Dragon’s Lair
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It wasn’t that hard if you kept feeding it quarters. It took a lot of trial and error, but having infinite lives means it was eventually beatable.
This is the real answer. Arcade games weren’t made to be beaten, they are made to extract maximum quarters. Most of these games don’t even have a real “ending”, and why would the devs bother? They already got your money.
It wasn’t a case of “why bother,” it was a case of evolution.
The original intent of arcade video games was to obtain a high score. You played until you died, and the game progressively got harder until you choked, or it hit some arbitrary limit of difficulty and went on forever, or in some infamous cases (Pacman) crashed. These video games were a conceptual extension of the arcade games that existed before: Pinball machines. Pinball games don’t have an end state, you play indefinitely for a high score until you choke.
Arcade video games could have endings, and even though in the very early days they didn’t: Crystal Castles was probably the first, in 1983. Even then, after reaching the “end” the game would loop so you could play it indefinitely until you died. Because that’s how arcade games worked. A lot of games starting from the 1990’s and beyond had endings of some description or another because they were in some way narrative based. In most cases (with the exception of some 1 on 1 fighters) you can still play another loop after the ending.
Arcade games weren’t made to be beaten
There was a remaster that was put out a few years ago: steam, gog. It was a nice piece of nostalgia finding it. From playing it on arcade difficulty and comparing it against the easier settings, it was pretty obvious this game was meant to suck up quarters. You just had to have everything memorized.
The mechanics of that game were more like a very fast choose your own adventure than the traditional move joystick left, spaceship go left mechanics.
Because the graphics were coming off a laser disk, they didn’t generate on the spot. There were predetermined outcomes to every move.
When people figured this out, information started to collect in the magazines, and the game became beatable.
This is correct. I remember getting patterns from a magazine.
Also, there are flashes on-screen that could guide you if you are quick enough.
ETA: Just watched a walkthrough of this game. I’ve never seen the ending before today! I’m certain horny teenager me would have just loved to see the princess’s huge nipples.
It’s simple: they didn’t.
My older brother’s friend worked at an arcade. He opened up the panel and loaded this game up with credits for me. I still never got close to beating it
The only arcade that had that game charge $2 or something like that for each credit. I tried it once and then never again.
It was 50 cents per play at launch.
I wasn’t great at Dragon’s Lair, but I got super far on Dragon’s Lair 2: Time Warp.
Cries in Sinistar. “Run, coward!!!”
I was in an arcade all day for multiple days watching others play. After four days of this I played and after two attempts I was able to finish it.
I remember Dan from game grumps being really good at that game.
I did it with a pen and paper over several months
