Dragon's Lair HD

Back in November of last year, I discovered that my favorite arcade game of all time- Dragon's Lair, had been released as a PC DVD-ROM in full 1080 HD resolution. I've always been meaning to own a copy of a true arcade version since purchasing an inferior CD-ROM based version back in the 90's.

So after buying a boxed version on eBay for ½ the retail price of $49.95, I was able to satisfy my 80's nostalgia in all of its digitally remastered glory. I can't think of another instance where a port of a classic arcade game had better graphics and sound than the original. This is due of course to the fact that since the source material was based on film, it could be rescanned, cleaned up and outputted to a much higher res than was possible in 1983.

Playing it again after all these years was just like being back in Chuck E. Cheese's or the Starcade in Disneyland -minus all the quarters I had to shell out. (This was the first arcade game I remember that had the gumption to charge a whopping 50 cents per play.) I was also surprised to find out that I still remembered most of the moves. Sure, you don't really have full control of Dirk any more now as you did back then, but the high quality animation, comedic sound effects and sheer innovation more than make up for it. I basically played it once since November, reaching the end but not being able to slay the dragon, but I'll get back to it eventually. When I showed it to Mark a few months ago, he decided to take the abbreviated route and watch the entire animation via the movie mode.