Back in 1990 when I bought my first computer, an Amiga 500, I came across a game called Dragon's Lair. It wasn't your ordinary game in that you controlled a sprite and either killed or doged other onscreen sprites, you basically controlled an animated character and decided his next path for him.
The aim of the game was to lead him through the maze of obstacles within an evil wizards castle, into the dragons lair to save the princess. Is there any other better romantic story to be told? No, not really, its just a matter of how it is told.
In 1983, ex-disney animator Don Bluth and computer programmer Rick Dyer both came up with Dragons Lair. A game based on classical animated imagery and a choose-the-right path style of gaming to produce the cult classic, Dragons Lair.
And now, for the first time in its 15 year history, it comes to a format that can do it proper justice. The original incarnation was on the now bulky, but then leading edge, laserdisc format that would reside within your standard coin-op box, controlled by a simple joystick and push button control.
The dvd takes it a step further with its ability to easily skip to different title tracks on the fly and to different chapters with ease. So how does the 15 year old animated game hold up?
For a 15 year old laserdisc master to be transferred to dvd, the best quality you are going to get is laserdisc quality in itself. What goes in is what comes out, but you'd be surprised at the quality. It must have been a damn good master or someone took the extra attention in porting this ageing game to the 500+ lines of resolution found on dvd.
The quality has held up well and does give a good guide that animation indeed will not suffer from mpeg artifacting as many skeptics have come to believe is the cause for Disneys delay in releasing their a-list of titles.
The only bad video you will see is the original source material Don Bluth studios used for their promotional material back in 1983-84. This stuff is scary and shows how good dvd can reproduce BAD video. :)
On the dvd cover, it states "crisp, powerful AC-3 sound" which is correct but it may mislead people to believe it is 5.1 surround when in fact it is more likely to be mono or simple 2 channel stereo.
To be fair, there was no need to do a 5.1 remaster of any sort which would keep the original sountrack intact. The sound is clear enough for a game but its not your earth shattering bass or surround enveloping musical score.