Dragon's Lair: Escape from Singe's Castle

In early 1990s, Readysoft released a number of animated action games that became instant hits on the Laserdisc platform, although their PC counterparts suffered poor sales in comparison.

This is by no means surprising: although these games boast very high production values and excellent animations which are created by Don Bluth Studios, their value as a game is sorely lacking. These game are little more than PC version of "choose-your-own-adventure" books, in which gameplay is boiled down to choosing an action from multiple choices. PC versions are, naturally, cut-down versions from Laserdisc originals, with many sequences missing altogether. It wasn't until the advent of CD-ROM that Readysoft (now sold to Digital Leisure) started making "deluxe" version of these games and put them on CD-ROM and later DVD. Treat the games as fun and humorous computer cartoons, but don't expect them to be involving games.

If you like any of these disk-based versions, check out the deluxe DVD/CD-ROM versions at Digital Leisure's products page. Excerpt from Rob's original review at CW#3:

"[Dragon Lair is the] PC conversion of Don Bluth's 1983 laserdisc arcade game... or well, not exactly! Escape from Singe's Castle features scenes from the arcade game that didn't make it into the original PC Dragon's Lair release from 1989 by Merit Software. Players control Dirk the Daring as he struggles his way through a dungeon to fight Singe, the Dragon, and rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne. With limited movement allowed, the game's main emphasis is on its heart-stopping graphics. Great animations and sounds make it worthwhile but gameplay only consists of pressing left, right, up, down or fire at the right time until you've made it through all the scenes. Not really what I would call an entertaining game.

Still, if you're a fan of the arcade game, you sure might like it. Check out the other two Dragon's Lair games released by ReadySoft, DL2: Time Warp and DL3: The Curse of Mordread. In case you wonder, the "fire"-key is "0" on the numerical pad."

Review By HOTUD