Dragon's Lair II is set a few years after Dragon's Lair.   Dirk now has a house filled with lots of children - and one mother-in-law!   (Mordrok and the mother-in-law voiced by Hal Smith - Digit the cockroach in "An American Tail" as far as I can remember... I'll have to check on that one!) Daphne has been kidnapped by the sorcerer Mordrok and taken into the planes of time to be his bride, made monstrous and generally warty all over by Mordrok's ring kept in the Casket of Doom.

The game opens with an outraged scream from Daphne's mother - "Daphne - kidnapped AGAIN?   AGHHH!!!" (or something like that!) followed by a worried "uh-oh" from Dirk!   His fears aren't unfounded either - the first two or three deaths in the game potentially come from Dirk's mother-in-law...   One of them involving a particularly eye-watering contact between a saucepan thrown by Daphne's mother, and parts of Dirk's lower body!...

Dirk must travel to Mordrok's castle and use a time machine to follow Daphne and Mordrok through the planes of time. The scenes include one in prehistoric times, Wonderland (Alice in Wonderlan), the garden of Eden and ancient Egypt, as well as a visit to Beethoven while he's wtiting a sympony. (That all sounds a bit like the film "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"!)

At the end of the game Mordrok puts the ring on Daphe's finger, turning her into a monster that Dirk must avoid while trying to get at the ring in order to pull it off. Dirk finally removes the ring and puts it on Mordrok's finger, who then explodes. Daphne now returns to normal, but appears to be dead. Dirk kisses her then cries. Daphne wakes up (doesn't all this sound like Snow White?!) and calls to Dirk who then shouts "Daphne" - his first words in any of the games! The pair jump onto the time machine and return home to their family, who then jump on board and fly away, with the words "Congratulations - you are a winner!" appearing on the screen!

This game had a new feature not included in Dragon's Lair I - the ability to pick up objects. The only one I lived to see when I played was a glowing gold bow and arrow that Dirk picks up with a satisfied "hm-hm!" as well as a chime of bells (you know - like when Windows closes down!). The game featured faster action too, along with Don's belief - formed during work on Space Ace - that the key to a successful arcade game was fast action.

This game met with problems, having suffered the misfortune of being made during the video game slump of the early 1980's. The backer of the project, Cinematronics, withdrew funding for the game after going into bankruptcy. The game was almost complete, and a memo circulated to studio staff appears to suggest (to me at least!) that Don hoped that the liquidators would allow him to finish the game considering its advanced state of completion...

COPY OF THE MEMO

March 23 1984

Dear Friend:

A very regrettable and unecpected thing has occured today the result of which requires that we temporarily discontinue your work on "Dragon's Lair II."

We have a large amount of money in our manufacturer's hands. These funds which have been supplied to us weekly, have been the source from which you and our other production costs have been paid.

Due to these problems, with which we are not involved, between our manufacturer and its creditors, the creditors have obtained a temporary restraining order against the payment of any money by our manufacturer, including its payment to us. These funds are used to pay your wages.

We hope that this is a temporary situation! however, we deeply regret that we must discontinue your service today.

We very much appreciate your intense loyalty and hope that we will be able to continue our pleasant association soon.

You will be pleased to learn that we have obtained the rights to make a featture length movie on "Dragon's Lair". We hope to be able to talk to you about this soon, and to work together on it as we have definitely decided to produe it.

The script is currently being written

With great affection

{Don Bluth}

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Don Bluth and his team continued work to complete the project however, and the game was eventually completed and released. I played the game myself around 1992, and from its lack of prominance at the rear of the arcade in which it was sited, I thought (at the time) that the arcade owner had bought an old cabinet from 1983 or 84. Evidently the game can't have been particlarly expensive - otherwise it would have been sited near the arcade doorway! I can only guess from this that the cabinet was maybe bought cheaply as part of some stock liquidation by either Bluth or Cinematronics, since it was so close to its acutal release time that it can't have been second hand.   Of course, the arcade owner could have been too lazy to move the present front cabinets!...

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Don apparently hoped to sell the game as a videocassette for collectors or as a computer game. Well, I've never heard of the cassette being released, but the game does exist as a CD-ROM.

The film version of Dragon's Lair - "Dragon's Lair : The Legend" featuring Dirk as a teenager was produced as a short film to show to potential backers, but interest in Dragon's Lair had waned, and it was never made.

The last game to be made connected with the Bluth group was "Zorro", designed mostly by Dan Kuenster, but the connection with the studio was not recognised when it was released.

The games were over, and Don Bluth returned to making animated features.

See also - The Dragon's Lair Project site.

Back to Don Bluth section

This page was created Friday 15 May 1998