Welcome to our review of the Dragon’s Lair Trilogy on Nintendo Switch, 3 classic games hit the eShop and boy, what a blast from the past this was!
Included are all three arcade classics! Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp.
In Dragon’s Lair, you play the heroic Dirk the Daring, a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon!
Space Ace will have you take control of Ace – Defender of justice, truth, and the planet Earth! Ace is being attacked by the evil Commander Borf. Struggle with Dexter to regain his manhood. Destroy the Infanto-Ray. Defeat the evil Borf! Be valiant space warrior, the fate of Earth is in your hands!
Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp once again has you leading Dirk on a perilous quest! Spirited away to a wrinkle in time by the evil wizard Mordroc, Princess Daphne will be forced to marry the wicked Mordroc unless Dirk can save her. Once the casket of doom has opened, Mordroc will place the death ring upon Daphne’s finger in marriage, and she will be lost forever in the Time Warp.
Originally these were laserdisc games and at the times, these formats were extremely limited in how to display game material. While others used completely other techniques, they opted for animation and the limited use of its input resulted in a game with a small animation, followed by the need to press a button or a direction. Press the right one and move to the next sequence. Every few sequences becomes a new respawn point and thus you move on.
The idea behind the games is easy, it looks fun and it is quite fast-paced in this iteration on Nintendo Switch. With the exception of the first game that seems to be borking on my switch, this is quite the experience. To be clear, the first game jumps from one instance to the other for me after dying. As long as I do not miss my cue, I will advance properly but after I do miss… Mayhem happens.
Scenes switch from one to the other, clearly not in the right order and it is driving me crazy. Mind you only the first game has this issue on my side and the other 2 games do not. I do thoroughly enjoy them regardless but the best about these games is the nostalgia factor on them. I used to be a very big fan of Don Bluth and his animations and this game reminds me of my childhood. Not just the animation but in the second game, there is this very big throwback to Alice in Wonderland and damn, just damn. It shows there was so much more out there than just Disney.
While this game is a true feat in clicking the right input at the right timing, it is also quite annoying when you get to the point that you want to watch the story but click wrong because you were distracted, right? Well, this Trilogy each time comes with the option to just watch the story unfold without having to click the actual buttons. The story mode can just be watched and within a mere 15 minutes, you have seen the entire first game unfold before your very eyes.
As much as I liked this, it does show the length of this game is not the longest and while there are 3 games in total, this is not going to be a trilogy where you will be spending hundreds of hours, maybe a few at most. Nothing wrong there, but do be warned this is not a lengthy game.
In conclusion, Dragon’s Lair Trilogy might not last very long once you get the hang of it, but for its age and all, this is quite the game you will enjoy. Everything considered this game deserves a solid 8.
8/10
Tested on Nintendo Switch
