Dragons Lair on the Amiga - How a laserdisc game fit onto 6 floppy disks

Dragons Lair on the Amiga - How a laserdisc game fit onto 6 floppy disks | MVG

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Жыл бұрын

Dragon's Lair, originally released for arcades in 1983 by Cinematronics. It uses laserdisc technology, offering greatly superior graphics compared to other video games at the time. The game was ported to several other platforms, but as no home system technology of that era could accommodate the graphical quality of LaserDisc. But there was one port of the game that stood above the rest and was a faithful recreation of the laserdisc original. That version was the Commodore Amiga release from 1983. In this episode we deep dive and take a look at how Dragon's Lair on the Amiga came to be.
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@franzusgutlus54 Жыл бұрын

Ah, the 80s...a time where a 17 year old could walk into the Arcades and ask for a laser disk, then the owner helps him get one from the company...also the time where a 17 year old can contact a company working on a next gen video digitizer and gets a prototype of it...different times...

@andy5178 Жыл бұрын

You're absolutely right. Nowadays you might send a brilliant résumé along with your idea and not even be given as much as a formal reply. The web gives a fair chance to (almost) everybody, but companies have gotten much, much worse than they used to be. I'm sure there are several people as brilliant as Linden out there who will just never get a chance to prove their worth.

@spectreman2532 Жыл бұрын

@@andy5178 You didn''t catch his sarcasm.

@franzusgutlus54 Жыл бұрын

@@spectreman2532 there was none from my side.

@stereozero396 Жыл бұрын

@@andy5178 A big reason is that, companies use Hiring Managers to pick their employees. And what ends up happening, is they only end up looking for the perfect unicorn employee, with the most prestigious College degree and a impressive CV.

@rodmunch69 Жыл бұрын

If you presented yourself really well, and they knew you were a geek, and trustworthy, they'd do that. I still think you'd find plenty of people today that would do that for kids who give off that same vibe.

@BurritoKingdom Жыл бұрын

Randy Linden, one of the greatest programmers of the 80s and 90s.

@LordmonkeyTRM Жыл бұрын

We salute you Mr. Lindon♥️

@GetLostGames1 Жыл бұрын

The man is a genius!

@carn9507 Жыл бұрын

Definitely. Millions of coders out there, many great, but you gotta pretty damn awesome and top-tier to do things others thought near-impossible and Linden proved he was that multiple times. :O

@yellohammer8571 Жыл бұрын

Don Bluth...

@BurritoKingdom Жыл бұрын

@@yellohammer8571 Don Bluth is one of the greatest animators of all time??? That is for certain but this video is about the port from an Arcade Laser Disc system to an Amiga with 6 floppy disk. Whatever Mr. Linden did was a miracle.

@xadek821 Жыл бұрын

Seems insane to me that a 17 year old could achieve all that. Not only programing, but the many business decision he had to make aswell. That man must have been on another different level than the rest, what a legend

@GamerzPro1231 Жыл бұрын

For real, some people are just born into greatness.

@stgigamovement Жыл бұрын

I was 17 when I wrote BWTC32Key, my file compression program after 4 years of effort

@craigix Жыл бұрын

Well since he was buying arcade machines and flying around the country I suspect he came from serious money.

@chunye215 Жыл бұрын

@@craigix but even then... Like, having that mindset with 17, let alone programming skills. I started programming at 10 and with 17 my programs were still mostly dumb win32 spaghetti code, and I had no idea on how I'd ever approach a serious project, or any sense of how to turn anything I do into business....

@mattpierce5009 Жыл бұрын

Different era. We don't make ourselves like we used to

@MKR3238 Жыл бұрын

Randy Linden is up there with the likes of John Carmack, incredible genius

@JJ-pi4zj Жыл бұрын

Galahad is also up there.

@witness1013 Жыл бұрын

I never understood if I was actually playing Dragons Lair, or just watching a cartoon, but it didn't stop me from dropping a bunch of quarters.

@BearfootBob Жыл бұрын

that game ate quarters like no other

@yellowblanka6058 Жыл бұрын

You were "playing" a glorified "choose your own adventure" book.

