Dragon’s Lair – An Arcade Story
A lot of people rag on Dragon's Lair (and similar) for being "just a pretty movie with occasional interaction" instead of a game. But modern games are full of Quick Time Events (QTE)s which are spiritually the exact same thing.<p>(I still have the announcer's voice calling out "DRAGON'S LAIR!" in the attract mode seared in my memory).<p>> We were staying in a hotel or motel, and it was either attached to or had a small arcade of its own.<p>For people who didn't grow up during the 80s arcade boom. Arcades where <i>everywhere</i>. It was basically expected that every place that sold anything would have at least 1 arcade game. Grocery store? Check. Tanning Salon? Sure thing. Strip mall? Why, they'll have 2 complete deluxe arcades.<p>It was a looooong time from the death of Arcades to modern smart phones before we had something to do while hanging around most stores again.<p>The gathering crowd around an awesome play of a game really did happen back then. It's like the scene from Tron where Flynn is playing in his arcade. It was <i>actually</i> like that.<p>My older brother could play epic multi-hour long games of some kind of game I can't remember the name to (I think it was Pengo), racking up so many extra men that he could go for a bathroom break mid-game and let some scruffy novice kid (usually me) break in and play at the advanced levels for a couple minutes. The convenience store he played in would be packed with 20 or 30 people watching history happen. It gave every small town a local hero they could cheer for and every local hero felt like a minor god for the length of their quarter.