Dragon's Lair

Kithani

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This game was before my time.

I had the opportunity to play it at a private party where the host happened to be an aracade nerd. For whatever reason he collected a dozen arcade machines in his garage. They were of course all rigged to cost you nothing and just play. He had Donkey Kong and some other ones I knew but I had never seen this before. I knew immediately that it's visuals were amazing. Especially for the arcade era.

But god damn if you could consider this a game at all. It's a series of extremely punishing quick time events (as we know them today). I failed a lot but managed to make some progress. Our party man was drunk as fuck and just plowed through it like it was nothing. Not even paying attention to his actions. Which was impressive in its own way. No doubt about it he fed a lot of quarters to this machine in the 80s and had a certain affection for it like you do.

It's 100% unique and amazing I agree. The arcade aspect of it is shit though.
This dude has a cool YouTube channel where he plays oldschool arcade games and calculates how bullshit / expensive they were to beat back in the day.



Dragon's Lair came out to
$106.98
for him to beat it in 2025 dollars, lmao
 
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Chanur

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When I was really little they had a chain of arcades in Southern California called Milkyway. My mom worked at one so I'd get coins to play Dragons Lair and proceed to die immediately because I was barely tall enough to play. Good times.
 
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Lenardo

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One of my favs is dragons lair, another was gauntlet. Elf/wizard/warrior/valkyrie on the console with 4 stations....
 
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Kithani

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One of my favs is dragons lair, another was gauntlet. Elf/wizard/warrior/valkyrie on the console with 4 stations....
GREEN ARCHER NEEDS FOOD BADLY

(I'm probs younger than you so I played the Gauntlet Legends / Dark Legacy games in my day)
 
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Armadon

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This dude has a cool YouTube channel where he plays oldschool arcade games and calculates how bullshit / expensive they were to beat back in the day.



Dragon's Lair came out to
$106.98
for him to beat it in 2025 dollars, lmao

Lol I still can't beat it even with unlimited lives. This is in my game room.
 

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Dr.Retarded

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We used to have our b'days at Diamond Jims or Aladdin's Castle each year and they'd put everything on free play. That was the only way we ever made any progress in Dragon's Lair, it may have even been a sequel at that point, would have been 1992 - 1996 or so. There were a bunch of games (99.9%) that were going to be bottomless quarter pits no matter how good you were. Especially stuff like Time Cop, a lot of Cruising USA, few others I can't remember. Just not really humanely possible to beat on one quarter. Oh, we beat the Terminator 2 arcade game that way, Aerosmith's Revolution X or whatever it was called? And Turtles in Time. Man, those were the days.
Man, we didn't get the free play birthday party, just double your dollar and a bunch of tokens to start. Wonder if it was something with the package or a specific location. Those are always the best birthday parties as a kid.

We did manage to beat Terminator 2, but my favorite was the Aliens arcade game because that's when I was still collecting the comics and stuff. That one's surprisingly didn't take as much money to beat.
 
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Dr.Retarded

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One of my favs is dragons lair, another was gauntlet. Elf/wizard/warrior/valkyrie on the console with 4 stations....
We used to play that one a bunch. The dungeons & dragons four-player game was also pretty awesome. We used to play back in high school when we hit up the mall. I don't think we ever beat it.
 

Mahes

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I watched people who could play this game on $0.50. It was something to behold and fun to just watch. The guy who was probably the best of all the players I watched was successful at winning the game with one life. I watched one of the two times he was able to do it. I was hoping for a different ending but it did not have one. It really should have. I cannot imagine the amount of money they spent to get that good.

I...sucked at the game. I managed to get good enough to get through just a few of the areas.

It is definitely up there on the list of all time arcade classics.
 