@sirmi9868 Жыл бұрын

Dood i never pass the entrance gate

@billlyons7024 Жыл бұрын

@@yellowblanka6058 Yeah this barely qualifies as a game. But it sure looked great in an arcade cabinet.

@Kalvinjj Жыл бұрын

A different form of visual novel if I may call it that, really only Laserdisc could do it, if not done on the Amiga's art style.

@FrameRater Жыл бұрын

Would be cool to see an analysis of how the Gameboy Color version was made, it's very impressive.

@emmettturner9452 Жыл бұрын

That didn’t happen until ROM sizes were much larger.

@ModernVintageGamer Жыл бұрын

its an impressive port, ill cover it at some point im sure

@emmettturner9452 Жыл бұрын

@@ModernVintageGamer I agree that it is impressive to fit into a 4MB (32mbit) cartridge but it came out during the era of the Game Boy Advance when they could shove two whole feature-length movies into a GBA Video cartridge. It just wasn’t going to make a big splash in the era of DVD and 64MB+ cartridges. Heck, they literally already had Dragon’s Lair for DVD players by that point… with a big fat “PlayStation 2 Compatible!” sticker on the shrink wrap! While Game Boy games in 1989 were only kilobytes the beauty of the Amiga version’s extra capacity and streaming tricks were that it made the experience more rich/impressive than even contemporary multi-disk games.

@shalpp Жыл бұрын

@@ModernVintageGamer honestly what's impressive is how it's been redrawn with a good bit of detail considering the resolution Reminds me of how the sonic cd opening/endings had to be redrawn for the original megacd version

@thebasketballhistorian3291 Жыл бұрын

@@emmettturner9452 What was impressive about the GBA port was that they actually re-drew all the animation and backgrounds to fit the GBA's screen resolution and color palette. It wasn't like the Shrek GBA movie (or other GBA video carts) where they just simply re-encoded it to a lower video quality.

@ridiculous_gaming Жыл бұрын

What a massive disk swapping experience, but I relentlessly played this on my Amiga 500.

@Alien_Bob Жыл бұрын

I find pretty much everything even tangentially related to laserdisc to just be utterly fascinating

@TheRealDealDominic Жыл бұрын

He did this at age 17? I am blown away!

@psaunder1975 Жыл бұрын

Yeah insane must have popped out of the uterus and started coding.. 😁

@doom5895 Жыл бұрын

I'm 19 and I'm jealous I can barely make a decent html page

@natecw4164 Ай бұрын

Yeah I was proud to know HTLM and Basic at 17 but I did nothing with it. Kudos to this kid for not wasting his teens binge drinking.

@th3cub350 Жыл бұрын

Liden is really one of a kind genius programmer, so many impossible ports and incredible programs under his belt, this is beyong amazing. Thanks for this retrospective MVG

@Retro_Royal Жыл бұрын

The Amiga scene ´89 was something special

@PublicinSpace Жыл бұрын

This took me back to my days at living in Texas. When I was a kid, Luther Jones Elementary School (Corpus Christi, TX) had this game on their Amiga computer. At the time I was four years old and I was complete rubbish (lol). Thank you for this video... it was a trip down memory lane I needed. Best, Patricio

@buckeyechad1 Жыл бұрын

From someone who played DL in the arcade the first week it was out. And also, a huge pirate on C-64 & Amiga...that was absolutely fascinating. Thanks

@jamezxh Жыл бұрын

Lol pirate 🏴‍☠️ arrghhh!!!

@NavajoNinja Жыл бұрын

Its not the content. Its the way You tell the story. Awesome. Then again, You know exactly what subjects would make a compelling story. Well done.

@ChanningKing Жыл бұрын

You summed it up pretty accurately: This is wizardry! Maybe it’s the early hour, but the Amiga digitized animation reminds me of Dr. Katz.

@bitdigital8052 Жыл бұрын

MVG always got something different to keep me entertained. Dragon's Lair was one of those games man!

@ET_Videos Жыл бұрын

TRON was my favorite arcade game from those days!!

