Dragon's Lair

Dragon's Lair was a 1983 revelation that literally stopped crowds in the arcades. While the competition ran on crude pixels, this game looked like a full-fledged animated film — because it essentially was one. Behind the animation stood Don Bluth, a former Disney master, and the picture played back from a laserdisc in a quality players of the time couldn't even imagine. The lines at the cabinet were as much about watching as about playing.

The gameplay, however, was completely different from what the looks suggested. The knight Dirk rescues Princess Daphne from a dragon's castle, but you don't control the movement freely — the game is a chain of scripted scenes where you have to press a direction or the sword at exactly the right split second. A wrong or late move means instant (and often comically brutal) death. It was essentially a visual memorization puzzle, a forerunner of what we now call quick time events.

Retro gamers love Dragon's Lair more as a phenomenon than as classic gameplay. It's a milestone that showed how far the gaming medium could reach for a cinematic experience, and it launched a short, wild era of laserdisc games. To this day it captivates with its animation — and it can also thoroughly infuriate with its ruthlessness.