Oh my gosh, THIS game. This is Dragon's Lair on the NES. If you grew up in the 80's, this was the odd-ball arcade game, the one that stuck out, because it was an interactive movie, which was nothing like every other game in the arcades. Now, this was ported to a ton of systems, most notably the Game Boy Color. I haven't played any other versions, but this one made me not want to.

  --- The graphics are deciving. ---
So, we start out with a bridge and a castle door. I guess I should just walk there. I would complain that you walk to slow, but I guess they had to make Dirk walk slowly to show all the detail. Oh, that's nice, a dragon emerges form the moat and breaks the drawbridge. Just like every other castle adventure game. So, I go to jump over the dragon, but the controls are delayed by nearly an entire second. Don't touch the door. If you touch it, you will die immediatley. Maybe it's a posionous door. Maybe it has a disturbing picture on it, and Dirk has bad eyes so he had to get that close to see it. Or maybe it's A CRAPPY CHOICE DESIGN. I can see him falling backwards or flipping out from it, but no. The door completely slaughters him until he falls apart into a skeleton. It could be an electric door, but I highly doubt it. If you stop to jump at a certain place, the floor falls through and you die from drowning in the moat, even though you fall apart into a skeleton. There are four deadly spots on the bridge. The one I just explained, one in the middle of the bridge, one where the dragon pops up, and the door of death.

  --- How do I get past the first SCREEN? ---
Here's something I really hate. When you're on the left side of the screen, you can do an extremely slow duck. However, when you get behind the dragon, you can't duck anymore. I'm serious. That's something I'd expect from ACTION 52, not a port of a classic arcade game! So, I guess I have to kill the dragon to get past the door of death. When I stand up, I can't hit him. When I crawl, I can't hit him. He stands when you stand, and he ducks when you duck. It's really hard to learn what to do, you can't just go Mario speed, throwing you're fireballs at him, FLUENTLEY ducking, and actually being able to kill him, no. You have to do it Lester the Unlikely style. You just have to take your time... I'M IMPATIENT. I GOTTA GO QUICKLY! I HAVE TO ROAR IN THE FACE OF DELAYED CONTROLS! Speaking of controls, this is one of those crappy games where 'B' is jump, and 'A' is attack. Now, that's normal on SNES, but on NES? How many bad games can do that? I mean, you know it's going to be horrible when you have that control scheme. The only good game I've seen this control pattern in is Mario Clash on Virtual Boy.

  --- Let's kill some dragon... hopefully. ---
Let's discuss something. It's called a health bar. Games should have these. They shouldn't have every enemy killy you in ONE HIT. All the enemies I've seen so far TRAMPLE AND CLOBBER AND POUND YOU into a skeleton. The dragon, the moat, the fireballs and the Door of Death. That thing is such a big deal I'm putting it in capital letters, as if it was a proper noun. But the bats, they take away a sliver of your... health bar. You wouldn't even notice you have one, because this is one of those bad games where everything is a ONE-HIT KILL. Another sign of a bad game is when your projectile always goes over the enemy. It's like Bible Adventures or Friday the 13th. It seems like it deliberatley goes over your target. So, to kill the dragon, you have to trigger him coming out from the poision moat, then pretend that Dirk is a rabbit and hop on the bridge making sure to avoid any holes the dragon may have caused when destroying the bridge, go to the very left of the screen, and just barely hit the dragon with your sword. On top of that, you have to keep going from standing to crawling mode just to keep the dragon at a good height. You have to do ALL THAT just to kill it. After that, you can enter the castle. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT FALL INTO THE MOAT. You're going to have to that ALL over again... I just realized it took me THREE paragraphs to explain the FIRST SCREEN. Let's look inside the castle... well, there are people in cellars who throw one-hit kill rocks at you, there's a poisionous snake that one-hit kill bites you, and these pillers that have unpredictable random patterns that one-hit kill yoi by squishing you into the ground. That's it. I can't take this any longer. This game is WAY. TOO. HARD. It's possibly the hardest game I've ever played on the NES, but for all the wrong reasons. I guess I'll see you in my next review.