@TN_AU Жыл бұрын

Yep, I had the pirated version of this game on my Amiga 1000 back in the 90's. I remember the ram expansion costed an arm and a leg here in Australia. Had heaps of fond memories of my A1000, I still have it tucked away somewhere.

@MrMario2011 Жыл бұрын

Randy was doing that all at 17?! That man is a machine.

@JSmith-nu4bl Жыл бұрын

This guy is the real deal, not a crappy journalist but a top dev and ex hacker

@antzpantz Жыл бұрын

Absolutely FASCINATING!!! I had no idea this port existed and the amazing copy protection around it!

@Reapergrim-kv2ps Жыл бұрын

Another great Video, Dragons Lair was a Groundbreaking game back in the day and I could not believe there was a good version on the amiga.

@JazzMartian Жыл бұрын

I remember seeing the Amiga port of Dragon's Lair at computer/video game outlets like Electronic's Boutique, and being completely amazed! I had never seen graphics that advanced outside of the arcade before.

@joseluki Жыл бұрын

Whoever was around when Bleem came out know what a wizard this guy was. I went from playing Mega Drive games on my pentium PC to emulate full PSX games in less than a year, at the same time the PSX was being sold.

@JoemamaTheHybrid Жыл бұрын

Doubt we'll ever see current gen console emulation that works that well ever again, once in a lifetime talent there

@gamagama69 Жыл бұрын

@@JoemamaTheHybrid yuzu and ryujinx are available rn and have been for the last few years

@stevethepocket Жыл бұрын

@@JoemamaTheHybrid Current-gen consoles literally are just cheap desktop PCs, so the only thing stopping them from being emulated day one is obfuscation.

@FamilyTeamGaming Жыл бұрын

@@JoemamaTheHybrid CEMU was a pretty great emulator for the Wii U that came out pretty early into the scene. Pretty surprising too considering how unpopular the console was, as well

@edgarfriendly4731 Жыл бұрын

Ultrahle was pretty impressive at the time too.

@maxalbe Жыл бұрын

thanks for telling us such an amazing story. DL is a beautiful work of art still today.

Жыл бұрын

I love when you uncover such stories. I've never thought that this game was such a technical accomplishment...

@luxdico Жыл бұрын

dragon's lair and space ace, just watchin' those arcade games was like lookin' into the future. I do remember the buzz on the amiga. thx 4 your video.

@OperationPhantom Жыл бұрын

Mainly remember the bad reviews and complaints about the hefty price tag. But I never really realized that there's a really impressive story and proper genius programming behind it all! There followed two more sequels and the two Space Ace games, so, yes, somebody must've been buying them!

@umrasangus Жыл бұрын

you're the goat of retro gaming youtube, my man. And Randy possibly the goat of code, the man is a living legend.

@cristobalc5425 Жыл бұрын

Great nostalgia vid as usual. Really loved the Star Wars Hot Seat moving cabinet that helped paved the way for other flight arcade games like Afterburner.

@videogameobsession Жыл бұрын

Rotoscoping! The same magic that was used on Capcom's Game Boy Color port. It's equally as amazing. Maybe more so. Worth checking out for sure.

@torsteinraaby Жыл бұрын

Thank you for this. I had a rough day today and this is soothing. I'm sure many others turn to content like this for comfort. Thank you.

@ModernVintageGamer Жыл бұрын

mean's a lot, thank you. I hope tomorrow is better for you

@SS-hz4jo Жыл бұрын

This is a great video! Thank you. I learned a lot of how my childhood was made.

@MikeDest Жыл бұрын

Randy Linden, John Carmack, Ken Silverman, and Justin Frankel are my boys.

@MortenSlottHansen Жыл бұрын

wow - waited a whole lifetime to get the details for this one. Remember how this was a released on 8 disks back in the days and stories about the crazy "slow drive thing" was circulating - but no one really understod anything back then. Amazing insight - love it !

@andocobo Жыл бұрын

I remember playing dragon’s lair in the arcade a few times as a kid - I never knew what the hell I was supposed to do, always just felt like a frustrating way to waste $2

@Tweekend27 Жыл бұрын

Me too. I played it once and died immediately. It felt like I had NO idea what I was meant to do.

