There’s Trouble, I Say Trouble, Right Here in the Video Game Arcade 

U.S. video game arcade operators face a slump heading into 1983. After a decade of wild expansion, there are about 1,375,000 video game machines installed in over 10,000 locations, earning 87 percent of the coin-op industry’s total revenue of $8.9 billion. This seems good on the surface, but the influx of game makers is splitting up the pie, and average weekly takes by video games has plummeted 22 percent, down to $109 per machine compared to $140 per week the previous year. Operators are starting to tighten their belts and order fewer cabinets, with sales of video coin-op machines having dropped from $1 billion in 1981 to $700 million in 1982. Experts know that the coin-op video game business needs to innovate to survive.

Rick Dyer: The Tick-Tock Man

The apparent saviour of the arcades 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 from prominent philosophers. Later he rigs his car with a computer which asks his dates by name their preferences of radio stations. He eventually becomes the first non-degreed engineer at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California…. home of the first working laser, BTW. While there he is yet another future video game pioneer exposed to the computer text game Adventure,  which he plays avidly. 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 Mattel, Dyer designs some of the popular hand-held games coming out of the company 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 flat-panel LCD screens in the back of airplane seats to entertain flyers. He then moves to Coleco, developing their arcade line of handheld 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, in 1978 he starts experimenting with interactive movie concepts, initially drawing images on a roll of cash-register receipt paper. Whether Dyer knows about Nintendo’s foray into videotape-based games with their 1975 EVR series of arcade cabinets is a mystery. He then transfers these to a system using computer controlled filmstrips and then moves to a cassette-based set-up. Dyer ultimately turns to laserdisc technology as his storage medium, and in 1980 starts work on a system that will allow users to play games stored on disc, and will feature a keyboard for control along with understanding voice commands via a headset. Labeled Halcyon, after the ubiquitous HAL computer controlling the Discovery spaceship in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the game unit will also be able to talk to gamers via voice synthesis. The game he intends the machine to play is Shadoan, a sword and sorcery epic inspired by the J.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books and his time with Adventure.

Don Bluth: Disney Calling

It’s one of those neat cosmic quirks that Don Bluth was born the same year as the release of Walt Disney’s groundbreaking animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When six-year-old Don sees the film, he knows he has found his calling. Born in 1937 in El Paso, Texas, Bluth grows up on a farm in Payson, Utah, south of Salt Lake City. He is seldom seen without a sketch pad and pencil in his hands, riding his horse into town and sitting in the movie theatre enthralled watching the latest Disney film. Never taking an art lesson, Bluth uses his pad to copy Disney characters from books and comics. 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 under veteran Disney animator John Lounsberry 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 in 1967 he does work for cut-rate animation house Filmation Studios as a layout artist on shows like Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down, and also does animation layout work on the 1968 psychedelic, counter-culture film Yellow Submarine starring The Beatles. 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). Bluth, however, begins to observe alarming similarities to Disney and the low-balling limited animation houses he has left behind: “Feature-length animated films became very formulaic, and tight scheduling made us take the kind of shortcuts you see on Saturday morning cartoons. We were just billboarding for characters and stuffed toys,” he tells the Chicago Tribune in 1984 about Disney Studios. “We were losing the subtle touches of Walt’s original vision – the contact shadows under the characters, backlighting and sparkles and reflections in water that made his early movies so magical.” As a reaction to this steady abandonment by Disney 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 recapturing Disney’s lost glories. 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 leaves Disney to start their own production company called Don Bluth Animation. 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, the Woodpile Cat is first shown in two movie theaters 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. The Extra-Terrestrial juggernaut of that year, only earning a disappointing $10,140,325 over the summer season.

Rick Dyer, meanwhile, has realized that his Halcyon home laserdisc system is tech a bit before its time, so he spins off the technology into the arcade game format. Dyer, having seen and been amazed by Bluth’s NIMH, approaches the former Disney animator about doing the artwork in a new game for his laserdisc system. Bluth and company are in a pinch: the animation union has gone on strike, starting in August of 1982. Subsequently, Aurora backs out of the deal to provide financing for Bluth’s next planned feature, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, based on a Norwegian fairy tale and budgeted at $11 million. Bluth had been left wondering if it is perhaps time to close the doors on his studio. Hence, there’s an incentive for him and his people to see Dyer’s proposal as a new opportunity to spread the gospel of their lavish animation style, as well as a way to tap into the $3.2 billion video game market, and they agree to supply the visuals. While the project can’t really afford the animator’s high 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. Cinematronics, pioneer of vector graphics technology in video games with their 1977 Space Wars, is looking to laser technology for a reprieve from their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in November of 1982. They sign a deal to manufacture and market the new game while making up the final third of the partnership. Since each partner must come up with the money for their part, Bluth and company seek out capital and find an investor willing to put up $300,000.

JUMP: Cinematronics and Space Wars

Exploring the Dragon’s Lair

Meanwhile, in 1982 Gremlin/Sega preview their video game featuring laserdisc technology, titled Astron Belt, first surfacing at the November 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 demo at AMOA, Dyer and his team agree with Sega’s billing of Astron Belt as the “laser disc video game of the future (emphasis mine)”; currently only at the early prototype stage. Sega itself admits that despite the game’s current success in Japan and Europe, gameplay isn’t quite up to snuff in comparison to current NA game releases. Problems such as the need for smoother transitions between scenes, and an upgrade to the player’s ship graphics are cited as needing work before the game hits NA arcades.  If Astron Belt gets a release in the West, according to Sega, it won’t be until “sometime in the next two years”. Neither Dragon’s Lair NOR Astron Belt would technically be the first video game based on laserdisc technology: that honour goes to horserace betting game Quarter Horse, made by Electro-Sport in 1981. Allowing players to bet on random races stored on its laserdisc player, Quarter Horse itself becomes a big winner, breaking all coin-op records in Las Vegas by pulling in $1 million in bets within its first 90 days of operation.

Dyer and his team 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 their own laserdisc video game technology to market. The plot of the game comes about by spinning off a tale from Dyer’s original Shadoan concept. Having worked at developing the story concept back when Dyer had been using paper-tape as a medium for his game system, 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. Reading the title of the eventual game, one wonders if perhaps the creators are also inspired by the 1981 fantasy film Dragonslayer, produced by Don Bluth’s old employer Disney and starring Peter MacNicol and Ralph Richardson.

The Bluth Group gets busy completing the animation for what is now known as Dragon’s Lair. At any of the over 1000 decision points in the Dragon’s Lair 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 continues with the scene. If it’s the wrong one, the laserdisc jumps to a new track, a death scene is displayed and the player loses a life. The gang at Bluth Group, with a total staff of 70, employ 14 animators and 36 artists in the creation of Dragon’s Lair, logging hundreds of unpaid hours of overtime to complete the animation, a process that takes six months. Nearly filling the 54,000 frame, 30 min capacity of a single-sided laserdisc, Dragon’s Lair consists of a total of 22 minutes of animation or 50,000 drawings. 10-25 percent of the original gameplay footage is cut from initial prototypes, as free playtesting with young kids has them complaining the game is too long. Branching storylines where players can choose different paths are also scrapped from Dragon’s Lair, due to elongated search times inherent in the technology making it hard to play…. this narrative technique will be revisited in the follow-up game Space Ace (see below). Played straight through without making a mistake, playing time for Dragon’s Lair as released is about 11 minutes. Each second of screen time takes 24 hand-painted cells, a number higher than the industry standard, equalling a cost of around $50,000 a minute: the total cost of the animation makes up 1.3 million dollars of the $3 million total budget for Dragon’s Lair. Although there are 38 different rooms in Singe’s castle, the player only has to survive 18 of them to win, taking the right actions at a torrent of decision-points coming at them approximately every 1.5 seconds. To keep the game from becoming too repetitive, after the initial opening of the game with Dirk making his way across the drawbridge to enter the castle, 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. Her speech bears more than a passing resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, and her body shape and ‘assets’ are taken from the pages of Playboy. Chris Stone is responsible for the brief musical stings and bridges in the game.

Dragon’s Lair Gets a Fiery Reception

A prototype version of Dragon’s Lair is shown at the spring 1983 AOE show in Chicago, creating a large buzz around the game from operators. What’s not well-known is that the project is in trouble. So far having pumped $600,000 into creating animation that is indeed lush, Bluth is alarmed to discover that on the technical side, the game play is just not there. Utilizing his filmmaking and narrative skills, he ensconces himself in the lab with Dyer’s team and they redesign the game in about four days, emerging with something closely resembling what ends up in the arcades. Financial disaster continues to loom over the project until Eric Bromley, VP in charge of R&D at video game company Coleco, shows up at their door in April, having seen the prototype footage. His company has a laserdisc add-on planned for their immensely popular ColecoVision home game console, and, possibly sensing another huge system-seller like they had in Donkey Kong, licenses the home game rights to Dragon’s Lair for $2 million, along with first right of refusal on any future games from Starcom. With Coleco paying half of that fee upfront, thusly does Bluth and Starcom get the money to finish the game. Bromley further contributes to Dragon’s Lair by offering further instruction on game design.

