Player 2 Stage 6: Laser Daze

In 1982, the arcade videogame industry makes three times as much money as the movie biz, with double the number of videogame arcades than there were in 1980. While there isn't an obvious dire disaster like with their home console brethren, arcade gaming faces a slump in 1983. Even though hits like Star Wars, TRON and Zaxxon keep collecting quarters, business is down some 40%, and it is estimated that up to 1/2 of the arcades formed during the boom will close this year.

Daring Duo

The apparent savior of the arcade market grows up as a born gearhead. While just a kid in California, Rick Dyer invents a cuckoo clock that not only talks the time, it spouts a plethora of famous quotes. Later he rigs his car with a computer which asks his dates by name their preferences of radio stations. When he becomes the first non-degreed engineer at Hughes Electronics, a prototype he makes of an electronic horse racing game catches the eye of toy giant Mattel. The company hires him as soon as he graduates from California Polytechnic University in Pomona. While with the company, Dyer designs some of the popular hand-held games coming out of Mattel in the 1970's, and he also works on the company's home console unit Intellivision. On the side he also develops the AES system, which would use LCD screens in the back of airplane seats to entertain flyers. He then moves to Coleco, developing their arcade line of hand held versions of titles such as Pac-Man, Defender and Donkey Kong. He is also involved in the project that eventually becomes the Colecovision. Forming his own company, Advanced Microcomputer Systems, he experiments with interactive movie concepts including a system using computer controlled filmstrips, and then moves to a cassette based set-up. He ultimately decides that emerging laserdisc technology is the best medium to work with. The game he intends the machine to play is Shadoan, a sword and sourcery epic inspired by the J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books and the original computer text game Adventure.

After seeing Walt Disney's ground breaking animated film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", a 6 year-old Don Bluth has found his calling. He is seldom seen during his free time with his family in El Paso, Texas, without a sketch pad and pencil in his hands. The Bluth clan moves to Santa Monica, California, and when Don graduates from high school in 1955 he goes straight to Burbank and the Disney Studio with a portfolio under his arm. He starts at the company working on "Sleeping Beauty" as an "in-betweener", someone who draws the frames between the key drawings made by the animator. He leaves to pursue a formal education at Brigham Young University as an English major, but continues working summers at Disney. Upon graduation he goes to work for cut-rate animation house Filmation Studios as a layout artist, rapidly moving to head of the department and staying there for three years. In 1971 he returns to Disney, moving with unprecedented speed up the ranks from animator to director in three years. His work there includes "Robin Hood" (1973), "The Rescuers" (1977) and "Pete's Dragon" (1977). As a reaction to what he determines as Disney's steady abandonment of their classic animation style, he and fellow animators John Pomeroy and Gary Goldman start work in Bluth's garage in early 1975 on a short film, intended to revel in the classical style. Called "Banjo, the Woodpile Cat", they work on it nights and weekends for four and a half years, and their crew steadily grows as other animators at Disney show interest in working in the classical style. In 1979 Bluth uses the short to secure financing from a film investment company called Aurora Productions for a feature film idea, and on September 13 the trio leave Disney to start their own production company. Following them the next day are 11 other animators, dubbed "The Disney Defectors" by the press. The departure of Bluth and his team sets back the production of Disney's "The Fox and the Hound" by six months. The 27 minute long "Banjo" is first shown in two movie theatres upon its completion in 1979, and it eventually airs as a TV special in 1980 on HBO, and again on ABC in 1982. For the subject of their newly financed film they enlist Robert O'Brien's seminal children's novel "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH", which had been rejected as a possible movie project by Disney. Under the new title of "The Secret of NIMH" and with a 7 million dollar budget, the film details the trials and tribulations of the brave widowed mouse Mrs. Brisby. Her character's name is changed from the book to avoid possible litigation with the company Wham-O, sellers of the Frisbee. In order to save her family from the treacherous farm tractor, she throws in with a gang of rats who have been genetically altered to gain human-like intelligence. The movie is released in 1982, and while it is a study in wondrous animation and classic storytelling, it is crushed by Steven Spielberg's E.T. juggernaut of that year. Aurora backs out of the financing deal for Bluth's next planned feature "East of the Sun, West of the Moon", and he is left looking for a new project. When Dyer approaches him about doing the animation in a new game for his laserdisc system, Bluth and company gratefully agree. While the project can't really afford the animator's high animation costs, Bluth accepts a deal where his company will gain 1/3 interest in a new company set up for the venture called Starcom, with Dyer owning another third. Vector arcade game maker Cinematronics, looking to laser technology for a reprieve under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, will manufacture and market the new game making up the final third of ownership.

