No. 73: Dragon’s Lair – 100 Greatest Games Ever
Dragon's Lair stunned gamers who walked into arcades in 1983. Think about it -- you're walking past Donkey Kong, Pole Position, Mario Bros. and Millipede, which are all relatively ugly games with tiny blocky sprites, and you see this game playing on a laser disc that looks like an animated film.
Of course, that's because it basically was a new animated film from master animator Don Bluth ('The Secret of NIMH,' 'An American Tail'). You don't actually control the action, but your inputs let you continue the story and keep our hero Dirk the Daring alive in order to rescue Princess Daphne from an evil Dragon. Mess up a move and you'd see Dirk die in all sorts of ways. It invented what came to be known as Quick Time Events and may be light on gameplay, but it's still influencing games to this day. Just check out how many titles used QTEs in the last year alone. Not all of them were Don Bluth films.
Dragon's Lair has recently been re-released for the PS3 and Xbox 360, the latter implementing Kinect controls.
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