40 years later, I finally beat the arcade game that financially destroyed me as a child
In 1983 I spent every single Friday night at the same place: the roller rink. It was a perfect way to end a dreary week filled with school and chores: a bully-free environment where I could goof off with my friends, skate around in circles, listen to music, and consume tons of junk food. There were even special events held at the rink, like the night they broadcast the premiere of Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video, which scared one little girl so badly she threw up. Good times!
That roller rink was also my first regular exposure to arcade games, and every Friday my weekly allowance was eagerly converted into quarters and pumped into classics like Spy Hunter, Pole Position, Mr. Do, Q-Bert, Time Pilot, and my favorite: Tempest.
Then one day the rink’s pecking order of arcade cabinets was upended when a game arrived that none of us could have conceived of. This game wasn’t filled with wire frame spaceships or pixelated monsters. It looked like a cartoon. That’s because it was a cartoon. The art for Dragon’s Lair was actually drawn and animated by Don Bluth, who’d been an animator for Disney since the 1960s. The day this Dragon’s Lair machine appeared was a thrill: video games, the thing I was wasting my life on, now looked like television, the other thing I was wasting my life on! Nirvana.
But that wasn’t the only thing special about it. For the first time in arcade game history, instead of a quarter, it cost 50 cents to play Dragon’s Lair. 50 cents! I know it doesn’t really sound like much, but a sudden 100% markup of the price to play a video game? “CASH GRAB! GREEDY DEVS!” I probably would have yelled if Reddit existed in the ’80s. Instead, I figured it must just be a really good game if they’re charging half a buck for it.
And it sure looked good, especially since I’d recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons (yet another thing I was wasting my life on). Dragon’s Lair had a dragon: it was right there in the title. Also, dungeons! Plus giant snakes, bottomless pits, bats and spiders, a damsel in distress, and a hero named Dirk the Daring. At the time it felt like it must be the best game ever made, or that ever would be made.
That’s why it was a bummer to slowly realize, as the weeks passed and my stacks of quarters were steadily eaten, that Dragon’s Lair wasn’t a particularly good game. It wasn’t even a game at all. It was an interactive cartoon, if you use the word “interactive” as loosely as possible.
Ups and downs
We didn’t have a name for it then, but Dragon’s Lair was essentially a bunch of quicktime events. Dirk would walk into a room and a scene would play out where he was attacked by monsters or threatened by traps. The controls were simple: move the joystick up, down, left, or right, and press the singular button to use Dirk’s sword. Since you were in reality just watching clips of a cartoon, moving or hitting the button at the right time played the next clip. That was the entirety of the interaction.
Say Dirk walks into a chamber and a tentacle pops out of the ceiling. Hit the sword button at the right moment and you’re shown a cartoon of him slashing the tentacle. Get the timing wrong, move the joystick instead, or do nothing, and you’re shown a cartoon of Dirk getting his ass strangled to death. If the floor caves in to your right, move left, and if acid pours in from the left, move right. Sometimes the game would give you a hint as to which way to move, like a doorway blinking—sort of like how Mr. Sandman would flash in Punch Out before throwing his uppercut trio—but you still had to be lightning fast to survive.
I was not lightning fast. I was also not rich. I could play Dragon’s Lair maybe two or three times on a Friday before running out of quarters, and those games went quickly, especially because I only had three lives per game and Dirk would be insta-killed by any mistake.
What was most unfair was how Dragon’s Lair randomized its story. If you failed the section where you swing across the pit on burning ropes, you didn’t get to try it again with your next life. On Dirk’s death, Dragon’s Lair would switch to a completely different scene. You might not get another chance to try the ropes again until several lives and a few dollars worth of quarters later. It’s really tough to train your muscle memory when you can’t play the same segment a few times in a row, especially considering a kid like me only got to go to the arcade once a week and only had a couple bucks to spend.
Don Bluth wanted my quarters. He wanted my quarters so damn much.
Even if you managed to memorize a segment flawlessly, it didn’t mean you were done with it. Progress far enough into Dragon’s Lair and you’re gonna see a few sequences for a second time, though flipped horizontally like a mirror image. Did you successfully ride the magical mechanical horse through the burning castle by going L-R-L-R-R-R? Get ready to do it again later in the same playthrough, but this time by going R-L-R-L-L-L. Not only did Dragon’s Lair artificially pad its length with reruns, it also tried to jerk your muscle memory out of its socket. Oh, Don Bluth wanted my quarters. He wanted my quarters so damn much.
About the only thing that worked in our favor was that we could watch other people play Dragon’s Lair on a free live stream with no ads, by which I mean standing around in a semi-circle while wearing roller skates, watching some wealthier kid play and trying to memorize their moves. It helped a little: I definitely got better by absorbing other kids’ success than I did by trial and error during my own games. Even still, I never got all that far into Dragon’s Lair, and never got anywhere near the end. I never saw anyone else finish it, either.
Drags & Dragons
Cut to a week ago when I finally pumped even more money into Dragon’s Lair. I bought it on Steam for $10, probably the same amount I spent on it per month in 1983. It hurt to surrender 40 more of my quarters to the cartoon I’d slowly grown to despise as a kid, but I thought maybe, all these years later, it would be satisfying to play it again. Maybe I could even beat it.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t satisfying to play it again. Dragon’s Lair really is QTE: The Game, though I have to admit I still do really appreciate Bluth’s animation, especially the many creative and horrifying ways Dirk can die.
But playing Dragon’s Lair on PC or on Steam Deck in 2024… it ain’t great. The transitions are choppy and there’s a deeply unnatural pace to the game: scenes don’t get a chance to breathe before you’re onto the next one. It’s just a bunch of clips you’re editing together by tapping the space bar and arrow keys.
Also, I still utterly suck at it. I have to admit I can’t entirely blame Eighties-Me’s lack of quarters on my failures. I’m just trash at Dragon’s Lair. I should have stuck with Time Pilot.
Sitting there getting trounced by the same game that trounced me as a child, I decided, the hell with this. The PC version of Dragon’s Lair has what the original arcade game does not: options. Most notably, there’s the option to continuously try the same sequence over and over until you get it right (like a proper video game), and even on-screen prompts telling you what keys to hit and when to hit them (like a proper QTE).
So, after a wait of 40 years I finally beat Dragon’s Lair in about 10 minutes.
Talk about anticlimactic. I feel like even with the prompts on-screen it should take more than 10 minutes to beat an entire video game, but at least now I understand why so many sequences repeated and why the developers made it so tricky to learn. And, I guess, why they doubled the price of admission: gotta suck up those quarters before the kids learn something.
Something about my victory felt hollow—probably the complete and utter hollowness of it—so I called around to the very few arcades in my city to see if anyone had a Dragon’s Lair cabinet. Unfortunately no one does at the moment, but I do promise this: one day I’ll face the original arcade cabinet version of this quarter-eating monster on its own turf, one last time, only now with a bit more training under my belt. I’m sure I won’t win, but I’ll start saving up my quarters now, just in case.
