Dragon's Lair HD comes to iPad [Joystiq]

[DP ServBot]

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2010/11/dragonip2ad.jpg (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/02/dragons-lair-hd-comes-to-ipad/)
Hello, my name is Justin McElroy, and I play a character called "Justin McElroy" on the popular Joystiq web site and podcast. I hope you'll indulge me for a second as I regale you with a story of my misspent youth. When I was growing up, I was always transfixed by FMV games. I begged and pleaded for a Sega CD, I've finished Dracula Unleashed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gOPpLXEOS4) more times than I care to admit ... hell, I own two copies of Wirehead (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9hHdFbGevg). To this day, I don't understand the draw of these oft-clunky classics, but it's nothing I can escape or reason away. Before I'd reached my 15th birthday, I swore to friends, family, anyone who would listen that I would one day be the "world's greatest FMV gaming journalist."

You, with the privilege of a dozen years of insight on my younger self, know how this story ends. FMV games have, for reasons beyond me, fallen by the wayside. You now know that the deviant, cretinous masses would prefer to see digital puppets dance on a screen than real humans -- their brethren -- leading out real, interactive drama in front of real, low-quality cameras.

But today, if only for a moment, I have managed to wash the bitter flavor of unfulfilled dreams from my palate. For today, I have written a post about The 7th Guest on iPhone, and I'm following it up with this:

An HD version of Dragon's Lair is now on iPad. It costs five dollars.

That's two FMV posts ... in a row. Maybe a drop in the bucket to 15-year-old Justin, who dreamed of visiting the set of Sewer Shark 3 and sitting down to heartfelt, career-spanning interviews with Rusty Dillen (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0226869/). But today, for nearly 30-year-old Justin, it's enough.

God bless.http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.joystiq.com/media/feedlogo.gif (http://www.joystiq.com)Dragon's Lair HD comes to iPad (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/02/dragons-lair-hd-comes-to-ipad/) originally appeared on Joystiq (http://www.joystiq.com) on Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds (http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/).




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[Flack]

I approved this post just so I could say that this may be the most poorly written Joystiq article I've ever read.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

LOL, yeah, that's some .... interesting grammar.

I'm really not sure what the hell happened with the transition to iOS4, but the previously excellent timing structure of Dragon's Lair on the iPhone got completely borked.

Previously the only major gripe I had about the app was the necessity to cover half the screen with your thumbs while playing, thus covering up one of the most delightfully "watchable" games ever. The timing used to be perfect!

The game still looks/runs beautiful, but the timing is way way way off, some levels (the electric cage/lava geyser specifically) are almost un-passable thanks to timing input/recognition glitches.

Digital Leisure have reported that they're aware of the problem and are working on a fix ... but we haven't seen anything yet.

I haven't given up hope though, as I was personally involved in alerting them to the glitch on the 1st run of the Blu-Ray version of Dragon's Lair that would prevent the lives from running down as you lost them. They went out of their way to fix that via subsequent pressings of the Blu-Ray ... so I can't see why they wouldn't push a DLC patch to fix something like this.

[zemmix]

I approved this post just so I could say that this may be the most poorly written Joystiq article I've ever read.

The whole 'McElroy' family on the AOL blogs kind of bug me to be honest. This Justin guys dad writes on the Autoblog part every now and then. Wish they would kick the lot of them out and get some good writers.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

For the record, and for anybody who was suffering through Dragon's Lair for iPhone and iPad being completely broken (the game would just skip wildly through scenes and then crash) by the iOS 4.2 update for a few months - EA/Digital Leisure have released an update, which should be out in the App Store now (I got mine last night and gave it a solid night of play testing).

The game is now fully playable and the timing issues that plagued earlier versions appear to have been corrected.

Personally I think that the timing is a little early on some stages, but the most important thing is that it now completely works again.

The update ALSO apparently makes the standard version of Dragon's Lair (the 99 cent version) work full-screen on iPad with better resolution graphics.

[BydoEmpire]

I really enjoyed Dragon's Lair on my iTouch when I played it over the summer. This was the first version of the game I've ever finished.

Can't comment on the iOS 4.x issues, but I did see there was a new version available. Nice to see an iPad version for those folks.