In 1982, Sega previews the first videogame to feature laserdisc technology, titled Astron Belt, first surfacing at the fall A.M.O.A. show in Chicago. It features live-action film footage rendered by a laserdisc, which the player interacts with by controlling a computer generated spaceship superimposed on the images. Seeing the game demoed in San Diego, Dyer and his team know that the arcade is the best platform for their new laser system, and they also realize that Sega is at least a year and half to two years from perfecting the technology. They rush back to the lab with renewed vigor, now knowing that they have entered into a race with Sega to be the first to bring laserdisc technology to market. Meanwhile, the Bluth Group is busy completing the animation for what is now known as Dragon's Lair. Spinning off a tale from its Shadoan roots, head writer and designer Victor Penman, along with Darlene Waddington and Marty Folger, pen a story to chronicle the struggles of the valiant, but rather clumsy, knight Dirk the Daring. His quest is to infiltrate a castle magically enchanted by evil wizard Mordread and rescue the fair Princess Daphne, guarded by fire-breathing dragon Singe. One wonders if perhaps the creators were also inspired by the 1981 fantasy film "Dragonslayer", starring Peter MacNicol and Ralph Richardson. Daphne herself bears more than a passing resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, and her body shape and 'assets' are taken from the pages of Playboy. At each of the 800 decision points in the storyline, the player must use either the joystick or the sword button to direct the on-screen Dirk to make a move. If it's the correct one, the laserdisc scans to the next part of the game. If it's the wrong one, a death scene is displayed and the player loses a life. The gang at Bluth Group, with a staff of 70, logs hundred of unpaid hours of overtime to finish the animation. Dragon's Lair consists of a total of 27 minutes of animation, or 50,000 drawings. Played straight through without making a mistake, playing time is a total of six minutes. Each second of screen time takes 24 hand-painted cells, a number higher than the industry standard, and the total animation budget comes out to 1.3 million dollars. Although there are 42 different rooms in Singe's castle, the player only has to survive 18 of them to win. To keep the game from becoming too repetitive, the system cycles randomly through the pool of rooms. Keeping costs down rules out professional voice acting; talent is culled from the staff. Dirk himself is practically mute, save for his occasional grunts of effort, Homer Simpsonish yelps, or screams of anguish during the numerous and frequently gruesome death scenes. His exultations are provided by assistant editor Dan Molina, and clean-up animator Vera Lanpher is the breathy voice of Daphne. Chris Stone is responsible for the brief musical stings and bridges in the game.