Excited arcade operators, sensing a game that might be the solution for their sagging collections income, finally get their chance to purchase it when Dragon’s Lair is announced for sale on July 1, and starts arriving in quantity to distributors in the following weeks. 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 on average an unprecedented 4,300 dollars each, twice the cost of a conventional cabinet, it comes factory-set to cost 50 cents a play. It is NOT, however, the first game to be set to cost 50 cents per single play by the manufacturer. In 1980, Atari had set Missile Command to cost two quarters by default when shipped from the factory, although that IS for a 2-player match. Explaining the reasoning behind this price increase, at the time Director of Marketing Frank Ballouz said, “50 cent play has been needed by the industry for some time to help offset the rising cost of manufacturing and to help increase location revenues…” Operators, however, quickly realized they weren’t going to get away with charging that much at the time and reverted the machines back to 25 cent play. On Dragon Lair‘s release, I remember being incensed by the increase to 50 cents a play; 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 to hit the market 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 at certain moments when and in which of four directions 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, compared to an average of about $200 or so per week for a hit conventional game at the time. After being installed in Bally’s Aladdin’s Castle arcade locations, in the first month, the game increases general revenues by 33%. In the first eight months of its release to arcades generally, the game grosses 32 million dollars worth of sales. Cinematronics gets 2,000 units out the door initially and then struggles to meet demand as orders head north of 8,000. Production of Dragon’s Lair cabinets is unfortunately capped due to the scarcity of the laserdisc players employed in their construction (see below). Still, Cinematronics sells ten thousand cabinets within the first three months of release. In the arcades, 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. According to Don Bluth, one operator in Berkeley goes so far as to install seating akin to a movie theatre around the game and a red velvet carpet leading up the cabinet with a monitor on top, creating a cheering section for the gamer currently at the controls. Overall, the game is said to have increased arcade revenue across the board by 40 percent. Starcom eventually sells 43 million dollars worth of Dragon’s Lair 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. The game 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 elicit such a reaction at the end of the game.

The Record Skips in Dragon’s Lair

But even as the game becomes a cultural phenomenon 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 disc players 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 a warehouse 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 the 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. This technical problem also prompts Pioneer to train at least five Cinematronics technicians and send them back to Cinematronic’s El Cajon HQ to repair Dragon’s Lair units that have been returned with head-alignment issues.

Games You Could Almost Play

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 scenes 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 game. As well, Dragon’s Lair is highly repetitive, extending the length of play by simply reversing the image of many rooms. Longevity in playing the game relies on rote memorization of the patterns, sometimes coupled with sheer reflexive movements of the joystick and button. Dragon’s Lair keeps 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 the 11 or so minutes it takes to play flawlessly all the way through to the end. Thus is anyone else prevented from dropping in their two bits, limiting the number of players and infuriating arcade owners. Despite these issues with Dragon’s Lair, the AMOA arcade operators show in late October 1983 is afire with the laserdisc games of other manufacturers who, you guessed it, have swarmed out of the woodwork with their own takes on a massively successful game. In a rabid race for a slice of the pie, game companies will again valiantly smite a trend with over-production (detailed below).

Space Ace In the Hole

As the plan is for Starcom to make a new animated laserdisc game every three months for distributors to upgrade their previous cabinets into for $1000, the animation for the official Dragon’s Lair follow-up is started even before Dragon’s Lair is released to the arcades. With an animation budget increased to $1.8 million and an overall price tag for design at $2.5 million, the new game has a working title of Space Nerd. This slightly pejorative label is eventually zapped, with the title becoming Space Age….and then finally Space Ace to reflect one of the main characters of the story. Written by Shannon Donnelly, it 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 nerdy 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. I guess Space Age would have worked as a title, too! As well as a new story, along with actual running dialog between the characters, the game also incorporates some new design concepts over Dragon’s Lair. 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. This branching option not only increases the total amount of animation to fourteen minutes, it also helps to give the player a sense that they have more control over what is happening in the game.

During the creation of the animation, actual models are built of Dexter’s spaceship StarPac and Ace’s Space Cycle, which are then filmed using a periscope camera and then traced into the hand-drawn cells to be recoloured. This process, known as rotoscoping, is done to aid animators with aspects of perspective and depth. Some of the voices are again done by staff members, including the processed voice of Don Bluth as the nasty Borf. There are, however, some other great strides in the area of audio: Space Ace has 35 separate tracks for sound effects, compared to only 14 in Dragon’s Lair. Chris Stone returns to compose a complete musical score for the game, featuring three separate tracks for music.

Changing With the Times, Dragon’s Lair Artist Don Bluth Sketches Kimberly Kicking Some Ass Instead of Standing By for Rescue

When it comes to gameplay, things are much more frenetic, with more moves placed closer together during a scene. However, there are also more flashing light cues to alert the player to the required moves. With Dyer’s company now known as RDI Video Systems, 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 are 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 includes a free replacement of the older laserdisc players with new and improved units. Space Ace is demonstrated at the October 1983 AMOA show in New Orleans, and it is there that Coleco exercises its first-refusal rights by picking up the home rights to the new game. By the time Space Ace is released late in 1983 by a newly renamed Magicom following the final bankruptcy of Cinematronics, the laser game fad is already losing steam. Space Ace blasts off quickly with 1500 units sold in its first week of release, but the cabinet ultimately sells only $13 million worth across its short lifetime. This despite Magicom’s aggressive merchandising campaign waged at a cost of around $100,000, featuring items such as press books, posters to hang up in arcades, and even flip books to demonstrate some animation from the game.

Laser Disc Game Astron Belt Belted

After its demonstrations at the AMOA 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 and Europe mid-way through 1983, On August 25, 1983, Bally/Midway gets their hands on Astron Belt, which they consider a vastly improved laser game over Dragon’s Lair, by signing a letter of intent to buy the U.S. arcade division of Sega from mother corporation Paramount. The new owners of Astron Belt keep fine-tuning the system, interating different versions of the game that has been in testing phase at The Yellow Brick Road Arcade in San Diego since May of the year. 

