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Sullivan Bluth Interactive Media |
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ReadySoft |
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"Dirk the Daring was a heroic, if clumsy knight. When Princess Daphne was kidnapped by the dragon, Singe, and taken to his castle, Dirk set out to rescue her. Due to limitations of the computers at the time, this conversion of the coin-op arcade game, Dragon's Lair only features the first half of the game, which consists of entering Singe's Castle and encountering the dragon. The adventures are continued in a second part which completes the conversion of the arcade game.
Dirk the Daring is controlled by the player, who views Dirk's actions on the screen from third-person. The game is reactive and players must press the right controller direction or action button at the right time to have Dirk avoid traps, defeat monsters and otherwise stay alive." --MobyGames.com
Many thanks to the Personal Computer Museum for providing this archive.
Learn more about the many versions of this game at Syd Bolton's Dragon's Lair Page (Web Archive).
Also in this series: Dragon's Lair (CD-ROM version), Escape from Singe's Castle, Time Warp, The Curse of Mordread
CompatibilityCopy protection codes are provided in a PDF.
Comments
@JonThysell: It may even be that your '030 Mac is too much for it... or the amount of RAM on board ?
(Reading MCP's post below)... "I didn't even try running it on a 4MB build actually, after I was told it didn't work with more than 1MB"...
I don't know, but MCP was pretty good at this sort of thing.
Plus in the readme doc inside the archive:
"NOTE: We were not able to get this to run under emulation because there are bugs in the code that prevent it from running on just about any Mac hardware with MORE than 1MB of memory (and most emulators like MinivMac default to 4MB). However, the game will work on real hardware and possibly other emulators configured properly. If you get it working please share with us the configuration you used--thanks!"
Now I realize that your SE/30 isn't an emulator, but maybe the onboard RAM is a factor too.
This game starts up in 7.5.5 on my SE/30, sound and animation looks great, but no matter what I do, I can't get the provided copy protection codes to work. Pressing return in the text box only inserts a new line, as if the box was set for multi-line text so I can't get past it. Even running in 24-bit mode doesn't help. Is System 7 just a no-go?
Oh dear, another video game-based movie in the works:
Ryan Reynolds in Talks for Netflix’s Dragon’s Lair Film Adaptation
So after Really reading the directions and watching some game play I discovered that I was pushing way too many buttons and thus not a move or wrong move and dead. So after I slowed down and tried a few clues in the manual I was able to complete a scene. I find it tough with the other screens with the river I think I need to adjust my monitor as I have trouble seeing the smooth water. Good news is I am actually able to play the game. Pretty neat.
@smitty420: View the 1st comment on the Dragon's Lair (CD-ROM version) page, linked above, and see if that's what you need to try.
I have the mac extended keyboard for a mac plus and I also have a 128 keyboard with the keypad and all I get are beeps. No movement. I do get the game to pause with P and start with 0 but maybe I am doing something wrong. All I get are beeps with the corresponding keys and no beeps on the keys that don't do anything. Weird, Has anybody been able to play through these disks. I also can't get them to load onto my hard drive and actually play. I plan to try this again but first try was a no go. Bummer really wanted to play this game, just rebuilt the Plus, repaired the monitor and upgraded with 4MB ram, maybe thats the problem. I even tried different versions of the OS thinking that maybe that was it, and went back far enough for it to not work.
@smitty420 The game uses the numeric keypad for control. If your keyboard doesn’t have one, then the numbers at the top of the keyboard might work. That’s what I had to use on my old Mac Plus. Very hard because their spatial relationship is all wrong.
Dragon's Lair, it's sequels, and Space Ace spin-off are not really a "games" as such. They are really just animated stories where you have to press the correct key at EXACTLY the perfect time for the story to continue on, otherwise you die. They look great, but are incredibly frustrating and silly to try to play.
I can't get control of character on any keys or mouse. What gives?
Like a boss! You're amazing MCP. You never stop delivering.
We have this guy to thank for this upload as well as the Space Ace floppy version:
http://www.pixelpower.on.ca/dl/
He did all the work and only asked me for a couple of tips, and I uploaded it here.
I can see the codes just fine on my monitor; if I thought it was worth the trouble I'd just type them into a text file, but I'm not planning on playing this, and I doubt that many will. This is the sort of upload that is really for historical purposes more than anything. Much better versions of the game exist and are still available.
I didn't even try running it on a 4MB build actually, after I was told it didn't work with more than 1MB. I used a 1MB build of Mini vMac. Maybe it depends on what System version is being used...
Well done, MCP! I think a lot of Macintosh Gardeners will be surprised to learn there was a Dragon's Lair (and Space Ace) for the Macintosh Plus. I had forgotten about the murky sheet of copy protection codes. If a better scan of it existed, the codes could be made more legible with some levels tweaking in Photoshop. Unfortunately, the existing scan has too many JPEG compression artifacts. Lastly, I had no problem running Dragon's Lair in the standard (4MB RAM) build of Mini vMac. Now if only I can remember how the keyboard controls work. It seems you have to use the numeric keys on the top row of the keyboard, which is terrible.