After four years of development, Dragon's Lair is released to arcades July 1, 1983 as the first marketed game to feature laserdisc technology. Cinematronics manufactures and markets the game, and by doing so phase out the vector game division on which they built their fortune. Since the units cost arcade operators an unprecedented US$ 4000 dollars each, twice the cost of a conventional cabinet, it becomes the first game to cost 50 cents to play in many arcades. At the time, I remember being incensed by this increase; in a decade or so, among games costing $1.00 or more, I'll be thinking back to how good I had it at 50 cents. The game is the first arcade system with filmed, animated action, but it is barely interactive. While the compelling attract mode lures passersby with the promise of the ability to "control the actions of a daring adventurer", a player can merely decide when and where Dirk should move or use his sword. But despite the price hike and the lack of deep interaction, Dragon's Lair causes a sensation in the arcades. No one can certainly complain about its rich, beautifully drawn images, harkening back to the classical animation days of yore. At its peak, Dragon's Lair brings in on average around $1400 a week, about 80 times the amount of a conventional game at the time. In the first eight months of its release to the arcades, the game grosses 32 million dollars worth of quarters. Huge crowds gather around the machines, causing operators to install additional monitors on top of them to appease the thronging masses of players vying for a look. Starcom sells 43 million dollars worth of systems. Dragon's Lair also makes the biggest inroads into popular culture since the Pac-Man bonanza. Lunch boxes, board games, books, trading cards, and a moat-load of other merchandise hits the streets. Perhaps best cementing its status as an early 80's icon, ABC's cheese-fest human interest show "That's Incredible!" features Dragon's Lair in an on-air contest between champion players. It makes another TV appearance as a permanent prop on NBC's popular sitcom "Silver Spoons", debuting in September 1983. Featuring Ricky Schroder as a young kid who moves in with his rich father, seeing his Dragon's Lair (along with Asteroids, Tempest and Gorf) sitting in the background unused drives me crazy with jealousy. It goes on to receive the San Diego-based comic convention ComicCon's Inkpot Award for the First Interactive Laser Disc Arcade Game, as well as an Arkie Award from Electronic Games magazine for Best Arcade Audio/Visuals. It's also profiled in an all-Dragon's Lair episode of the videogame TV show Starcade. The game also sparks a debate along the lines of "Why is the Mona Lisa smiling?", as people wonder what Daphne whispers in Dirk's ear to illicit such a reaction at the end of the game.

But even as the game becomes a cultural phenomena it is apparent there are problems, both technical and conceptual. The first Dragon's Lair games contain the Pioneer PR-7820, one of the first lines of laserdisc players, released in 1979. They are notoriously unreliable and unsuited for the rough-and-tumble environment of the video arcade. Pioneer produced 25,000 of the units, with a majority of them ending up in every GM auto dealership in the U.S., used for training mechanics and demonstrating their 1980 model lineup. 5,000 are purchased by Cinematronics, and another 5,000 used for parts since the 7820 has been discontinued by the company. The units had been gathering dust in their warehouses until Dragon's Lair takes off, creating a huge demand for them. They are eventually replaced by LD-V1000 players from Pioneer, first introduced to market in 1983, which are more reliable but still skittish. The nature of Dragon's Lair is inherently frustrating to players learning the ropes (literally and figuratively), relying on split-second timing and sometimes obscure on-screen clues on what to do. Therefore, when a player protests a seemingly correct move ending in one of many death scenes, a swift kick or jostle of the game easily knocks the disc player out of alignment, rendering the game inoperable until it is repaired. Thus, many Dragon's Lair cabinets spend more time with "Out of Order" signs taped to their faces than actually working. When the game IS operating, it does suck up many a player's quarters, but critics point out that its gameplay sucks as well. While it tends to happen between game episodes and not in the middle of crucial moves, there is an annoying 2-second blackout while the scanning heads of the player find the next track, breaking the flow of the story. As well, the game is highly repetitive, extending the length of play by simply reversing the image of many rooms. Gameplay relies on rote memorization of the patterns and sheer reflexive movements of the joystick and button, keeping the player on a "rail" from which they cannot deviate. This also leads to the game's problem with "coin drop". Once someone knows all of the moves necessary to play, they can tie up the machine for all the time it takes to play through to the end. Thus is anyone else prevented from dropping in their two bits, limiting the amount of players and infuriating arcade owners.