Maximis Velocity

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I took my kids to alleycats and was shocked at how poor the selection is for games now in the arcade. It is shit compared to even putt putt in the 80's-90's
 

Cybsled

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There’s no more arcade culture anymore. 80s and 90s they were packed and had all sorts of games. I used to have friends I met there and people all knew who was good at certain types of games

Now you go into one and it’s 90% ticket games and maybe 10% regular video games
 
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Lenardo

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<--59. so grew up at the height of the arcade craze. i suck at fighting games so skipped those. but played pretty much everything else.
i blew SO much money from when i was ~12-20 yrs old. i lived near 2 malls, one had an aladdin's castle and the other had a no "brand" arcade would take me 30 minutes to Walk to either one. the Aladdin's Castle mall i had to walk thru a field, cross a major highway by going under a bridge(river not road bridge)- OR crossing on the railroad bridge. if i went to the movie theatre that had ~20 games there...

loved track & field, could get sub 9.8 second (i think 9.1s it has been a LONG time) on the 100 meter consistantly by spamming that run button.

god i miss arcades like this, cyb is right 90% ticket games nowadays.
 
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Sorce

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<--59. so grew up at the height of the arcade craze. i suck at fighting games so skipped those. but played pretty much everything else.
i blew SO much money from when i was ~12-20 yrs old. i lived near 2 malls, one had an aladdin's castle and the other had a no "brand" arcade would take me 30 minutes to Walk to either one. the Aladdin's Castle mall i had to walk thru a field, cross a major highway by going under a bridge(river not road bridge)- OR crossing on the railroad bridge. if i went to the movie theatre that had ~20 games there...

loved track & field, could get sub 9.8 second (i think 9.1s it has been a LONG time) on the 100 meter consistantly by spamming that run button.

god i miss arcades like this, cyb is right 90% ticket games nowadays.

I remember the old pencil trick for one of those track and field games, to help push both buttons in the right rhythm.

We were pretty poor so I stopped wasting my quarters on Dragon's Lair, but, man, did I want to beat that game.

The arcades in the 80s were amazing, but there were still fun times to be had in the early 90s, as well. Street Fighter 2, Turbo was insanely popular at the mall arcade where I lived. I even had a guy that wanted to take it in the parking lot because he couldn't beat me.

Good times.
 
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Kithani

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Light gun games were pretty fantastic in the 90s
Loved Gauntlet Legends / Dark Legacy
Simpsons/TMNT/Xmen beat em ups
Honorable mention to Cybersled of course
 
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Chanur

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There’s no more arcade culture anymore. 80s and 90s they were packed and had all sorts of games. I used to have friends I met there and people all knew who was good at certain types of games

Now you go into one and it’s 90% ticket games and maybe 10% regular video games
Funny you mention ticket games. I'm in my 40s so I too grew up with arcades. I just saw a video about a big arcade opening near here. Dude was walking through it and it was a shit ton of ticket games and claw games. Very depressing let me tell ya.
 
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Homsar

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All those games were huge money pits, if you had massive rolls of quarters you could keep playing but that was never the case
 

Armadon

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We have a cool arcade/bar in downtown Phoenix with all the old school games. It's pretty fun to go every once in a while.
 
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Cybsled

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Light gun games were pretty fantastic in the 90s
Loved Gauntlet Legends / Dark Legacy
Simpsons/TMNT/Xmen beat em ups
Honorable mention to Cybersled of course

For some of the light gun games where the gun was on a flexible tether as opposed to being stuck on a rigid stand, I used to buy player 1 and player 2 and just go guns akimbo lol. You could basically just rapid fire everything and alternate your reloads so you were never not throwing stuff at enemies

Cybersled was the first game I ever won a local arcade tournament in. I used to love playing that game in the arcade (who would have thought? lol). I remember there was an uneven number of entrants in the tournament so I got fucked on the seeding and got put into multiple elimination matches in a row as a result, but I smoked everyone in it lol. I remember for the final round they made us pick the stage setting where it was super foggy. I literally ran circles around the dude strafing him and got to bait him into revealing his position in the fog. Grand prize was like 25 bucks in tokens
 
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Miguex

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When I was 12 I found 80 credits on a Donkey Kong game at the local pizzeria, pre cell phones of course. I played them all and came home 3 hours late. Grounded for 2 months. Totally worth it.
 
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