@chuco915C Жыл бұрын

Samsies. Y’all remember that hologram one? Where some lady talks to you and you have to make her jump I think lol

@LethalBubbles Жыл бұрын

cleaning up all that digitizer dithering by hand for every single frame sounds like a monumentous task, jeez. They did a good job too.

@kloroformd Жыл бұрын

I hope many viewers of this video have either seen Star Wars arcade and Dragon's Lair in person. Especially Star Wars... it's stunning on a vector CRT.

@spacechannelfiver Жыл бұрын

It's also an actual game.

@FabledGentleman Жыл бұрын

I remember when i bought this game, after being recommended to do so by my cousin who said he had never seen or played anything quite like it. And i also remember he told me that this game should not be possible, he said something like it being a marvel of design and engineering. Therefor, not just because the game itself looked good and was fun, it was like owning something truly unique, something extraordinary 😁

@aleksazunjic9672 Жыл бұрын

And then in reality it was just glorified cartoon :D

@ChrisSkitch Жыл бұрын

While I had heard much of this story previously the part at the end about the A1000 blew my mind!!

@chefjeff1366 Жыл бұрын

love getting Randy AND Galahad's perspectives on this - makes for a great telling of this story, indeed!

@deeiks12 Жыл бұрын

Stories like this are the most interesting IMO. Well done video, and well done programming by Randy. Pure awesomeness.

@BMR86 Жыл бұрын

You see, this is an example of things I wouldn't care to learn for myself (that is of course if I had a vested interest in this game or the amiga), but since MVG puts out a very comprehensive video on it I'm actually learning something new about the gaming industry in the 80s, which is f*cking cool! Thank you sir!

@pcjohn0308 Жыл бұрын

Great video. Brings back fond memories of my Amiga days. I was a huge DL fan and this was the closest I had to playing it. Back in the arcade days I brought my Betamax into work and recorded the entire Space Ace laserdisc right off the machine. We didn't have DL at the time so I didn't get a copy of that.

@hersnab Жыл бұрын

Love these videos. Completely in awe of the ingenuity. Thanks for the presentation, MVG, really enjoyed this one :-)

@LotoTheHero Жыл бұрын

Such a brilliant programmer. I really love these detailed "impossible port" videos. Please keep them coming!

@Sonicstillpoint83 Жыл бұрын

This was not only a captivating story, but incredibly inspirational.

@PlasticCogLiquid Жыл бұрын

BLEEM! changed my life. I played Silent Hill on my PC at nights when I was 17 and I didn't have a Playstation. I have fond memories of that time!

@nomadic_shadow Жыл бұрын

Randy linden is a fucking champ. I've been getting into programming and he's an inspiration to me.

@WrestlingWithGaming Жыл бұрын

Linden is a legend. His work on Bleem. And the history behind it is basically the reason my channel exists. Fantastic and fascinating video! Also, your desk is unbelievably clean. Did you move to a state that banned dust?

@mash2481 Жыл бұрын

Blew my mind when I first seen it in the arcade. Played the hell out of it!

@FawadBilgrami Жыл бұрын

Man I love the intro music! No mistakes were made there 😂

@HybridAngelZero Жыл бұрын

I had never heard of this port, and all I can say is WOW!

@liaml1694 Жыл бұрын

Before I even watch the video. I was literally JUST talking about Dragon's Lair to my mum a few hours ago which is a game I didn't even know about until yesterday and than now I've just hopped onto KZfaq, I have 1 single notification and it's that MVG uploaded a video about Dragon's Lair! What even are these chances lmao!

@GeneralFaliure Жыл бұрын

I owned, (and finished) Space Ace on the Amiga back in the day. I loved it. Now i have an arcade cab with several laserdisc games on it, i still like them because they look and sound spectaculaire.

@retropuffer2986 Жыл бұрын

Outstanding video. Exactly the type of content that makes your channel unique! Great work MVG.

@GregsGameRoom Жыл бұрын

I have DL2: Time Warp on the Atari ST and I was blown away when I played it. (It's also on just 6 floppies.)