The animation for the sequel is started almost as soon as the Dragon's Lair artwork is finished. With a budget increased to 2 million, the sequel is named Space Ace. Its story, written by Shannon Donnelly, details the exploits of the dashing, heroic title character who's girlfriend Kimberly is kidnapped by the evil Commander Borf. Wielding the diabolical Infanto-ray, Borf zaps Ace into the nerdly Dexter and is threatening to turn everyone on Earth into squealing ankle-biters. Dexter must race to save the girl and the planet before Borf infantizes the universe. As well as a new story, the game also incorporates some new design concepts. There are three different skill levels available to players: Space Cadet, Space Captain or Space Ace. Playing Cadet level, gamers miss about half of the animation in the game, while playing Ace covers the whole story. In addition, while Dexter is the main hero, at certain points in the story the energizer button on the game's control panel will flash, allowing the player to transform Dex into the muscle-bound Space Ace and complete the scene as him, turning back into Dexter at the end of the sequence. During the creation of the animation, actual models are built of Dexter's space ship StarPac and Ace's Space Cycle, which are then filmed and incorporated into the hand-drawn cells to be recoloured. This is done to aid animators with aspects of prospective and depth perception. Once again, the voices are done by staff members, including the processed voice of Don Bluth as the nasty Borf. Space Ace has 35 seperate tracks for sound effects, compared to only 14 in Dragon's Lair, and Chris Stone returns to compose a complete musical score for the game. Gameplay is much more frenetic, placing more moves closer together during a scene. However, there are also more flashing light clues to alert the player to the required move. With Dyer's company now known as RDI, they refine the technology, allowing Space Ace to access information on the laserdisc 50% faster than its predecessor. But as in Dragon's Lair, the action still offers only limited interaction for the player, as well as numerous scenes repeated in reverse mode. Hoping to defer the hefty cost of the Dragon's Lair units, arcade owners had been assured that any sequels to the game would be available as upgrade kits, allowing them to avoid the cost of purchasing a whole new game. This turns out not to be the case, however, and Space Ace must be purchased as a new unit. By the time the game is released late in 1983 by a newly renamed Magicom following the final bankruptcy of Cinematronics, the laser game fad is already losing steam, and Space Ace sells only $13 million worth.

After its demonstrations at the A.M.O.A. in 1982, Sega decides that the technology in its revolutionary Astron Belt still needs work, and the game heads back to the drawing board even as its conception inspires a craze in laser games in the arcades. It is released in Japan mid-way through 1983, and when the U.S. division of Sega is bought by Bally/Midway the new owners keep fine-tuning the system. It is finally released in U.S. arcades late in the year. It offers more playability by letting the player freely control a computer generated spaceship from a chase view, superimposed on top of a filmed playfield. It must do battle against charging spaceships while soaring through space, across an alien landscape and through the tight metal corridors of a mother ship. While the attacking ships are on film, their laser fire is computer generated. A timer can be set by the operator to allow players 60 seconds of indestructibility, past which they will start losing lives. The video is culled from a combination of films, primarily from the Japanese science fiction movie "Message from Space" from prolific Toei Studios, probably most famous for their campy Godzilla flicks. Released in 1978, the film features American actor Vic Morrow and is a thinly veiled ripoff of Star Wars, which hit theatres only a year earlier. Both "Message" and another movie whom Astron Belt borrows footage from, the low-budget Roger Corman SF quickie "Battle Beyond the Stars", details the exploits of eight intergalactic mercenaries trying to defend a planet. The plot for both movies borrow liberally from Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai", as did indeed Star Wars. A TV series based on "Message" is produced by Toei, seen in America under the name "Swords of the Space Ark". Yet even more footage is taken from the "Genesis" sequence in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". And additional images are also created specifically for the game. Absent are the nagging blackouts from other laser based games, but the refined technology comes at a cost: the game misses most of the Dragon's Lair-fueled boom in the arcades. Using even more footage from "Message", along with some created for the game, Bally/Midway releases similar film-shooter Galaxy Ranger in 1984. It offers the innovation of allowing players to choose at certain parts in the action which path to fly during the game.

