Here Be Dragons

When I was pretty young we went to the beach where they had a huge arcade on the boardwalk, and that’s where I fell in love.  From across the arcade — above the cheesy 8-bit beeps and pings — I heard a booming voice call to me.  A voice I can still hear today: ‘Dragon’s Lair! The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight.” There was a crowd around the console and we all just stared at our first glimpse of the future.  An amazing combination of two of the best things in a young lad’s life: cartoons and video games.  Well, three things once I got a glimpse of the Princess Daphne (“Save me!”). What a tease.  And those illustrators knew what they were doing because she was hot.  We were totally willing to pump quarter after quarter into that machine to get another glimpse of her. So I’ve tried to recreate her for #ThrowbackThursday.

It would be a while before it showed up in an arcade near me, and to be honest I watched more than I played. And, it was actually a fun game. Don’t get me wrong there was zero skill required. Unless you count memorization as a skill because that’s all it was. You didn’t really control Dirk so much as you just made choices for him, and you had to remember all those choices. And the timing.

There have been quite a few recreations and versions of the original (including a sequel called ‘Dragon’s Lair: Time Warp where his crazy mother-in-law had huge cans), but none of them were ever able to recreate the thrill of the first game.  It’s true what they say, you never forget your first love.