Those who remember video games of the 1980s will likely recall the laser disc games to crop up during that time. The titles caught the attention of quite a few people with their style of play and artistic direction. In this article, Syd Bolton talks with Digital Leisure's David Foster about these classics and the process of bringing them into the gaming world of today.

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Dragon’s Lair – Back into the Lair Again

An Interview with Digital Leisure’s David Foster

By Syd Bolton

January 19, 2007

There is no doubt that Dragon’s Lair is one of the most fondly remembered arcade games from the 80’s. With its classic cartoon graphics, under the direction of former Disney employee Don Bluth, Dragon’s Lair was jaw dropping when put against its competitors: Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to name a few. Whether it was the animation, the sound, or the medieval setting you found yourself drawn in to the game and most people ignored the fact the gameplay was far from deep.
Dragon’s Lair used a laser disc to create its visuals and sounds and was therefore a very difficult game to port over to home computers. It wasn’t until 1989 when David Foster’s company Readysoft released Dragon’s Lair on the Commodore Amiga that a true representation of the game could be seen. The earlier versions on the Commodore 64 and Coleco Adam were actually games based on the franchise, but recreated within the technical limitations of the machine (this held true for the initial ports to the Gameboy, NES, and SNES machines as well).

The Amiga version brought many firsts to both Dragon’s Lair and the home computer game market as well. It was the first game to ever use overscan, a technique that allowed the games visuals to extend to the entire monitor and eliminating the black border we all have on monitors even today. It was also able to pack an outstanding 130 megabytes of data on six floppy disks, and buffered that data into memory similar to how programs like RealPlayer buffer video playing over the Internet (but it did this back in 1989). The game also only required 512k of RAM on the Amiga 1000 because it used the Amiga’s WCS (Writeable Control Store) where the actual Kickstart code was stored – another first and proof that Dragon’s Lair leveraged the Amiga hardware directly and did not rely on any routines offered by the manufacturer. In the end, Dragon’s Lair consisted of only 8 kilobytes (8192 bytes) of pure assembly code and ran on a 7.14 MHz 68000 microprocessor.

I have personally met both Randy Linden (who wrote the Amiga code and later went on to produce Bleem, the Playstation Emulator) and David Foster at the time the game was released. Randy has moved on to many other different projects, and David sold ReadySoft to another company years ago and along with it – the rights to Dragon’s Lair. However, his new company Digital Leisure was able to obtain the rights again after Readysoft showed little interest, and is once again releasing newer versions of Dragon’s Lair for the fans. I caught up with David at last year’s final E3 and saw the latest Dragon’s Lair. More recently, I asked him a few questions about the past, and what is yet to come with Dragon’s Lair.

Above: Images from 2006's Dragon's Lair HD

SB: How did you first get involved with Dragon's Lair?

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DF: I had been working with Randy Linden on a number of projects including the Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga at ReadySoft. When that project was done, he decided to pursue the Dragon's Lair license to convert to the Amiga. I coached him through the process but he ultimately ran out of money to fund the project so we took it over and completed it. We've never looked back.

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SB: From the first version to the latest version, how have the Dragon's Lair games changed?

DF: Initially in the Amiga era, we were limited by disc space (the Amiga version was a breath-taking 6 floppy discs!) and we could only fit about 15% of the game in the released version. With CD technology we were able to include the full game and at the time we were amazed by the video quality. Then came DVD and we were even more amazed with the video quality -- it was on par with the laser disc. We were also able to tighten up the code to more accurately reflect the original laser disc release. Now with high definition (HD), we're able to bring a full film quality version of Dragon's Lair to the home market -- it has never looked this good. Even the creators of the game -- Rick Dyer, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman -- were amazed when they saw the quality of the high definition release.

SB: How many versions and platforms have you released Dragon's Lair for?

