Dirk the Daring is a heroic, if clumsy knight. When Princess Daphne was kidnapped by the dragon, Singe, and taken to his castle... Dirk set out to rescue her. Due to a lack of disk and memory space in the systems of the day, the port of the arcade game, Dragon's Lair was split into two parts. The first part covered the half of the game dealing with entering Singe's Castle and saving the Princess. This second part, named Dragon's Lair II: Escape from Singe's Castle completes the game, continuing the adventure of Dirk the Daring after slaying Singe the Dragon.
Dirk the Daring is controlled by the player, who views Dirk's actions on the screen from third-person. The game is reactive and players must press the right controller direction or action button at the right time to have Dirk avoid traps, defeat monsters and otherwise stay alive.
Dragons Lair is a legend among video games. When it arrived in the arcade scene it was like nothing you've ever seen before: The game was an interactive cartoon, where Dirk the Daring, a dashing young knight, enters the evil Singe the Dragon's castle to rescue the beatiful princess Daphne. Despite the flawed gameplay, it was a hit. A beatiful hit that is.
How does the DOS-game fair? Well enough. The dos version, titled "Dragon's Lair II - Escape from Singe's Castle" is a sequel of the original released only for the home computers. Despite this, its still the same; Dirk goes in the Castle, dodges traps and saves the girl, all in glorious dos-animations. Its understandable that you cant get the same quality as in the arcade Dragon's Lair games, but its still a good try.
So how does Dragon's Lair actually play? Well, its kind of like Interactive cartoon. You have to move the Dirk out of the harms way or help him to take out the baddies. In game words, you have to choose your action with joystick before Dirk gets killed. And mark my words: If you dont do anything or you do something wrong, Dirk really gets killed. There's no different ways to survive the scenes: You have to do it right.
This makes the gameplay very flawed. Many times when playing this, you do something wrong and when you're out of lives, you start out from the beginning. Its a huge game of trial-and-error. Altough some of the times there's something flashing, as a sign what you should do, most of the players usually end up guessing the next action.
Despite the gameplay flaw, Dragon's Lair still has that charm. Okay, its not the same charm as in the arcades, but charm nonetheless. I think the best way to enjoy the game is to finish it, memorize the whole game and replay it or play it with a walktrough.
Oh, and Princess Daphne is a one hot chick.
The joystick actions can be done on num-pad keys, arrow keys or with joystick, which has to be calibrated first. To use the sword, press 0 on the num-pad.
Remember: When you press something, you decide Dirk's next action. Dont press twice or do rapid-fire as you might accidently choose the same move for the next action. Sometimes you have to push the right action before something happens or at the right time. You'l get a hang on it eventually.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Dragon's Lair: Escape from Singe's Castle have also downloaded:
Dragon's Lair (1993), Dragon's Lair III: The Curse of Mordread, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, Dragon's Lair (1989), Dragon's Lair 3D: Return to the Lair, Space Ace II: Borf's Revenge, Space Ace (1994), Space Ace
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