Astron Belt is re-introduced at the 1983 AMOA show in October, and subsequently released to U.S. arcades. 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 between 40-60 seconds of indestructibility, past which they will start losing lives.

Gameplay video of Astron Belt,Laserdisc Game by Sega 1983

The video for Astron Belt 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, Message 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. Both movies, along with Star Wars, liberally cribbed their plots from Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. 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 startling “Genesis Effect” CGI sequence in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. A nice bit of media conglomerate symmetry, as the Star Trek films are released by Paramount Pictures, the sister company to Sega, all under the Gulf + Western banner. 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: development time for the game has it missing most of the Dragon’s Lair-fueled boom in the arcades. Sega Japan later releases a laserdisc replacement for Astron Belt, called Star Blazer, but this fails to reignite the laser game explosion. Using even more footage from Message From Space, 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 which path to fly at certain points in the action during the game. On the hardware front, the sit-down version of Astron Belt features the “vibraseat” force-feedback system.

 

Clip from Wrath of Khan, Featuring Effects and CGI Used in Sega Laserdisc Game Astron Belt

Ahhhh, MACH 3…

For a look at the sudden impact that arcade laserdisc games have made on the amusement industry, one only has to stroll the aisles of the fall 1983 Amusement and Machine Operators Association (AMOA) convention in New Orleans. There, 16 new arcade laser games are introduced, and 30,000 orders for them placed. These laser games are split between two factions: limited decision animated stories, and video footage shooting games. Gottlieb, formerly known as D. Gottlieb & Company, makes a big addition to the latter genre. Owned by Columbia Pictures, they are yet another Chicago area pinball giant that entered the video game market with their 1980 top-down tank game No Man’s Land. Located in Northlake, Illinois, in an attempt to indicate their increased focus on games featuring “high technology”, they change their name to Mylstar Electronics on July 3, 1983. Their M.A.C.H. 3 laserdisc game (developed under the working title Airmada) plays similar to Sega’s Astron Belt, but instead of cheesy movie visuals, MACH or Military Air Command Hunter features professionally shot aerial photography onto which the player’s computer-generated jet aircraft is superimposed. Mylstar accentuates this flight realism by signing Vietnam fighter ace Steve Ritchie (not the pinball design guru), accredited with shooting down five MiG-21 aircraft during the conflict, to help promote the M.A.C.H. 3 video game. 

After inserting their 50 cents, gamers have the choice to face off against enemy planes and ground targets in Fighter Raid mode or to fly at high altitude over aerial targets in Bombing Run. Using an elaborate flight stick, they can fire a machine gun at the targets as well as launch missiles as they infiltrate enemy areas. Targets to be destroyed are computer-generated icons surrounded by a yellow box, including ground positions that keep their place on the landscape as the player soars around it. 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. After over eighteen months of development, M.A.C.H. 3 is released to arcades in October of 1983. Available in a sit-down cockpit and stand-up version, Mylstar’s laser game is a popular hit: it is beating the coin intake of Dragon’s Lair in popular locations by December of 1983. It is also rated the #1 Player’s Choice in RePlay magazine.

Gameplay Video of M.A.C.H. 3, a Laserdisc Arcade Game by Mylstar

Brief Cut-Scene from Laserdisc Game Us. vs. Them, by Mylstar 1984

Us Vs. Them: “…to develop a laser game that would replicate the feel of a 1950’s martian movie.”

A year before M.A.C.H. 3 comes out in 1983, Gottlieb enjoyed a big hit with its “conventional” arcade game Q*bert, released in November of 1982. It featured a furry, big-nosed creature jumping through an M.C. Escher inspired playfield turning tiles different colours while being chased by a coiled snake. The lead designer of the game was 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 the Party Monsters 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 Gottlieb), a desert, a forest, and a final showdown in the alien Mothership. The hook in this laser game is that players are subjected to four different views of the action, including a profile view as well as a chase camera behind their fighter.

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, -26F 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. Felled by expenditures and the lacklustre sales of Us. Vs. Them, Mylstar closes the doors of its Northlake, Illinois factory for the last time on September 30, 1984. Its microprocessor-based graphic and video technologies, along with all M.A.C.H. 3 tech and IP, end up purchased by JVW Electronics, Inc., a company founded by former Mylstar people.

Warren Davis goes on to create another unusual game, published as the only video game by the company that had purchased the remains of the pinball section of Mylstar, Premiere Technology. Titled Exterminator, it is 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 titular 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, including its dedicated cabinet with a top that resembles the gable of a house roof. The last video game produced by Premiere, as well as Gottlieb, it unfortunately bombs, with only 250 units made for the arcades.

Animated Laser Disc Game Cliff Hanger: Leaping Lupin

One of the many animation footage contenders in the laser game race is Cliff Hanger, licensed by Stern Electronics from Taito in 1983 and released in North America in early October. It tells the story of Cliff Hanger, a master cat burglar. In a resoundingly familiar plotline, Princess Clarissa is kidnapped by the evil Count Drago, and our hero must blah blah blah…. But wait! Our “hero” is actually using an alias! His real name is Lupin III, star of an immensely popular anime movie and TV series in Japan. Starting as a manga comic series in the late 60s by Katou Kazuhiko a.k.a. Monkey Punch, it is then developed into a TV series by Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co in 1971. Lupin’s first appearance as a video game comes with Taito’s Lupin III, released in Japan in 1980.

