Can you imagine if videogames were designed to soak up as much money as possible using cheap tricks and not-so-cheap paywalls? Thank god we don't have to deal with that kind of nonsense (opens in new tab) anymore. But that was very much the norm for the quarter-hungry arcade games of the 80s and 90s, and few games devoured allowances as ravenously as Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, ex-Disney animator Don Bluth's laserdisc hits. Luckily, you can now get Dragon's Lair, Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp and Space Ace on GOG (opens in new tab) for a set price of $20.
By my calculations, $20 is a mere 80 quarters, a fraction of what it would take to beat just one of these games back in the day, and with no line, to boot. The original Dragon's Lair cost $0.50 per play when it was originally released in 1983, and when you take into account inflation and the many sudden deaths, this trilogy bundle really is a hell of a deal.
Of course, releasing on GOG isn't going to make these games any less impossible, and I'm willing to bet they haven't aged well. But they were cutting-edge stuff in the 80s and dazzled countless budding gamers, so it's nice to see them catch a second wind, if only so newer generations can experience more glorious death animations like these:
