Dragons Lair (1983) [Arcade]

Dragon's Lair is a laserdisc video game published by Cinematronics in 1983 as the first game in the Dragon's Lair series. In the game, the protagonist Dirk the Daring is a knight attempting to rescue Princess Daphne from the evil dragon Singe who has locked the princess in the foul wizard Mordroc's castle. It featured animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth. The game displays animated cutscenes, and the player executes an action by selecting a direction or pressing the sword button with correct timing in order to clear each quick time event (QTE). The comedy aspects of the game stemmed not only from the bizarre-looking creatures and humorous death scenes, but also the fact that the player character was somewhat clumsy in his efforts, as well as being a reluctant hero, prone to shrieking and reacting in horror to the various dangers he encounters. Instead of controlling the character's actions directly, players control his reflexes, with different full motion video (FMV) segments playing for correct or incorrect choices. While there are a limited number of scenes, other than the first and last, these are played in a random order. Some scenes are played more than once before reaching the end and additionally some scenes are flipped or mirrored such that the opposite actions (e.g. left instead of right) are required.