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.(I still have the announcer's voice calling out "DRAGON'S LAIR!" in the attract mode seared in my memory).> We were staying in a hotel or motel, and it was either attached to or had a small arcade of its own.For people who didn't grow up during the 80s arcade boom. Arcades where everywhere. 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.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.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 actually like that.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.