@LOT9T Жыл бұрын

Dragon's Lair was a tough game to beat! Quarter after quarter!

@Zan_Jayna Жыл бұрын

In my arcades it was 50 cents to start too

@danmanx2 Жыл бұрын

Randy is a wizard. For your next challenge Randy, I would like Doom running on an 8-bit machine!

@laserdiscphan Жыл бұрын

I had forgotten that I had seen a commercial for the Amiga back in the day featuring Dragon's Lair gameplay. It was so long ago and I had heard nothing else about DL on the Amiga since then, that I kind of concluded that I dreamt it up! Thanks for letting me know I'm not crazy!

@AmstradExin Жыл бұрын

I remember cracking Thexder 2 on the PC 8801. To make a copy-able copy, it took hours because the disks had different sector sizes, track lengths per track on many disks. There was no other protection I think. I had to copy the raw data into the standard floppy format with a disk monitor and patch the loader with the same tool. Then you could copy the disks with any backup tool.

@Zan_Jayna Жыл бұрын

Great game, thanks

@eee2861 Жыл бұрын

I remember playing this and Space Ace on Amiga 500. Beautiful, but frustrating to the point of being unplayable.

@eijentwun5509 Жыл бұрын

It played just like the arcade so you must have had trouble with that too.

@beecat4183 Жыл бұрын

I never had DL but I memorized space ace the weekend I got it and became upset I spent so much on it as a kid. It's much shorter than the arcade version too.

@RH-xm5uk Жыл бұрын

Brilliant story. Respect for your research. Was a pleasure to watch.

@paultucker3143 Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the insight. The first computer I bought with my own money here in the States was a used A500 with 1mb trapdoor and Dragon’s Lair among the software.

@HiyaEverybody. Жыл бұрын

OMG I'd forgotten all about this game and I used to love playing it. Wow man, thanks for the trip down memory lane. Now I'm thinking about lots of other games I used to love playing on various ZX Spectrums. Happy contented smile at how much nicer and simpler life was back then.

@patfer1189 Жыл бұрын

What I remember of Dragon's Lair arcade when I was a kid is that I never knew what exactly I had to do, but no matter the frustration I would try again right away again and later whenever I ran into the game again. And the same with other Laserdisc games such as Space Ace, Cobra Command, or Road Blaster.

@alpaykasal2902 Жыл бұрын

I was terrible at this game, but I loved showing off my Amiga with it. It was an incredible feat... I didn't know about that DMA trick on the drive, crazy! Thank you for this vid

@RealziesCuts Жыл бұрын

We had a neighbor on our street that had a laser disk player, It was wild the disks are huge

@TravisStamper Жыл бұрын

Thanks for the video, always appreciate the information

@alex73630 Жыл бұрын

With all those stories and contacts, I'm pretty sure that you could make some incredible podcasts talking about those game programming challenges and miracles! I'd guess that a ton of smaller tricks or even anecdotes aren't worth a full video by themselves, but an actual podcast or long format "interview" talking more about those developers experiences would be a killer concept! Much like the WAN Show concept from LinusTechTips, where Linus can use tech news to talk about his past and present experiences and his knowledge. I'm probably not the first one to talk about this but I do wanted to share my thoughts on this if it can help make even greater content down the line. Thanks again for all your work!

@dream431ca Жыл бұрын

These videos are my favorite. I love seeing the mechanics behind game ports, especially these kinds.

@uplinkx1126 Жыл бұрын

What I remember most about Dragons Lair is the input lag on the C64 and Amiga version. The game was a pain to play. Not that it mattered that much... It was revolutionary to be able to play this at home and I still enjoyed every frustrating second of it.

@doncapo732 Жыл бұрын

Amazing story and what an awesome video to share it with us all. Thank you so much, always enjoy your content!

@lancebukkake Жыл бұрын

i had the Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair II and Space Ace on the A500 with they first came out, it's fasinating how this was made

@bozimmerman Жыл бұрын

What a cool subject, and story. Packing bits by slowing the drive on writes -- ingenious!

