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Dragon's Lair stunned the coin-op world with its amazing video disk graphics. Now Dirk's daring deeds come to the computer screen.

Once upon a time, there was a princess called Daphne and, as was traditional with princesses, she was incredibly beautiful. So much so that Knights and Princes came from all over the land to ask her father, King Aetheired, for her hand in marriage. But it was to no avail for Daphne was in love with the King's champion, a certain Dirk the Daring.

Everything was peaceful in the kingdom until one dark day when Daphne was kidnapped by the evil dragon Singe. To be fair to Singe, he was rather upset at the time as he had asked King Aetheired to hand over his entire kingdom and lands and the king had, somewhat unreasonably Singe thought, refused. As is also traditional in these stories, Daphne was imprisoned in a far away castle and a ransom note delivered. The gist of the note was that the king had ntil sunset to agree to the demands, or his daughter would cop it. But it was written in slightly more diplomatic terms than this.

And, verily, the entire population quaked at the knees, all save Dirk the Daring, who, in a moment of folly, decided to live up to his name and volunteered to go and slay the dragon and rescue his true love.

After weeks of travelling, Dirk arrived at Singe's enchanted castle. Upon entering, there seemed to be nowhere to go save along a platform. This ended up in front of a large wooden disk. Throwing caution to the winds, Dirk leapt on and immediately, the disk started to fall.

It's one thing to throw caution to the winds, but it's really bad news when the winds fight back. Suddenly, an air genie appeared and tried to blow Dirk off his platform. At the last moment though, he grabbed the edge of the disk and hauled himself back on, regaining his balance. Again and again the genie attacked but Dirk weathered the storm until the disk slowed and he decided it might be a good idea to leap off. He was glad he did, for looking back, the pit below the disk appeared to be bottomless.

The passage led into a hallway and Dirk hardly had time to get his bearings before he was attacked by what seemed to be a do-it-yourself skeleton kit. Hands and skulls materialised from nowhere to the general accompaniment of bats but Dirk made no bones about attacking them with this trusty sword as he made his way out of the hall.

The next room stopped abruptly at an edge and there appeared to be a series of stepping stones leading to the other side. Fired up after killing the bones, a giant leap took him to the next stone.

Not a moment too soon as the ground behind him burst into flames. A rope lay in front of him and Dirk used that to help himself across the next gap. This combination of climbing and jumping continued as Dirk noticed that the only exit was at the top of the room.

Catching his breath, Dirk looked cautiously into the next room but it was only the armoury and seemed empty and so, feeling secure, in he went. Wrong!

Would-be heroes should realise that nothing is ever what it seems, especially in enchanted castles. The weapons started to animate, even though there was no-one there to wield them, and Dirk soon found himself weaving this way and that as he dodged and parried. Suddenly a door opened in the far wall and so he made his way for that. A series of ramps led the way through the next chamber but they had an annoying tendency to disappear from under you if your attention wandered for but a moment - quite likely occurrence when you are being attacked by some goons at the time. Not wasting any time, Dirk got out of there as quickly as he could.

The next room was a deserted laboratory or, at least, it was deserted until large tentacles appeared and tried to grab Dirk. A few slashes of the sword soon created a septapus or two. Beginning to expect the unexpected, Dirk was a trifle miffed to find another disk in front of him.

Although he could feel evil at work all around him, he had learned how to hold on. The next room he had certainly not encountered before. A single-handed combat with the dragon's greatest champion, all taking part on a mid-air chessboard.

Just as Dirk was about to strike a telling blow, the phantom knight vanished only to reappear on the other side of the board. The most worrying aspect of it all though was that a line of destruction had been created between the evil champion's old and new position.

Holding himself back, Dirk soon came to recognise when the knight was at his most vulnerable and, after a few blows quickly exited at the far side of the room.

There at last was the object of his quest. The dragon Singe with the princess locked in a glass sphere. At the far edge of the ledge, Dirk saw a magic sword glowing and knew that only that would kill the dragon. Weaving every which way he could, Dirk ran towards the sword. He had just picked it up when Singe showed why he was called so and burnt the foolish hero to a crisp!

This was not the end of the story though for Singe was touched by the foolish actions of our late lamented hero and relented on his demands. Princess Daphne soon forgot about him too as she found that she enjoyed being chatted-up by princes and going round kissing frogs. But the ordinary people of the kingdom loved a good story and they wrote it down.

And, as their wizards become more and more technologically competent, so they transferred the story to other media. First came something called a video disk which had the most amazing pictures, but limited actions, as you acted out the part of Dirk.

Then a magic shoppe called Software Projects brought out a version for computers (whatever they be) which did not have such pretty pictures but allowed you more freedom of movement.

And, because they were such a lot of romantic softies at heart, they changed the ending so that, with a bit of skilful management of the old magic wand (also known as a joystick) Dirk could get the girl in the end.

And they all lived happily ever after. Except, that is, for the court jester, also known as this game's reviewer, who even to this day has great difficulty getting off the first disk!

The game itself allows you more freedom and options than its coin-op counterpart right from screen one - the dreaded disk. In the coin-op game, you simply leap onto the disk, plummet down with it and then leap off at the right moment. However, in the computer version you have to battle to stay on it. On your way down you will have to face seven attacks from the air genie by battling against its force in any of four directions then, as the disk slows down, leap off it onto a platform before it's too late.

In some screens (or parts of the game) you must move at the correct time or you won't move at all! Chances are that you'll die as well (usually horribly). For example, in screen two, Skull Hallway, if you don't move in the right direction at the right time skulls leap on you or you are grabbed by a giant bony hand, or suffocated by swarming bats or even lost in slime. Each ending the life of one of your initial five Dirks.

Luckily, you do get hints (a buzz warns that you made the wrong move but at least you did it at the right time) and, since most of the problems are logical, you'll no doubt solve them - eventually.

Such trial and error solutions may not seem like the most enjoyable game and, believe me, it is annoying. So annoying in fact that it drives you back, time and time again, until you finally solve a screen... only to find another waiting.

Quite honestly, I don't think you'll enjoy playing the game but you'll certainly enjoy beating it!

The C64 tape version uses a cunning way of keeping the action flowing, despite the fact that the game is too big to fit in the computer in one go. Consequently, each screen must be loaded in from tape but, here's the clever bit, while you're still struggling with the current screen! Should you finish it, the next one is there, ready and waiting for you.

Unfortunately, this does mean that, if you've lost your last Dirk, you have to rewind the tape.

Dragon's Lair is available on the C64 on both tape (£9.95) and disk (£14.95) with Spectrum and Amstrad versions nearing completion.