He also makes a rather abstract appearance in Data East’s 1981 game Lock ‘n’ Chase. In his laser incarnation, he is accompanied by his longtime companions: Jigen, Goeman, and Fujiko. The animation for Cliff Hanger comes mainly from 1979 Lupin film The Castle of Cagliostro, with additional footage from 1978’s The Mystery of Mamo. The dialog for the game is changed in the English dubbing, turning Lupin into the daring Cliff. While it may not have a particularly original storyline, it does offer a new way of playing: the control panel contains a joystick and two buttons. One to control Lup…er, I mean CLIFF’s hands and the other his legs. When the action on screen requires it, players must hit the correct button to perform the needed move. The graphics may not be quite on par with Dragon’s Lair, but this is still a nice indoctrination into Japanese Anime which at the time of the game’s release is rare to find in America. If arcade operators are magnanimous enough (and at 50 cents a pop, they SHOULD be), the game has a dip switch setting inside the cabinet to allow on-screen textual advice on the correct move (You should have gone right) given when players make a mistake. And there is also another alteration made available for the game. If the player fails in his mission and loses a life, a startlingly graphic scene is shown of Cliff being hanged from a gallows. Cliff. Hanged. Cliff Hanger. Funny, no? Watchdog groups are not amused and a dip-switch setting is made available to skip the neck-stretching. Another child safeguard is designed into the game, although this one probably inadvertently: a scene with Cliff fighting a band of Ninjas is so incredibly difficult, with a rash of moves jumbled on top of each other in rapid-fire sequence, it prevents most kids from making it to the end and seeing what has to be one of the most gruesome finales in video game history. Only 550 machines are sold by Stern, and the game quickly drops off arcade radar screens. This helps to make Cliff Hanger one of the most sought-after and highly priced arcade game collectibles in later years.

Further Into the Dragon’s Lair

When the Space Ace animation is completed, Bluth Group starts right in on the Dragon’s Lair sequel, Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp. Sporting an animation budget of 2.3 million, the story has Dirk and Daphne married with 13 kids, and Daph is unsurprisingly kidnapped by Dirk’s old nemesis Mordred. 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 1991, the company that ends up purchasing the remains of Cinematronics, 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.

Don Bluth promises the press that a Dragon’s Lair movie is on tap to go into production in August of 1984, and a prequel story is written to chronicle the events of how a teenage 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 a scene as familiar as any in the Dragon’s Lair game for Bluth and company: an acute lack of financing. The creative team themselves are split as to whether the best medium for a DL movie is live-action or animation.

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). Aping the game on which it is based, the show pauses the action occasionally, offering the audience a chance to make a hypothetical decision on what Dirk should do next. The various possible ramifications are then played out (usually after a commercial break), some of which lead to the hero’s demise. In true Wile E. Coyote fashion, however, Dirk would soon appear unmolested as the correct choice is portrayed. In 1984, the cartoon Space Ace airs as part of CBS’s Saturday morning toon show Saturday Supercade, produced by Ruby Spears. with Ace’s segment replacing Pitfall! starring Pitfall Harry who apparently falls into the blackened pit of the home video game crash. Kimberly is voiced by Nancy Cartwright, who also does voices for NBC toon shows Snorks and Pound Puppies before ending up as the voice of Bart on the long-running The Simpsons on Fox. Saturday Supercade itself gets zapped off the air in August of 1985. Sea Beast and Barnacle Bill is another laser game concept created by Bluth Group, in 1984. While Bluth, Goldman, and company float improvements to the technology like even more advanced graphics, a two-player mode, and full character control, the new Barnacle Bill IP ends up shelved along with movie version Dragon’s Lair: Legend after Bluth and company move back into theatrical animation and accept Steven Spielberg’s offer to do the animation for the more traditional An American Tail, released to theatres in 1986.

The Key(board) to Thayer’s Quest

While Bluth and company move out of video games, Dyer and RDI remain, 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. Utilizing a version of Dyer’s Halcyon home laserdisc game project (see below), 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 is 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.

Gameplay video of Thayer’s Quest, a laserdisc arcade game from RDI, 1984

Thayer’s Quest is a remarkable attempt at recreating the feel of a graphic adventure game in arcade cabinet form. During his travels, Thayer finds various magic items that are all listed on the keyboard, and players must realize where and when to use each item and press the appropriate key. 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.

The Halcyon Days of the Home Laserdisc System

Dyer’s moonshot home laserdisc video game console Halcyon is eventually declared ready for primetime. As well as a game machine, Dyer promises that like its 2001 HAL namesake 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. After the user dons a headset and orients their voice with the unit, they can call out commands and items into the supplied headset during the game to input their actions. Halcyon also has a vocabulary of over 1000 synthesized words. Nearly $2 million in R&D costs has been sunk into the system’s development. The console 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, containing much more animation than the original. It also sports a musical soundtrack provided by The Turtles, aka Flo and Eddie, aka Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. They hit it big with the smash single Happy Together in 1967. Their music for Thayer is recorded with a 360 Systems Digital Synthesizer, which allows real musical instruments to be loaded and played on the keyboard. The other game readied for Halcyon‘s release is called NFL Football, utilizing footage from a Dallas/Redskins game.