@carlolalattacosterbosa5821 Жыл бұрын

this is the kind of videos i like the most! and most of all, Linden was my hero back when i was a kid (... a nerd kid) !

@MrReese Жыл бұрын

I remember Dragon's Lair being on the cover of one of the very first gaming magazines I ever purchased...those were really exciting times.

@jadelor Жыл бұрын

Love this. Thank you for the post-mortem!

@cubeflinger Жыл бұрын

Dragon's lair on the nes honestly blows my expectations away but I still have no idea how you fit so much animation on a small bunch of discs. Mad.

@hhectorlector Жыл бұрын

Watched this with my dad. Another excellent documentary. Great work!

@KevinSaunders Жыл бұрын

Thankyou for promoting this cool game on the Amiga - very insightful video, love your research into this and all your videos.

@pnvgordinho Жыл бұрын

Randy Linden sounds like a person that should be doing games for the Amiga, today.

@iVTECInside Жыл бұрын

Cool that you were able to talk to someone from the Fairlight group.

@Chilliconcarnage Жыл бұрын

Such pioneers these guys! It takes me back to the copy protection of "Leander" on the Amiga which I think was one of traveller's tales' first games. Really creative and sneaky protection.

@redpheonix1000 Жыл бұрын

The founder of Traveler's Tales actually has a channel here on youtube where he explained how the copy protection of their games worked, and I think he made a video for Leander specifically, too! It's GameHut, if you want to look it that up :)

@Chilliconcarnage Жыл бұрын

@@redpheonix1000 thanks I have seen it!

@ZA1US Жыл бұрын

Another awesome video! Thanks MVG!!

@TheBroz Жыл бұрын

Jim Bagely's port of Dragon's Lair to the ZX81 is also pretty incredible.

@Bhavyo Жыл бұрын

The Amiga port was the reason i wanted an amiga. I first saw Dragons Lair in an arcade in italy when we were on holidy. I was about 8, 9 years old and Dragons Lair totally blew me away. There was nothing comparable on the market, the graphics was lightyears ahead of anything else. To play the game was frustrating though. It was a unfair game, cause it was impossible to know many times what you actually should do. So it was also very expensive to play cause you died often and quick in this game. The game had a very special atmosphere though. The knight, think his name was Dirk, with all his hilarious facial expressions, the sound and so on. It was all pretty well put together.

@GamersUplink Жыл бұрын

This was a fantastic video. Randy Linden is brilliant.

@phxsisko Жыл бұрын

Yeah, i had the C64 version and I was so bummed how it looked/played, but i knew it could never look like the arcade, but when i sold my C64 (ugh) and got an Amiga 500, that version blew my mind and so did Space Ace. Seeing both on my friends A500 is what sold me on an Amiga. I wish I still had both of them and the libraries I cultivated :(

@rainnaxil Жыл бұрын

I had an amiga500 with 512kb of additional ram ... and when dragon s lair came out I was already finishing the arcade was great!

@Sypaka Жыл бұрын

This mad man just streamed the Laserdisc to his Amiga. Today, this would be the equivalent to capture every frame of a BluRay with a static Gameboy Camera.

@RobertBlow Жыл бұрын

Great video. You literally have the best channel on yt for techies of a certain age..

@8KilgoreTrout4 Жыл бұрын

The music on this channel gives me goosebumps every time! I LOVE the style!

@robertlawrence9000 Жыл бұрын

This was so cool back in the day. Pretty neat animation. Remember "Revenge Of The Ninja" on SEGA CD? That blew me away. Pretty cool animation quick time game.

@CinemaStormz Жыл бұрын

This is really awesome keep up the good work!

@sheppertonstudios8253 Жыл бұрын

Subbed man, thank you for this. As someone who has played Dragon's Lair on the Spectrum, CBM64, Amiga, and PC and now own the Replicade mini cabinet and the Arcade 1UP cabinet, this was SUPER interesting!

@Warlock_UK Жыл бұрын

The animation in this reminded me of PD Demo Animations done in Moviesetter on the Amiga which obviously game later but was a fantastic tool for doing this kind of work. Awesome video, man!