saturday_am_80s | 1984 10:00 on ABC: DRAGON'S LAIR

By 1984, ABC had realized that these new-fangled VEE-dee-oh Games were all the rage with kids and brought yet another popular game character to Saturday Mornings at 10:00, DRAGON'S LAIR.

One of only *three* video games stored for posterity at the Smithsonian Institute, Dragon's Lair was a revolutionary video game with rich, delightful animation courtesy of Ex-Disney Animator Don Bluth. Just compare the above opening credits of the TV show (produced by Ruby-Spears on the cheap) to the "Trailer" that played on the old Dragon's Lair Video Game and you'll begin to see why the show may not have performed so well...

The Video Game had been cinematic quality animation, and the Saturday Morning cartoon was... well, TV Animation. And then to further doom the show, it was scheduled at the dreaded TEN O'CLOCK TIME SLOT, the time in the morning when every other network was showing the second or third half-hour of some extremely popular show such as The Smurfs.

Despite all this, the show was *extremely* popular! One gimmick they used that really helped connect the show to the video game was to end on a cliffhanger at each commercial break, having the narrator ask viewers "What would YOU do?" to insure that the kids would stay tuned to find out what happened. Coming back from commercial break would have the narrator show one or two possible "Bad Choices", followed by the heroic option that saved the day :)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This video game drove me NUTS. There was some bit where you had to run through/jump over a swinging paddle turnstile thing and it always batted me backwards into need-another-quarter land...

We had Dragon's Lair in exactly *one* location in my small home town, a tiny grocery store that just happened to be near my Grandma's house. Whenever I had an extra 50-cents, I knew better than to try and play the game myself - I gave my quarters to Bryan Reynolds in exchange for right-shoulder prefered seating views of him playing and (one time) BEATING the game :)

And Don has been trying to market the heck out of the game (and float a feature film) ever since, with only minimal success.

I love the guy, but a businessman, he's not.

-TG

Yeah... he had Walt Disney's pure, unbridled PASSION for the art form, but he really needed a Roy Disney to make it actually happen :(

1984 10:00 on ABC: DRAGON'S LAIR

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