The other day I was stumbling and mumbling my way through a conversation with a coworker about how the internet has made us all dumber. What I meant to say was the internet has turned our brains into jelly because we really don't have to remember or retain any information. Every fact, date, name, or whatever is just a quick search away.Like my dormant stomach muscles, my brain doesn't have to work very hard anymore to recover long-lost information. I just Google whatever I'm looking for and eat another peanut butter cup during the time I just saved.
Take tonight, for instance. I spent about 40 seconds trying to remember the name of a forgotten arcade game before I gave up and Googled it.
I wasn't an arcade nerd growing up, but I remember this game that was a huge deal for a while because the graphics were cartoon-level art instead of bleeping blipping squares and dots. It was such a sensation for about a summer, when word-of-mouth still spread by word-of-mouth, not message boards or Web 2.0.
I think I got to play it once. If it wasn't broken, there was always a long line. If I remember correctly (I can't Google a personal memory, or at least I couldn't before I wrote this post), I couldn't manipulate the joystick to control the awkward movement of this cartoon guy on the screen and ended up just running him off a cliff or something three straight times.
Game Over.
So, now it's 30 years later and I'm sitting here watching this Little Mermaid crap with my daughter and something about the animation reminds me of this elusive game.
What was that called?
A search for "80s arcade games" took me to a wiki page with a long list of games. There it was. Right there under 1983.
Dragon's Lair.
Yep, that's it. I just needed to confirm its existence. I didn't imagine that memory.
I should have stopped there, but I didn't. I ended up on Dragonslairfans.com, which gives you way more information than you should ever have about it. There, you will find a blow-by-blow account of one man's quest to get an original arcade version of Dragon's Lair up and running again. It includes nerdilicious quotes like this:
"So, I power up the Sony LDP 3300, the EuroDL card is also pluged (sic) to the original Atari DL PCB, and the computer runs the prg to remap laser disc command to the Sony LDP..."
Wow. But God bless him. He got it going.
And, of course. You can buy the T-shirt on the internet.
1 comment:
You should have called me. I knew the name. You like your internet better than your phone obviously. I like you only played Dragon Lair a few times. Although I was impressed by the graphics getting eaten by the moat monster 3x in a row sucked and I cursed myself for being so bad at video games.
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