Laser games rapidly split into two factions: limited decision animated stories, and video footage shooting games. Following the tradition of the later is M.A.C.H. 3 by Mylstar, a division of Gottlieb. Its play is similar to Astron Belt, but instead of cheesy movie visuals, MACH or Military Air Command Hunter features professionally shot arial photography with the player's computer generated jet aircraft superimposed. After inserting their 50 cents, gamers have the choice to face off against enemy planes and ground targets as a fighter, or to fly at high altitude over arial targets as a bomber. Using an elaborate flight stick, they can fire a machine gun at the targets as well as launch missiles as they infiltrate the enemy landscape. Targets to be destroyed are surrounded by a computer generated yellow box. The fighter sequences are generally low-flying affairs as the player must avoid the scenery while blowing up ground targets and shooting oncoming enemy planes and missiles. Taking the other choice, the bomber drops its payload on ground targets and destroys enemy fighters with its machine gun fire. Players are warned of approaching planes by a red warning signal at the top of the screen. Since the enemy country seems to have had some kind of nuclear mishap, the game later provides radioactive clouds for players to avoid. If they can survive till the end, the game takes 15 minutes to complete with a finale runway landing. All of the footage is filmed by a special aerobatic plane with cameras in its nose and belly. Available in a sit down cockpit and stand-up version, the game is a popular hit and is rated the #1 Player's Choice in RePlay magazine.

At the time M.A.C.H. 3 comes out in 1983, Gottlieb is enjoying a big hit with its "conventional" arcade game Q*bert, featuring a furry, big-nosed creature jumping through a M.C. Escher inspired playfield turning tiles different colours while being chased by a coiled snake. The lead designer of the game is Warren Davis, and he is tapped early on for a project to produce a MACH sequel that will be available as a conversion kit for the original. It is the idea of Dennis Nordman, who goes on to Williams/Bally/Midway to design pinball games (Blackwater 1000, Party Zone, Whitewater, Indy 500, Dr. Dude, Demolition Man, Elvira and Scared Stiff), to develop a laser game that would replicate the feel of a 1950's martian movie. He writes a script around the premise with Gottlieb art director Rich Tracy and with the project titled Us Vs. Them the team begins to put together the footage. The story deals, as one can surmise from the title, with aliens attacking Earth. From a central command, military leaders send out pilots to fight the invaders from multiple points around the world. Utilizing the unique process of showing multiple views during a battle, the skirmishes take place in such locations as over the skyline of Chicago (home of Gottleib), a desert, a forest, and a final showdown in the alien mothership. A production company shoots all of the outdoor photography excluding the Chicago footage, using planes and helicopters. Nordman and Davis personally supervise the Chicago shoot, with a steadicam operator hanging out of a helicopter during a brisk, -26 degree Chicago day. They also are present during a shoot in a forest in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Inspired by the Endor forest scenes in "Return of the Jedi", the footage is taken as the steadicam operator moves through the dense trees. Sets are built in Chicago for between-wave cinematics taking place inside the control room and in the fighter cockpits, with Davis acting as co-director. A music soundtrack is composed by Gottlieb's in-house sound designer Dave Zabriskie, who conducts an orchestra for the score. Davis programs the game, as well as edits the footage together. Jeff Lee creates the computer overlay graphics of the player's fighter and enemy ships, and Dave Thiel does the sound; both had worked with Davis on Q*bert. While the game does wonders with the laserdisc shooter genre, by the time Us. Vs. Them is released, the laser game market is beginning to tarnish. Orders for M.A.C.H. 3 dwindle, reducing the market for its sequel, and Gottlieb enters into a lawsuit against its distributors. Us Vs. Them is eventually released in 1984, but never has a chance to succeed. Warren Davis goes on to create another unusual game from Gottlieb called Exterminator, released in 1989. Concerning a bug exterminator trying to rid houses of pesky insects and the like, it is the first game that incorporates digitized images for all of the game graphics. The only part of the exterminator shown is his disembodied hand, as he tries to shake, slap, and pound the critters, along with shooting lethal purple bug juice from his finger. The game might feature an inscrutable control scheme, but it certainly does ooze originality and creativity. Unfortunately, it also bombs, with only 250 units produced for the arcades.