Premiering at the 1984 Summer CES in Chicago, units are finally shipped in very limited quantities early in 1985. Due to the high-technology on display, Halcyon 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.

Arcade Laserdisc Games Gunned Down

And so it goes with every entry into the laser game sweepstakes of the 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 Konami/Centuri’s Badlands (1984), Data East’s Bega’s Battle (1983) and Cobra Command (1984), Simutrek’s Cube Quest (1984), Stern Electronics’ Goal to Go (1983), Taito’s Laser-Grand Prix (1983), Universal’s Super Don Quixote (1984).

Attempting to circumvent the common complaint that laserdisc games aren’t very interactive, Williams bides its time entering the field until the release their spectacular Star Rider in late-1983. It is developed at a cost of $4 million, with John Newcomer and RJ Mical as designers and Python Anghelo conceptualizing the graphics, and CGI house Computer Creations producing the unique CGI worlds of Anghelo. The game allows players to race a jet bike through numerous surreal worlds, and has the hook of moving the on-screen track in response to player controls, allowing riders to feel like they’re more involved in the action. Unfortunately,the time-lag needed to perfect the gameplay and technology means the game is released as the sands are shifting underneath arcade games, and laser games in particular. It is also saddled with a price tag for operators of upwards of $5000, so after initially riding high in the game sales charts, Star Rider rides off into the horizon as the video game market slumps.

Video of all the ways Buck can die in Konami’s Badlands laserdisc arcade game

Crazy Like Atari Firefox

Industry leader Atari gives the laser game genre a go with Firefox, a tie-in with the 1982 Clint Eastwood action movie of the same name, made by Warner Bros. The no-nonsense, gravelly-voiced no-nonsense tough guy Eastwood seems like he’d be a tough nut to crack to help make a video game.  However, according to Atari’s coin-op division marketing head Don Osborne, turns out the guy who played Dirty Harry and nameless gunfighters from numberless westerns is a huge fan of video games, playing pretty much every product Atari ever put out. Not only that, but Eastwood has an important role to play in the development of the game, reportedly consulting with Atari engineers and programmers during its development. The Firefox arcade game charges players to steal an advanced supersonic fighter jet from the Russians and bring it home to Mother One base in the Arctic. The game features edited movie visuals culled from hours of footage, some unseen in the finished film, with the total footage equaling at least 12 minutes of play time. Atari’s laser game also sports 28 digitized dialog phrases from Eastwood, including extra lines recorded by the actor, and a specially created music soundtrack all presented in stereo sound. Similar to M.A.C.H. 3, Firefox has players swooping over filmed landscapes while shooting at computer generated targets, although Atari’s game adds the ability to change altitude at certain points, taking to the open skies to conserve fuel or stay low to the ground for better cover and shake off radar detection. In the harder escape paths available to players during the level selection screen offering four different routes, day turns to night and pilots must rely on their display to control the craft. A new laser disc player co-designed by North American Philips and Atari provides quick access to the data on the disc, eliminating the “blanking” that has plagued other games of the genre. Firefox has another ace up its sleeve as well, in the form of the same solid-feeling flight yolk used in Atari’s classic vector shooter Star Wars. 

Dubbed a LASERVIDEO product, Firefox‘s cockpit cabinet makes its debut at the October 1983 AMOA show in New Orleans, along with six other laser game efforts made by various companies. However, literally only the cabinet for Firefox debuts at the show. No game is running inside it, due to what Don Osborne explains as “technical difficulties”, and trade paper Cash Box describing in more detail as “problems with the disc software”. Two attempts are made to get Firefox to read the laserdisc, and even after flying the “master disc” in by private Lear jet from Grass Valley the game remains grounded for the entire show. This creates a bit of flak in Atari’s strategy to have its new laser efforts help the company out of financial difficulties: Atari posts a loss of $180.3 million for 3rd quarter, 1983. Firefox does eventually take off, beginning shipping to arcades in early February of 1984. The impressive sit-down cockpit version of the game, however, has an albatross around its neck: it runs arcade operators between $13,000 to $14,000 per unit.

Atari struts its stuff on March 15 1984, holding a press conference officially introducing the game. Covered by major press outlets, present at the gathering are co-designers Mike Hally and Moe Shore, who explain the technology behind their creation. As Firefox project lead, Hally already has a big notch on his belt… he’s the designer of blockbuster Atari vector game Star Wars. After he and Shore make their presentation, Firefox movie star Clint Eastwood takes the stage and puts the game through its paces. Atari also utilizes the same promotional techniques they had with the Star Wars vector game in 1983, creating video promo packages that news outlets can edit into their nightly broadcasts, and thereby get priceless free promotion for their product. Atari also states at the presser for Firefox that they plan on releasing around four more laserdisc games by the end of 1984… a highly optimistic forecast, with hindsight on the fate of laser games being 20-20.

