op original, has limited interaction for a lot of the time. You only have to make keyboard or joystick moves at crucial moments. The rest of the time the action carries on regardless.

Now, while all this is very well in the arcades, it doesn't work quite as well on the Spectrum. In the arcade you could stand back and be amazed at the cartoon graphics which glided across the screen with amazing precision etc, etc. On the Spectrum, you can't. The graphics simply aren't up to it.

The first section is called 'The Falling Disk'. It involves Dirk and a falling disc. As the dragon lives deep underground, you must find some way to get down to him. A suitably precarious route is offered by a large wooden disc which hovers in the middle of a very deep shaft.

A couple of metres down the shaft, though, and everything turns sour for Dirk. An Air Genie, which wafts up the shaft and blows you all over the disc. As the disc descends, you fight against being blown off by an increasing number of Genies. This part is so unimaginably difficult, I cannot believe anyone but the most resolute player solving it.

Complete this part and the way is left clear for Stage 2.

Lucky Dirk now works his way along a very dangerous hallway, in order to get closer to the dragon's lair. Nothing is as easy as it looks, though, and he's unpleasantly assaulted by numerous pieces of dead people. You wait for the correct moment, and then let fly with a sweeping blow, striking the skulls. This part of the game is very inadequate indeed, forcing you to jerk the joystick around - often with no effect.

You will die with unnerving regularity, which leads you through to a sub-routine in which you are split into little pieces, and then reformed. Were it possible to escape from this routine, things would not be as bad. Unfortunately, you can't, and after the third man has been lost, you begin to wish that something more useful had been done with the memory.

The rest of the game is numerous screens of the same ilk, with exciting names such as Burning Ropes, The Weapons Room, Ramps and Giddy Goons, The Tentacle Room and The Deadly Checkerboard.

It all sounds pretty stunning but I'd already been stunned once too often.

Label: Encore
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

Dragon Lair was a biggie amongst biggies when it first appeared at full price - but why? True, it was based on a phenomenally successful arcade coin-op, featuring laser-disc cartoon-style Don Bluth graphics. But you don't actually get those on the Spectrum, do you? No, you just get the usual selection of colours and the usual semi-jerky sprites. You don't get the marvellous multi-voice synthy music either, just the Spectrum's bleepy intro theme, and a few zips and zaps in the game itself. So what do you get? A series of nine very straightforward but irritatingly difficult arcade games interrupted by tedious loading sequences, that's what you get.

The plot - rescue maiden from clutches of evil dragon Singe and pinch his treasure, doesn't bear discussing, so let's plunge straight into the action, big joke, because the first section sees you leaping onto a plummeting platform. If you survive the leap you have to fight against the foul breath of demons who try to blow you off the platform - slip off the edge and you plunge to your doom, and get to see the sequence where you disintegrate to a skeleton then reform for another go, which rapidly gets tedious, as you can imagine.

In later stages you have to negotiate corridors with sword-wielding hands, thread your way through mazes full of deadly skeletons, swing on burning ropes, slice slippery tentacles and finally fight the dragon itself. You have different controls in different sections, but basically each routine is a matter of learning to make the correct joystick movements in the right order. It's more like being a laboratory rat than playing a game, if you ask me.

I always thought that the arcade game was a complete rip-off, after all, once you've learned the correct movements, you could play the game all the way through in two minutes, but it would have cost you hundreds of pounds to get to that stage, which would be better off given to charity.

At least with the budget version of Dragon's Lair you won't waste more than £2 99, but if you ask me it's £2.99.

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Software Projects
PRICE: £8.95

Dragon's Lair was the first laser disc arcade coin-op. It caused quite a stir when it first appeared thanks to the cartoon style animation of the screens, and the original gameplay.

It wasn't easy to play and people soon got bored trying to get to grips with the thing even though it DID look extremely pretty.

It would take a brave programmer to try and attempt a conversion of this particular coin-op, despite the current trend towards turning arcade games into computer hits.

Software Projects were the brave people to attempt it - and their programming team included none other than Andy Walker from the now defunct Tasket software company.

The computer version features many of the "challenges" from the coin-op original. There's the falling discs, the skull hall, the burning ropes, the weapons room, the Giddy Goons, the tentacle room, the chequerboard and, of course, the dragon.

It also features the incredibly irritating "death sequence" where Dirk, the hero, collapses into a pile of bones and reforms EVERY time you lose a life. This wastes time and is boring after the billionth time.

And you'll be losing lives 19 to the dozen when you begin playing - just like the coin-op! I'd of thought it would've been better to make the game easier at the start just to get people into the swing of things. But oh, no, you have to struggle to stay on the first falling disc as a stupid genie tries to blow you off. And more often than not he succeeds.

I doubt if many people will want to play through to the end of the game where Dirk has to rescue the maiden from the fire-breathing Dragon.

Each different section, which has to be loaded from tape each time you want to play, faces the player with a different combination of joystick/keyboard controlled moves which have to be learnt, adding to the general confusion.

Dragon's Lair proves that some arcade games just aren't worth converting - or if you really want to have a crack at it, not to stick slavishly to the original concept which - as in this case - wasn't that great anyway.

The 64 version of this game has the benefit of prettier graphics and better sound. The Spectrum version is simply too difficult to get into and not very attractive.

A brave attempt which doesn't come off. Sorry Software Projects...

Software Projects
£8.95

What made the original Dragon's lair such a hit when it first appeared in the arcades was the quality of the graphics made possible by the laserdisc system in the arcade machine, and as somebody said to me while I was playing it - "It loses something in translation from laserdisc onto the Spectrum, doesn't it?"

Surprisingly enough, it's not the graphics that are the main let down here - they may not be up to laserdisc standard, but they are perfectly acceptable - it's the gameplay. I found the game so hard to play, and spent so much lime trying to get past the early stages that I just gave up in frustration after we'd had the game for about a week.

For a start, the loading and setting up instructions aren't very good. The prompt to press a key to start a game appears before the option to select joystick/keyboard controls, which is a bit daft, and it took me about fifteen minutes just to work out how to select the controls and get started. I nearly gave up before I'd even got started.

There are nine sections in the game including falling discs, burning ropes, the Tentacle Room and so on, all taken from the arcade version, but I wanted to give up after two days of trying to get pas the very first section. This was the falling disc, where you have to keep Daring Dirk on the disc as it descends the shaft into the dragon's castle. As you descend. an Air Genie keeps appearing to try and blow you off, and you have to keep Dirk balanced on the disc. But the stupid demon starts blowing before it appears on screen so you've hardly got any chance at all, unless you can guess where it's likely to appear.

The main problem is that it's hard to judge when you're doing the right thing. There are times when it looks like you're positioned in the right place to hit something or leap across a gap only to find yourself dying on the spot. In the end the game becomes more a matter of trial and error than of skill or reflexes - if you play the game enough times then by a process of elimination you'll work out what to do, where to stand and so on, but that doesn't make for a particularly exciting game I'm afraid.