Dragon's Lair Goes DVD

In the early '80s, games weren't as blessed with fancy graphics as they are today. With CD technology just out of the gate, companies looked for a way to store video on a digital format as well. The result was laser disc, a 12-inch format that remains today a niche market. The ability to skip to different video tracks made it possible to make a game comprised completely of video sequences that a player had to control to see the whole story as it played out.

The first animated game to use this technology was Dragon's Lair, a game that starred Dirk the Daring on a mission to save Daphne from the evil Singe, a dragon. What made the game so entertaining was that the animation was actually pretty good (from Don Bluth, who is behind this winter's Anastasia), and though the gameplay was minimal it was a new experience to interact with video.

Dragon's Lair has been released for just about every home video game console and PC system in existence, including the Super NES (as a side-scrolling adventure game), 3DO, Sega CD, and Jaguar. Now the game is coming to an entirely new format - DVD.

Digital Leisure, a Canadian company formed by ex-employees of Readysoft (the company that used to handle the Dragon's Lair titles), has acquired the rights to produce the games for the DVD-ROM and DVD-Video formats. The DVD-ROM version should be out in November, with the DVD-Video version following it in early 1998.

The company has also acquired the rights to produce DVD versions of Space Ace and Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp. Those will be coming in 1998.