Dragon's Lair HD Review
Price: $4.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad
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Some games hold up over time better than others. Some of the classics like Pac-Man, Galaga, and Super Mario Bros. hold up superbly well even to this day, not just as relics of an era long past. While Dragon's Lair serves as a relic of its era, when it was a stunningly impressive laserdisc-based arcade game, some relics just shouldn't be unearthed for consumption by modern people.
Dragon's Lair HD is very, very pretty. The game was animated by Don Bluth Studios, and is presented in an HD transfer here on the iPad. The animation is incredibly fluid, and its hand-drawn style looks great in an era where a lot of animation is produced on the cheap. It's clear why this game attracted such attention back in the day - it's a joy to just watch; and there is an option to just watch the game as a movie. If you want to actually play the game, you have several options to either play the game exactly like it played originally in the arcade, or the home version of the games with additional and tweaked scenes, and there are options to play with infinite lives or with additional action cues.
There just isn't much appeal to Dragon's Lair HD beyond nostalgia. The actual gameplay is lacking in both depth and length, and while it's very pretty, there's not a lot to justify a $4.99 price if you don't have some sort of previous emotional connection to this game.