Fallout from Dragon’s Lair: The Lights Go Out for 80’s Laser Games/American Laser Games Resurgence

While Dragon’s Lair has been a massive hit, gamers rapidly tire of the limited gameplay offered by it and the influx of all these other laser games following in its wake. Coin-op video game sales are cut in half from one billion in sales the previous year to $500 million in 1983. Perceived by the trade as the knight in shining live-video armour riding in to save their profits, laser games as a subgenre of video games have completely dropped off the radar 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 Albuquerque, NM in the late 80’s by Robert Grebe. It is originally incorporated as ICAT, makers of video-based situational trainers for police officers and military personnel. After noticing how much fun the participants are having using their training system, they decide to enter the arcade game market. Seasoned arcade game veteran Stan Jarocki, who presided over the heady days of the Pac-Man era over at Bally/Midway as their marketing man in the early 80’s, sees enough promise with the system to come out of retirement to work for ALG. Old-west shooting-gallery game Mad Dog McCree is probably ALG’s most popular release, although the plastic gun used in the game is not era-specific: it uses a .357 Magnum as its model, and will shoot as fast as the player can squeeze the trigger. Other releases by the company include The Last Bounty Hunter, Crime Patrol, Crime Patrol 2: The Drug Wars, Fast Draw, Gallagher’s Gallery,  Mad Dog McCree II: The Lost Gold, Shootout at Old Tucson, Space Pirates, and Who Shot Johnny Rock? are all produced by ALG. In 1992 the company even threatens to release a “live action” driving game, signing a deal with 1992 Indy 500 winner Galles Motor Company to produce a laser-based racing game, with co-owner Rick Galles to appear giving racing tips, as well as providing cars and a pit crew for filming. The Driving Game never makes it off the starting line.

The ALG game system initially revolves around an Amiga 500 computer, providing for easy superimposition of video graphics like scores and hit squibs. In early 1993. the company enters an exclusive deal with Atari Games Corp. to distribute ALG products in Europe and Asia, while still taking care of their own business at home. The company eventually incorporates technology from the 3DO home video game system. This helps their arcade products find a natural home as games for the 3DO as well as other disc-based gaming systems of the early 90’s like the CD-i, Sega CD, and PC CD-ROM. By 1993, ALG is posting $16 million in sales, the same year they sell off the ICAT video training division.

JUMP: Full Motion Vidiots have fun with ALG’s Space Pirates, YouTube

The company releases their first fully computer graphics game in 1994, called Orbatak, with players smashing their orbs Into other enemy orbs via a trackball controller while rolling across multiple playfields collecting various power-ups. Hoping to attract more of the female segment of video game players, ALG moves to cater to that relatively untapped demographic with a new division called Games for Her Interactive in May of 1995. Their first product is released the same year, an FMV dating sim for PC-CD-ROM titled McKenzie & Co. With revenues in 1996 projected to be about half of the $16 million they were the previous year, heading into 1997 ALG undergoes some radical changes, replacing president and founder Robert Grebe with Jan Claesson and shutting down its arcade game division. Her Interactive is spun off from ALG, and eventually buys out their former mother company. Her Interactive finds success in a line of Nancy Drew adventure/mystery games, although their ambitious bid for fantasy game glory with the PlayStation 3D action-adventure game Shining Sword is ultimately cancelled.

Rick Dyer’s Time Traveler Laserdisc Game – Hologram Arcade Game?

Rick Dyer himself comes back to the FMV stage in 1991, in a bid to revolutionize arcade games again, with Sega’s release of “hologram” laserdisc arcade game Time Traveler. The game features display technology first introduced as a tech demo at the March 1991 American Coin Machine Exposition (ACME), as well as the Summer CES that year. The unique display process is called MicroTheatre by its developer, With Design in Mind. The system transmits recorded live-action sequences via laserdisc to a monitor, which is reflected off a quarter-sphere concave mirror inside the cabinet, causing the images to appear “holographic” in pseudo-3D on a stage above the mirror. Said mirror being produced for Time Traveler by an aviation company that manufactures canopies for jet fighter aircraft. 

The result of a $2 million budget just in its research and development, this imaging technology paired with a Time Traveler FMV game created by Dyer’s company is unveiled by Sega as a full-fledged arcade game at their distributors meeting in June of 1991. In it, players control the actions of old-west Marshal Gram (portrayed by stunt co-ordinator Steve Wilbur) in his quest to…do you see it coming?…rescue the Princess Kyi-La (LeAnne McVicker, Las Vegas aerobics instructor) who has been kidnapped by some evil timelord. All of the action takes place on a surreal, sparsely decorated set with a black background. Along with some player input as to what paths to take in the story, a full playthrough of Time Traveler covers 20 random scenes out of a pool of a possible 60. As players progress, the amount of time given to make correct decisions is reduced. As a hidden bonus, if someone holds down both the player one and player two select buttons and presses down on the joystick during the attract mode, they can watch Dyer cavorting around the stage with his young son on his shoulders.

