Here's a more in-depth look at the black sheep of the series:

The game opens right in the thick of the action. Dirk is running around his household of ten children dodging a rolling-pin-swinging mother-in-law who's incensed that he's allowed her daughter Daphne to be kidnapped by the evil wizard Mordrok. Dirk escapes on horseback, constantly dodging obstacles and unwittingly landing in the seat of a time machine, which will eventually bring him into the dimension where he can rescue Daphne from the wizard's clutches. From there on out, gamers (or viewers using the Watch mode) will be plunged into a tour-de-force of Don Bluth/John Pomeroy/Gary Goldman animation.

Though the original Dragon's Lair took place inside a castle, this time the sky's the limit as the time-travel motif sets the animators free to take on whatever their imaginations conjure up. Dirk is transported into a variety of far-out perilous situations such as an Alice in Wonderland interlude, where a psychedelic sneezing dragon chases him as he hurtles through the woods and over a river, riding on top of a flying Cheshire Cat head. Then there's a Paradise Lost scenario that collides the Biblical story of Adam and Eve with the figures of Greek mythology in Olympus, with Dirk acting as the unsuspecting pawn of the serpent in the apple tree. Best of all is a brilliant sequence reminiscent of Disney's Fantasia, in which Dirk witnesses Beethoven composing his Fifth Symphony at the piano all the while narrowly escaping the jaws of his ferocious pet cat. Things really take off when the piano rockets into space and Dirk must hop across swirling music notes and floating violins to save his life.

Even for a Dragon's Lair game, this is some abstract stuff.

Indeed, Time Warp is so out there with its intensely creative but bizarre imagery, one might venture a guess that it was designed to be best enjoyed on drugs - if the split-second reaction times required by the game didn’t make such a feat all but physically impossible. Better stick to the Watch mode. This entry's cult status among the three laser disc games probably isn't solely due to its 1991 release, eight years after the others hit arcades and long after such a game seemed cutting-edge. It's wonderful animation, but also decidedly less accessible to the mainstream due to its surreal nature.

For fans already familiar with the games, the most interest may lie in the Extras disc. It includes a wealth of liner material and bonus features like text biographies and video interviews with the game's creators, a 1984 episode of the TV game show Starcade featuring contestants competing at Dragon's Lair, vintage press clippings (headline: "Dragon's Lair makes Pac-Man seem like something Grandpa should have played by candlelight"), scans of merchandising products and action figures, a making-of featurette, and a box art gallery of more than twenty home console ports. This is a lot of rare content all gathered in one place for collectors it and makes a terrific companion piece to the games. The viewing experience is hurt somewhat by the lack of any ability to fast-forward or rewind through the interviews, the Starcade episode, or the featurette, and by the slightly pixelated nature of the image - all drawbacks that were not present in Digital Leisure's earlier DVD release of the Anniversary Edition.

Overall, the transfer quality on all three game discs unfortunately also leaves a little to be desired. Though the picture is clear enough to be more than playable, there are sometimes noticeable compression artifacts, and the image never seems to be as sharp as it could be. The DVD versions of the games have far superior picture quality, and with good reason: they have the luxury of more storage space on DVD media.

In the end, this is still a tremendous package that scores points for cramming just about everything available about Dragon's Lair into one set. And one advantage that the CDs do have over the DVD versions is the control of the actual gameplay. There is a frustrating delayed reaction when using a remote to play through the games on DVD (often resulting in an accidental death), but the keyboard for the PC version gives a near-instant response. Too bad there's no DVD-ROM version of this set that would give gamers the best of both worlds in play control and image detail. Until one comes along, those who just want to watch the games should probably stick with the DVD's. This CD-ROM set is really best suited for the hardcore crowd who still want to play them.

Back to Page One of
our Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary Special Edition review

· · · Ted Boyke