When the Space Ace animation is completed, Bluth Group starts right in on the Dragon's Lair sequel, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. The story has Dirk and Daphne married with 13 kids, and Daph is unsurprisingly kidnapped by Dirk's old nemesis Mordread. This requires our man in tights to use a time machine and chase the old crone through famous periods in time. Highlighted are even more graphic death scenes than the original. But as the market for the game collapses Cinematronics pulls the plug with a heartbreaking 80% of the animation work finished. Determined to see the game's release, Bluth continues to work on the project. After meeting Morris Sullivan, a dealer in classical animation, they form Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media, and under that development label the game is eventually released to arcades by Leland Corporation in 1992. Also released is a conversion kit to put the new game into Space Ace cabinets, but the laser days are long gone and the game sinks amid a myriad of Street Fighter clones. In 1984 Bluth gets the rights to make a Dragon's Lair movie, and a script is written to chronicle the events of how a teenaged Dirk and Daphne meet. Called "Dragon's Lair: The Legend", the subject matter is much darker than the game, and this combined with the fact that studios are skittish about the rapid demise of the laser market creates an acute lack of financing for Bluth and company. But both Dragon's Lair and Space Ace do make it out of game cabinets and into living rooms in TV cartoon versions done by cut-rate animation house Ruby Spears. "Dragon's Lair" lasts one season on ABC between 1984-85, featuring Dirk's repeated rescuing of Daphne from the clawed clutches of Cinge (note the name change). It is an unusual entry for a Saturday morning show as each program has Dirk making multiple decisions for his actions, which in some scenarios would lead to his demise. In true Wyle E. Coyote fashion, however, Dirk would soon appear unmolested. The Space Ace version airs as part of CBS's saturday morning toon show Saturday Supercade in 1984, with Ace's segment replacing Pitfall Harry who apparently falls into the blackened pit of the home videogame crash. Kimberly is voiced by Nancy Cartright, who also does voices for NBC toon shows "Snorks" and "Pound Puppies" before ending up as the voice of Bart on "The Simpsons". Saturday Supercade itself gets the axe in August of 1985. In 1984 yet another laser game concept is created by Bluth Group, called Sea Beast and Barnacle Bill. It ends up shelved along with Legend.

While Bluth and company move out of videogames, Dyer and RDI are still kicking, producing another arcade animated laser game called Thayer's Quest in 1984, offered as a conversion kit for Dragon's Lair and Space Ace cabinets. The game mechanics are truly unlike anything seen in the arcades before. Instead of a joystick and buttons, the game features a membrane keyboard for players to input their actions. It is the first realization of Dyer's long obsession with the Shadoan project that spun off Dragon's Lair. Taking place 1000 years in the past, the five kingdoms of Weigard, Illes, Iscar, the Far Reaches and Shadoan live in peace under the auspices of the benevolent Elder leaders. But throwing in with the dark forces of Shadoan is the evil wizard Sorsabal, who overruns the five kingdoms and destroys the Elders. Realizing their approaching demise, the Elders preserve their power by breaking up the Hand of Quoid (pronounced kwode), a powerful amulet that is the source of all magic in the kingdom. Each of the five amulet relics are hidden in each land. The player assumes the role of Thayer Alconred, last in the bloodline of the Elders, in his quest to reunite both the amulet and his fallen homeland. The game, however, contains only three of the five lands: Weigard, Illes and Iscar. Along the way Thayer finds various magic items, all listed on the keyboard, and Players must realize where and when to use each item. Thayer's Quest is a remarkable attempt at recreating the feel of a role playing game in arcade game form. When gamers first start the game, they are given an opportunity to enter their first and last name on the keyboard. When they are finished a voice synthesizer says their name, and if people are unhappy with the pronunciation they are allowed to try another spelling to improve how it sounds. The player is then called by name throughout the game. The various items retrieved by Thayer are stored on his person, and players can look at them through an inventory review system. Other features include such innovations in the laser game field as multiple points in the game where Thayer can heal himself, and even a save game system. When players lose one of their lives, they are resurrected at a point near when they died. When they lose their last life, the game ends and saves their game. With the game's ability to save up to ten games, the player is able to continue if he is one of the last ten people to play. If they make it to the end, the game promises that the story will continue on a second disc, which unfortunately never materializes.