While Time Traveler certainly offers an interesting visual effect, the gameplay is still “on a rail” and the sets and acting certainly leave a lot to be desired. It does, however, offer the innovation of letting players actually travel back in time: when Marshal Gram dies, one can immediately hit a flashing button on the control panel and activate a Time Reversal Cube and rewind things to before their mistake, and try again. One of these cubes is given at the start of the game, with other available via a merchant throughout the game at the cost of a token. Factory set at 75 cents a play, the visual flash of Sega’s Time Traveler eventually pulls in $18 million in sales. Further arcade games utilizing more refined versions of the holographic technology are promised by Sega.

Beyond Dragon’s Lair

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 called Kingdom: The Far Reaches aka Reaches, on Philips’ CD-i platform, Panasonic’s 3DO, and MS-DOS, with Windows and Mac versions following later. A sequel is planned but falls through along with the CD-i technology. Here, the character names have been changed but the artwork and gameplay remain relatively the same. While this game is a rejig of the original arcade game, Dyer is finally able to fully realize his Tolkien-fuelled obsession with the initial 1996 Interplay release of the definitive Kingdom computer game. Shadoan, aka Kingdom II: Shadoan, is produced with a budget of 3 million dollars, putting it in the top ten of the most expensive games produced at the time. The plot and characters from Thayer’s Quest are redesigned in this sequel, 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 is the first game to be mixed in 5.1 six-channel DTS sound and 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. Both The Far Reaches and Shadoan go on to win numerous awards and accolades from game reviewers, including the re-release of Kingdom II: Shadoan from Dyer’s Virtual Image Productions receiving the Best of Show award at the 1998 MacWorld. The Shadoan series is to continue with games coming out every two years or so, such as the planned Kingdom III: Journey into the Great Abyss and Kingdom IV: Treasure of the Argent King, although these sequels end up dropped like Dirk the Daring down an air shaft.

 

Even though laserdisc games succumb to a thousand Dirk-like deaths, Dragon’s Lair lives on. In April of 1983, in a startling move, Coleco licenses the home video game rights to Dragon’s Lair for 2 million dollars, although this deal also includes first options on further Bluth and Co. video games. There are reports that Coleco plans to develop a laserdisc add-on for their ADAM computer, to be sold at a price of $150 or even less than $100, and a laser version of Dragon’s Lair to go with it. Although timelines such as ‘late in 1984’ and ‘beginning of 1985’ are touted for its release, this add-on never materializes, although Dragon’s Lair does make it to the ADAM in conventional graphics form in 1984. The various other  incarnations of Dragon’s Lair product have generated hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. 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, Windows CD-ROM and DVD. 14 years after the original is released, it ends up on the pedestal of history as one of only three videogames displayed in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., alongside fellow trendsetters PONG and Pac-Man.

Further games based on the material are released by Readysoft Incorporated for computer platforms of the time, starting with Dragon’s Lair: Escape from Singe’s Castle, developed by Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media, Inc. and released in 1990. The game contains the levels that were left out of the original ReadySoft computer version of Dragon’s Lair due to space constraints. Space Ace gets a similar treatment, with sequel Space Ace II: Borf’s Revenge zooming in for computers of the era in 1991 with scenes that were left out of the original computer release, with some new animation added. Following this is the computer game Dragon’s Lair III: The Curse of Mordread, developed by Don Bluth Multimedia, Inc., appearing in 1992. 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 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 is occasionally taken off the shelf and dusted off, as rumours begin surfacing at the end of the millennium of its development. And Bluth and Dyer create 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: Return to the Lair, released in 2002. The game is put out by Blue Byte Software, best known as the makers of the Settlers series. Distribution duties are later handled by Ubi Soft. The game 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 purloined princess.

Dirk and company also grace the pages of a 6-issue comic book series, published by Arcana Comics in 2008. Presenting a story that fleshes out the events of Daphne’s capture and Dirk’s battle to rescue her from Singe, they feature a plot by Andy Mangles and art by Fabio Languna… although Don Bluth lends a hand, drawing the cover for issue #1.

Although the arcade laserdisc has met a permanent demise, Dirk, Daphne and the rest of the gang continue as some of the most enduring characters in video game history. I’ll slip this in here, near 20 years after I wrote this original article… Netflix has inked a deal to run a live-action Dragon’s Lair movie, with funnyman Ryan Reynolds floated as Dirk the Daring, as related by the Hollywood Reporter on March 27, 2020. Further word from Reynolds leads one to believe that Netflix’s version of Dragon’s Lair would be some kind of interactive movie, as in their 2018 Bandersnatch experiment with the makers of popular anthology series Black Mirror. Personally, I would think that a full-length animated Dragon’s Lair movie, with Don Bluth artwork, would be a more pleasurable resolution of this tale, but still… if anyone can handle retro game nostalgia IP with a careful, knowing and hilarious hand, it’s Ryan “Deadpool” Reynolds, star of spot-on video game movie Free Guy.

And to those brave people who continue to honour the valiant struggles of Dirk, Daphne and company, I say: Lead on, adventurers…your quest awaits!