The Commodore 64 is a computer that is close to my heart as a gamer.  I had other computers prior to it, I also had gaming consoles around but none were as cool as the C64.  From playing Alternate Reality: The Dungeon to playing Temple of Apshai and Sword of Fargaol on it, I had a lot of great days just trudging through fantasy games on that Commodore 64.  Other platforms just didn’t compare.  One thing that was quite limited on the C64 though was animation.  That meant we didn’t see anything like Dragon’s Lair, hell nothing of the time was producing Laserdisc ports.  Thanks to homebrew developers though, we can finally see what Dragon’s Lair looks like on the Commodore 64.  I am not talking Nintendo NES style porting either.

Dragon’s Lair tells the tale of Dirk the Daring who is tasked with saving Princess Daphne from the evil dragon, Singe.  This is all told through hand drawn cartoon animators lead by former Disney animator, Don Bluth.  Dragon’s Lair was the face of Laserdisc gaming when it hit.  If you talked about Laserdisc games, even today, people think of Dragon’s Lair rather than the handful of other titles that were released over the years.  Talk about staying power.

Much like the port of Dragon’s Lair to the Sinclair ZX81, this port to the Commodore 64 is not running on stock hardware.  That would be freaking awesome if it was running on stock hardware though (and would probably look nothing like it does).

The Commodore 64 version of Dragon’s Lair runs thanks to the 16 megabyte RAM Expansion Unit and either in the VICE emulator or using a 1541U.  A small price to pay if it means being able to play Dragon’s Lair in all of its glory in Commodore 64 graphics.

Source: Youtube via Retro Domination’s Facebook

Carl Williams

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