![]() Dirk, Daphne, and the titular dragon appear on shirts, lunch boxes, and eventually star in a single-season Saturday morning cartoon. Not only is Dragon's Lair a certified success in the arcades despite the occasional downtime of the cabinets or the eventual realization that while the animation and narrative are rich, the gameplay is decidedly shallow, but it spawns a pop culture phenomenon. Worried operators observed slowing numbers after an explosive 1982 and were desperate for a hit. Industry Rescue? Still, the quarters keep rolling in - and the arcade industry cannot be happier. The players are swapped for the more advanced LD-V1000, which alleviates some, but not all, of the pressure. Long hours and cabinet bumping are hard on the players, leading to unfortunate downtime. The first batch of cabinets shipped a Pioneer PR-7820, a serviceable player that's fine for home use, but hardly ready for the arcades. Dragon's Lair is so popular, the laser disc players inside the cabinet struggle almost as valiantly as Dirk the Daring to keep up with demand. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the Dragon's Lair. You control the actions of a daring adventurer, finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. And really, how can you not fumble around your pockets for two quarters when you have an attract mode - the demo shown while nobody is actually playing the machine - that bellow this over a full score: Dragon's Lair. ![]() Within the first eight months, Dragon's Lair pulls in over $32 million, enticing play after play with its "controllable cartoon" gameplay that is nothing like the other titans of the arcades at the time, like Dig-Dug or Ms. The fifty-cent price of admission does little to dampen enthusiasm. Gamers stand in long lines just to hop on the machine and slash through some Giddy-Goons or negotiate those infernal fire ropes. Dirk's Debut Any concerns are laid to rest when the game finally does debut in arcades. If Dragon's Lair is a failure - perhaps gamers just don't quite "get it" or too many arcade operators balk at the cabinet's $4,000 price tag - the curtain drops and the future of the follow-up game, Space Ace, is brought into question. The animation budget alone is over $1.3 million, and the added expense of the laser disc players and cabinets is hardly chump change. The team is racing against the clock to beat SEGA to the arcades with the first laser disc game. Dragon's Lair took approximately six years to go from concept to cabinet. We've listed every copy of the game featured in the picture after the break.Their vision was not without peril, though. ![]() Bolton mentions that the image doesn't contain the whole collection, as a few copies are in storage. The picture above contains 47 versions of the game and its sequels. However, he hasn't got them all, telling Joystiq that he's missing the mobile phone version from 2005 (because it wasn't available in his area) and the Amstrad CPC versions from the mid-'80s. Bolton owns almost every version of Dragon's Lair ever released, which is saying a lot considering that game has been ported more times over the last 30 years than a Carnival Cruise ship. Syd Bolton, who runs the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Canada, really enjoys Dragon's Lair in all its many, many incarnations.
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