Dirk the Daring Comes to Blu-Ray: Dragon’s Lair!

Classic games have seen resurgence in popularity in recent years. While gaming consoles are getting more complex it seems more people want to play Galaxian on their $400+ machine. Odd as that seems some forgotten gaming gems are resurfacing to the top. Dragon’s Lair might not be all that forgotten but it certainly a gem. The heart of Dragon’s Lair lives in the arcades where the first laserdisc game wowed pinball wizards with movie quality animation and an unfolding story. Gameplay is simple yet utterly frustrating during some scenes. It comes with the territory of a game from 1983. You have 5 input buttons and that’s it, the tricky part is timing when to press them. For those of you still in the dark about Dragon’s Lair, shame on you. Quickly search Wikipedia then come back.

Now that the 21^st century is here, laserdiscs (in any form past or present), arcades, and 2D animations are just about ancient history. Still, the dragon’s fire burns brightly with the (almost) arcade perfect version of Dragon’s Lair on Blu-Ray disc. To be exact, this is a BD-J disc. The J stands for Java and that makes all the interactivity possible throughout the adventure. There is more techno babble behind it all but just know it’s a complex disc.

While the tech behind the game might be interesting, the total upgrade of Dragon’s Lair is even more impressive. At full 1080p, the colors of Dragon’s Lair sparkle like never before. Vibrant red colors in Dirk the Daring’s tunic standout against the lavishly hand drawn backdrops. There was painstaking effort put into making Dragon’s Lair look and sound as beautiful as possible. Dust was removed on each frame of animation and the sound was completely re-mastered for Dolby 5.1 surround.

Watching and playing the title makes you yearn for the past age where Disney animated feature films were something to look forward to, as the current movie scene is chalk full of generic CG movies that pour their budget into nice looking water physics. I could keep gushing about how much I loved the personality of the hand-drawn game with the colors and animation but there is one distinct problem. Believe it or not, the problem is the widescreen nature of HD sets. While movies were recorded with theaters in mind, Dragon’s Lair was captured with arcade tubes in mind. As a result, the widescreen cuts off the top and the bottom of the frames. Purists will not call this a “perfect” conversion of the game even with the boosted sound and picture quality.

For the 30 dollar asking price, it is not a bad deal for what is arguably the best port of Dragon’s Lair. There are some minor concessions made with the widescreen cutting off the top and bottom but they are forgivable as the image and sound qualities over the moon. It should be mentioned that there are a slew of extra features including audio commentary by the very creators of Dragon’s Lair as well as previews for Dragon’s Lair II and Space Ace (coming soon). Gamers of age will want this for nostalgias sake but new gamers might find a history lesson tucked inside the high-tech disc. Not only is Dragon’s Lair a legend, it has something that many video games have forgotten about — a soul.