Dragon's Lair
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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you try to not play any arcade if you haven't seen anyone else play first, that cost you money :) My experience with Dragons Lair is that it was a nice game to watch, and a bad game to play, it was expensive and as someone else said in the thread it requires you to memorize the movements, it was never random
Quick time events are such a garbage game design concept
As an interactive method of storytelling, I think they're fine (but not my thing). I think the problems really emerge when you try to combine them with the revenue-driving elements of an arcade machine - the challenges need to be designed to kill you so you'll keep paying rather than giving you choice or staking you in to the story further.
It wasn’t that hard if you kept feeding it quarters. It took a lot of trial and error, but having infinite lives means it was eventually beatable.
This is the real answer. Arcade games weren't made to be beaten, they are made to extract maximum quarters. Most of these games don't even have a real "ending", and why would the devs bother? They already got your money.
It wasn't a case of "why bother," it was a case of evolution.
The original intent of arcade video games was to obtain a high score. You played until you died, and the game progressively got harder until you choked, or it hit some arbitrary limit of difficulty and went on forever, or in some infamous cases (Pacman) crashed. These video games were a conceptual extension of the arcade games that existed before: Pinball machines. Pinball games don't have an end state, you play indefinitely for a high score until you choke.
Arcade video games could have endings, and even though in the very early days they didn't: Crystal Castles was probably the first, in 1983. Even then, after reaching the "end" the game would loop so you could play it indefinitely until you died. Because that's how arcade games worked. A lot of games starting from the 1990's and beyond had endings of some description or another because they were in some way narrative based. In most cases (with the exception of some 1 on 1 fighters) you can still play another loop after the ending.
Arcade games weren’t made to be beaten
By perfecting it on the Amiga first
I remember watching a guy play an arcade game back in about 1990, I think it was spy hunter or something but the car could do a jump and side scrolled to the right. Not sure. Anyways, over the course of about 4 hours this guy plunked about $100 worth of quarters into the machine until he beat it.
10-year-old me was, uh, impressed to say the least. I tried playing it but I only had two quarters and lasted less than 3 minutes.
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There was a remaster that was put out a few years ago: steam, gog. It was a nice piece of nostalgia finding it. From playing it on arcade difficulty and comparing it against the easier settings, it was pretty obvious this game was meant to suck up quarters. You just had to have everything memorized.
The mechanics of that game were more like a very fast choose your own adventure than the traditional move joystick left, spaceship go left mechanics.
Because the graphics were coming off a laser disk, they didn't generate on the spot. There were predetermined outcomes to every move.
When people figured this out, information started to collect in the magazines, and the game became beatable.
This is correct. I remember getting patterns from a magazine.
Also, there are flashes on-screen that could guide you if you are quick enough.
ETA: Just watched a walkthrough of this game. I've never seen the ending before today! I'm certain horny teenager me would have just loved to see the princess's huge nipples.
My older brother's friend worked at an arcade. He opened up the panel and loaded this game up with credits for me. I still never got close to beating it
It's simple: they didn't.
I (my mom) spent so much money on this game. It was in the laundromat near our home. My little brother and I would die so early on. Back then it took some time to figure what was going on with this game and what to do. We were so young so that's all I recall.
The only arcade that had that game charge $2 or something like that for each credit. I tried it once and then never again.
It was 50 cents per play at launch.
It’s seriously so hard. I think I’ve never made it past the second scene
Billy Mitchell or Todd Rodgers might claim to.
Cries in Sinistar. "Run, coward!!!"
Lots of quarters. Arcade games were not designed to be beatable with one quarter. They wouldn’t make money if they did.
I was in an arcade all day for multiple days watching others play. After four days of this I played and after two attempts I was able to finish it.
I wasn't great at Dragon's Lair, but I got super far on Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp.
lots of pizza and tokens plus summer vacation
I watched someone beat it.... but no I was never able to do it
I remember Dan from game grumps being really good at that game.