Dyer and company begin work on a home computer/laserdisc system in 1981, called Halcyon. The name of the unit comes from Dyer's affinity with HAL, the all-encompassing computer from Stanley Kubrick's seminal SF film "2001: A Space Odyssey". As well as a game machine, Dyer promises that like its namesake the Halcyon will eventually have the ability run an entire household through various modules to be released. Not only will the unit be revolutionary in its laserdisc technology, it will also be controlled by voice-recognition technology. The unit is to be bundled with a home version of Thayer's Quest, a double sided disc as opposed to its arcade counterpart's single sided platter, and contains much more animation than the original. The other game readied for the unit's release is called NFL Football, utilizing footage from a Dallas/Redskins game. Finally shipped in very limited quantities early in 1985, it carries the daunting retail price of US$ 2500. Some amazing new laserdisc games are demonstrated along with the system, including the mythical Greek tale of Orpheus, SF story Shadow of the Stars, creepy live-action horror game Spirit of Whittier Mansion, and the 17th century adventure game Voyage to the New World. Unfortunately, the high sticker price and sagging market sink this promising system along with the planned games.

And so it goes with every entry into the laser game sweepstakes of the early 80s. What started as the future of arcading is rapidly buried by lack of interaction, technical problems, and the inherent failure of full-motion video to provide a singularly compelling videogaming experience. Other attempts include Badlands, Bega's Battle, Cobra Command, Cube Quest, Firefox, Goal to Go, Super Don Quixote, and Star Rider...all these laser games and more have disappeared from arcades by 1985. At the height of the craze, both Atari and Coleco plan to release laserdisc add-ons to their systems, which never make it off the drawing boards. The genre enjoys a brief renaissance in the arcades during the early 90s with new laser shooting games, created by a company called American Laser Games, founded in the late 80's by Robert Grebe. It is spun off from original company I.C.A.T., makers of situational trainers for police officers. The Last Bounty Hunter, Crime Patrol, Crime Patrol 2: The Drug Wars, Fast Draw, Gallagher's Gallery, Mad Dog McCree, Mad Dog McCree II: The Lost Gold, Space Pirates, and Who Shot Johnny Rock? are all produced by the company. The system revolves around an Amiga 500 computer, providing for easy superimposition of video graphics like scores and hit squibs. The success of ALG is short-lived, however, and the company eventually disappears. Rick Dyer himself comes back to the technology in 1991 with Sega's release of "holographic" arcade game Time Traveler. Players control the actions of old-west Marshal Graham in his quest to...do you see it coming?...rescue a princess kidnapped by some evil timelord. All of the action takes place on a surreal, sparsely decorated set with a black background. The images are transmitted by a monitor and reflect off a black concave mirror inside the cabinet, and appear in psuedo-3D on a stage above the mirror. If someone holds down both the player one and player two select buttons and presses down on the joystick, they can watch Dyer cavorting around the stage with his young son on his shoulders. While Time Traveler certainly offers an interesting visual effect, game play is still "on a rail" and the sets and acting certainly leave a lot to be desired. It does, however, eventually pull in 18 million in sales.