DF:
-Dragon's Lair Amiga (1988) and then later Atari ST, IBM & Mac.
-Escape From Singe's Castle (included scenes not in our original release) (1989) -- we didn't do the Amiga release but I believe we did all the other formats.
-3D0 (1993) -- we were out with the release of the system
-MS-DOS PC CD-ROM (1993) -- the first version to include all the scenes.
-Sega CD -- this one pushed the limits of what could be achieved on the Sega system at the time.
-RealMagic PC (MPEG1) (1994)-- best video quality to date but required a dedicated MPEG1 decoding card.
-Atari Jaguar (1995) -- didn't sell too many of these!
-Deluxe Pack (1996) -- a remastered version of the all three games for Windows 95. Better video quality than our MS-DOS versions.
-Windows DVD-ROM (1997) -- the first version to approach the video quality of the laser disc.
-DVD-Video (1998) -- similar video quality as the DVD-ROM version but compatible with much more hardware including DVD movie players and ultimately the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
-20th Anniversary DVD (2003) -- included all three games on DVD with some great new extras including cutting room floor material never before seen.
-PC HD (2006) -- amazing video quality -- makes the DVD versions look like VHS.

There were several other versions that we didn't release including CD-i, Gameboy, NES and SNES.

SB: Information on additional versions (and even a playable mix and match game) can be found at http://www.pixelpower.on.ca/dl.

It seems like every couple of years there is a new version of Dragon's Lair to buy. Would you agree that you are the George Lucas of Dragon's Lair?

DF: That would be a very lofty comparison but we do our best to keep Dragon's Lair alive and better than ever with new releases and extras.

SB: The latest version of Dragon's Lair is the High Definition version. Tell us more about it. Do you need an HD-DVD drive to play?

DF: Our PC HD version of Dragon's Lair only requires a DVD-ROM drive (not HD DVD) in your PC. The video is encoded using Windows WMVHD compression and we provide it at three different compression levels so that a wide range of PCs will be able to handle the playback. The minimum processor speed is 1.8 GHz and you would probably want about 3.0 GHz to play the best video quality. The video quality of HD is just spectacular compared to the previous versions and the color is much more vivid. We've also reworked the audio and created a 5.1 surround soundtrack that really makes it seems like you're right in the middle of all the action.

SB: There have been rumours about releasing the game for the latest game consoles. Can you tell us if anything is happening in that regard?

DF: As with the previous generation consoles, we will not be supported as a native game but we believe that the latest game consoles will be able to handle Dragon's Lair via their HD playback capabilities. I can confirm that we are developing an HD DVD version and hope to be shipping in the Spring of 2007. I must say that Dirk looks great on a 60" 1080p television set! We're still considering Blu-ray.

SB: Any information about Space Ace or any other laserdisc games getting the high definition treatment?

DF: We will be bringing Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II to HD in time. Our focus right now is on Dragon's Lair. We have captured Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II from film into HD but there is a lot of work that has to be done cleaning up the video. If we can manage it, we may have Space Ace ready before the end of the year.

SB: What is your personal favorite version of Dragon's Lair and why?

DF: I like the Amiga version because nobody thought it was possible to bring Dragon's Lair to the Amiga when we first released it but in terms of the most complete package I like our Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary DVD release. It had the best video quality (until now), was quite faithful to the arcade release and had great extras including some playable scenes that never made it into the arcade release.

Of course now that we have the HD versions, those have to be my favorite. Not only have we got great video from the original film but we've cleaned up the hairs, scratches and film noise to make it even better. The HD DVD version has some great new extras but I don't want to give away all the secrets quite yet.

SB: What do you think keeps the fans coming back to Dragon's Lair year after year?

DF: You know it may sound strange but we get people calling us all the time and only now discovering that Dragon's Lair is available on home systems. Dragon's Lair made a huge splash in 1983 and so many people remember it fondly. I think it brings back a lot of memories for them. It was revolutionary in its day when the alternatives were graphically limited games such as Pac-man. I think Don Bluth's great animation holds up well even today and Dirk is the perfect character -- a bumbling knight that with one wrong move meets his end in some humorous way.

Given all that we're always trying to find ways to keep improving the Dragon's Lair experience -- better video quality, interaction, availability on different systems and interesting extras.

SB: Thanks David!

It’s hard to imagine Dragon’s Lair being any better than the HD version, but I am looking forward to trying it out on the Xbox 360. If you haven’t played Dragon’s Lair in a while, maybe it’s time to try it out again. Lead on adventurer, your quest awaits!

For more information on the latest version of Dragon’s Lair, visit Digital Leisure at http://www.digitalleisure.com

Syd Bolton has been collecting game consoles for over 20 years and has dozens of systems and over 5,000 games. He is the newest addition to the Armchair Empire. Have any interesting stories about your Dragon’s Lair experience? Make sure you share with us here.


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