Don Bluth is responsible for many of the great animated films of my childhood that didn’t bear the Disney banner. Having never had a chance to enjoy his foray into video games as a kid, I relished in the opportunity when the classics Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace were released on Blu Ray. Beautiful and frustrating at the same time, the games both reminded me just how much I loved Don Bluth’s style. When the extremely rare sequel Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp arrived on Blu Ray, I had to play it, if only for the chance to revisit that wonderful style once more.



 

Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp picks up quite a few years after the end of Dragon’s Lair, as Daphne and Dirk now have something like ten kids (all around the same age strangely enough) and live with Daphne’s mother in a small cottage in the woods. The game begins with Dirk getting chased out of the house by his mother-in-law to rescue Daphne, who has apparently been kidnapped. Once you evade Daphne’s mom, you’ll be off on your way through the remains of Singe’s castle, before hopping on a talking time machine that whisks you away through time and space to save the beautiful princess. You’ll travel to the Mesozoic Era, the Garden of Eden, Egypt, and, for some reason, Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, to track down the villain and regain your true love. The actual story is pretty thin, and if you can figure out what’s happening without looking it up on the internet, you obviously know a lot more about the lore and history of this game than I do.

If you’re familiar with the arcade games of old, you’ll know that the only controls the game has are a four-way directional pad and an action button. Prompts will show up on screen in the form of a blinking piece of the scene as a hint, and you’ll have about sixteen frames or so to react. The PlayStation 3’s controller works perfectly, and there was absolutely no lag in the response time. The only difficulty comes in trying to recognize the indicator quickly enough, and then memorizing the pattern for the next time you have to play through an area. And that will happen quite often as you’re going to die. A lot. Thankfully, you can set the game to give you unlimited lives so you’ll only have to restart at a checkpoint, which is usually every ten or so moves. There’s not a lot of depth to the game’s controls, but that’s fine with me since this is just an updated port of a classic arcade game. Complaining about controls for Dragon’s Lair would be like complaining about controls for Pac-Man or Space Invaders.

The Blu Ray transfer of the animation is simply wonderful. While the game doesn’t get as good of a treatment as the recent Disney Blu Rays, Digital Leisure cleans up the original to provide the crispest and brightest version of the game to date. I couldn’t pick a favorite section if I tried because each one is rendered so expertly. Even though many sequences are dependent on your input to get Dirk through a scene, the animation still flows together very well should you succeed or not. You may get tired of seeing the same death over and over again if you’re not able to hit the right button at the right time, but those sequences are the only times you’re jarringly pulled from the story. Plus, if you find the game exceedingly frustrating, you can at least watch the whole thing straight through as a short movie. The voice work is excellent, as are the sound effects and score, but I’m not entirely convinced the game was given a full surround sound mix as most of the sound came from my front two speakers.

After playing through Dragon’s Lair II, my fondness for the series has been rekindled. It’s a shame that the cost is so high ($40) for a game so short. If you somehow manage to make it through the game on one try, it’ll last less than twenty minutes. Of course, it’s pretty much the only way to see the amazing animation that Don Bluth Productions created for Dragon’s Lair since there’s no way to watch the old animated series legitimately yet. If you find someplace that has either this or the original game available for rent, that’s the smartest bet. Even as a fan of the series, I’d have a hard time giving up that much cash for so little content.