Both Rick Dyer and Don Bluth move on after their laser efforts, with Bluth directing such films as "An American Tale" and "The Land Before Time", executive produced by Steven Spielberg, along with "All Dogs Go to Heaven", "Rock-A-Doodle", "A Troll in Central Park", "Thumbelina", "The Pebble and the Penguin", "Anastasia", and "Titan A.E.". In 1992, Rick Dyer founds Virtual Image Productions. His Thayer's Quest goes through a remarkably serpentine comeback process, surfacing first in 1995 as a game on Philips' CD-i platform, called Kingdom. A sequel is planned, but falls through along with the CD-i technology. 1996 sees the release of Interplay's DOS CD-ROM game called Kingdom: The Far Reaches Book One, which changes the characters' names and continues to omit parts of the five kingdoms. But Dyer is finally able to fully realize his Tolkien fueled obsession with the 1998 release of the definitive Kingdom computer games. The first is Shadoan, produced with a budget of 3 million dollars, putting it in the top ten of the most expensive games at the time. The plot and characters are redesigned from the Thayer's Quest debut, with a team of 300 animators working non-stop for nine months creating 700,000 hand-painted cells for 70 minutes of animation. In this version, players control Lathan Kandor in his quest for the last three missing amulet parts to defeat the evil wizard Torloc. As well as the top-flight animation, Shadoan also boasts 30 original music tracks created by Martin Erskin and Andy Brick, along with Doug and Brian Bestermanthe, the musical team behind Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and "Pocahontas". Also featured are multiple solutions and, in keeping with Dyer's newly-formed crusade against videogame violence, a Parental Guidance Mode is available so kids aren't subjected to intense fighting scenes. The game is a refinement of the same type of play as Thayer, with players choosing paths and actions and the ramifications of such played out. The game makes history as the first computer product to spawn a hit song, "Where Do We Go From Here?". Known as Calace's Song in the game, the ballad is sung by Julie Eisenhower. The second game is a prequel to Shadoan titled Reaches, chronicling Lathan's quest for the first three amulet relics and utilizing footage from Thayer's Quest. Both games go on to win numerous awards and accolades from game reviewers.

Even though laserdisc games succumb to a thousand Dirk-like deaths, Dragon's Lair lives on. 14 years after the original is released, it ends up as one of only three videogames in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., alongside trendsetters PONG and Pac-Man. Approximately 109 million dollars has been made through the years by the various Dragon's Lair spin-offs. There are at least 30 translations of the game to such platforms as the Commodore 64 and Amiga, Atari ST and Jaguar, Apple IIGS and Macintosh, 3D0, CD-i, Nintendo NES and SNES, Sega CD and IBM PC DOS, CD-ROM and DVD. In a startling move, the Coleco ADAM version is licenced by the company for an incredible 2 million dollars. Direct sequels of the concept have titles like Escape from Singe's Castle, and The Curse of Mordread. Even a Color Gameboy version is announced by Dyer, developed under the Dragon's Lair LLC banner in partnership with Digital Eclipse. Practically every scene is to be fully rendered for the portable device, and the game is scheduled for release by the end of the year 2000. The aborted Dragon's Lair movie seems to have been taken off the shelf and dusted off, as rumours begin surfacing at the end of the millenium of its development. And Bluth and Dyer have created game production house Dragonstone Software to create a new generation of games, including new 3D remakes of both Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Their first is called, unsurprisingly, Dragon's Lair 3D. The game is distributed by Blue Byte Software, best known as the makers of the Settlers series. It features state-of-the-art graphics and finally offers players what they've been waiting 18 years for: full, free-roaming control of bumbling Dirk the Daring in his eternal struggle through the castle to reach his perloined princess. Lead on, adventurer...your quest awaits!

Multimedia Files:

dragons_lair.mpg - Dragon's Lair video clip

Acknowledgements - Some images and information came from the following sources, in no particular order:
The Dragon's Lair Project
Syd Bolton's Dragon's Lair HomePage
Blam Entertainment Group
Dragonstone Software
Don Bluth Shrine
Don Bluth
Digital Leisure
Dragon's Lair On-line
Dragon's Lair Collectables
FYIowa - Q&A: Rick Dyer
Shadoan
AGH Coin-Op Special: The Rise and Fall of Laserdisc Arcade Games
GameArchive
American Laser Games by David Fikers
Cliff Hanger/Lupin III
Lupin III FAQ
M.A.C.H. 3
Starcade
Cineposters
Van Eaton Galleries
Cartoon Depot
Yesterdayland
Various game technical manuals
Various published interviews:
Joystik
Electronic Games
Video Games
Starburst

Plus email interviews with:
Warren Davis
Shannon Donnelly

             

 

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