What I wanted for Christmas #4: A Dragon’s Lair arcade game

From about ages 8-12, Showbiz Pizza held fun of near mythical proportions. Back then Showbiz had one of the best collections of videogames, and the nature of the visit meant you were going to be playing for hours. Chuck E. Cheese is a shadow of that culture–primarily focused on younger kids and ticket-producing games.

This was where the famed “Dragon’s Lair” game eventually showed up.

To this day I could walk into that building and point to right were the game was, probably to within a few inches. That’s even with the Chuck E. remodelling job.

Dragon’s Lair utilized the combination of laserdisc tech and normal video games to create a very unique gaming experience. Here’s a modern screen cap on Youtube:

I wanted this game in the middle of 6th grade. I’m talking the full size, arcade style version of the game. Ran about $3000. At some point I was probably delusional enough that I thought I’d get it. But there was a reasoning behind all this. And it had to do with grades.

For some reason people always just assumed I got good grades, this was not the case.

From K-6th grade, I was in no less than 5 different schools, and each of them had a completely different philosophy. This included the practical rural mid-west school, the in-town Montessori-ish school, and what I call the “brutal ABC’s” approach in the South. By the time I was in 6th grade, I really had no idea why I was in school or what I was supposed to be doing. It was just someplace you went to get lost in the shuffle.

What I figured out pretty quickly was that I was supposed to get good grades. I didn’t know what that meant but I knew that my parents seemed to have limitless resources when describing the rewards for such an achievement. Thus, I was able to work out a deal: Straight A’s = my very own Dragon’s Lair game.

Turns out it was a safe bet on my parent’s part. I never even came close to straight A’s in middle school. I did figure things out by my freshman year in HS but by then the Dragon’s Lair deal was history. So, no…I never got this! No chance!

Now you can download the whole thing on PC (probably for iphone too). But back then it was the unachievable awesome thing I wanted for Christmas.

Update: Jason emailed me the iphone version of the Dragon’s Lair ap. There really is an app for that….

On a side note, the princess in the game bears a striking resemblance to my wife. So maybe I did get the game after all.