2020/6/14: Wii: Dragon's Lair Trilogy, Shaun White Skateboarding

[VideoGameCritic]

Here's a new pair of Wii reviews for you to comment on!

[Retro STrife]

Is this version of Dragon's Lair Trilogy identical to the one that came out on newer consoles? (i.e., like the one you reviewed on Switch?) After your Switch review, I bought the PS4 version and was really impressed with the package. I agree with your review and score.

After years of trying the Dragon's Lair series and hating it, I FINALLY was able to play through the games thanks to the Trilogy version on PS4. And it's finally an enjoyable experience. The huge quality of life upgrades (like the "move guide" button prompts that show you which moves to press), finally make these games playable for the ordinary person. Still, even with those, the games are an extreme challenge -- which really just emphasizes how bad they were before these upgrades were added. And I do think they're terrible games in their original form. I wasn't around in 1983 to be wowed by Dragon's Lair impressive visuals, so I have no nostalgia for it - instead, I just have pure annoyance for its unintuitive control system and wasted potential.

Anyway, those feelings went away with this Trilogy package thanks to the assist features. Dragon's Lair and Space Ace are fun to play through and witness the story. One spot where I diverge from you is that I think Space Ace is superior to Dragon's Lair in most ways (from story and setting, to animation, to more obvious move inputs). And then there's Dragon's Lair II... Trilogy was my first time playing DL2. Unfortunately, DL2 is sooo much wasted potential. It has the best story and animation of the 3 games, IMO. Compared to DL, DL2 is more obvious about what moves you need to make, which is nice. But, as you've noted before, the game is completely ruined by one monumental flaw-- the sequences are way too long between checkpoints, making the gaming virtually impossible to play and finish. While I beat DL and SA, I had to give up on DL2 after finishing about 35% (even with the move prompts!). It was just impossible. Imagine playing the game in arcades without all this extra help!! It's so unfortunate that the animation/story department did their job and the programmers ruined DL2.

[VideoGameCritic]

With the original Dragon's Lair, it's clear each room was specifically designed for a particular series of moves.

With Dragon's Lair 2 it's as if someone told Don Bluth "Just create an entire animated movie and we'll go back and shoehorn in the various moves".

[Cafeman]

I have similar thoughts as Retro Strife, although I do have nostalgia for DL and SA, which I beat in the 80s arcades thanks to Joystik magazine's guides.

I and my 2 Caf Jr's were all able to beat these 2 games on the PS4 edition thanks to difficulty settings and the pointer arrow helps. SA has some unfair quick timing sections, but once you play it a few times the directions are usually obvious.

But forget the exhausting DL2! What were they thinking?