Dragon’s Lair comes to the iPhone and iPod Touch

To date, Dragon’s Lair — that “classic” quarter sucker of inexplicable and catastrophic player death animated by Don Bluth and first released to arcades in 1983 — is available for over 59 different platforms. Now you can make it sixty: Dragon’s Lair has officially been released for the iPhone.

Dragon’s Lair has never been much of a “video game” as we commonly understand the term: it’s cheap and nearly impossible to beat without a walkthrough. The original arcade version, in fact, was more like a machine that — for a single quarter — would pleasantly show you about twenty seconds of attractive animation, suddenly deliver a rousing haymaker to the groin, then prompt you to insert another quarter.

On the iPhone, Dragon’s Lair delivers the same experience, but instead of charging you a quarter at a time, it’s a one-time fee of $4.99. The iPhone version simply overlays the four direction inputs and sword button over the gameplay, with options of shrinking the virtual D-pad. The player also has the option of choosing three, five or infinite lives.

There’s two modes: Arcade mode, which will doubtlessly end in an iPhone hurled against a wall as it doesn’t allow you to replay sections that you have just failed, and Home mode, which allows you to attack a section until you beat it. The latter mode also includes extra movie sequence that were never actually shown in the Arcade version. And as an extra concession to Dragon’s Lair‘s extraordinary cheapness, the game even ships with a Move Guide, which basically cues you as to which buttons to press and when.

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Dragon’s Lair is available now over at the App Store, and it looks like a faithful port, but personally? You can save yourself a fin and get the experience by just putting on a DVD of The Secret of NIMH and repeatedly dropping a heavy dictionary in your lap.

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