Fan Gets Dragon’s Lair Running on Atari 8-bit Computer

Back in the day Atari had quite the plethora of platforms under their belt. They hold the honor of being one of the few hardware manufacturers that supported both a computer and dedicated consoles at the same time. The line of Atari 8-bit computers are well thought of in the retro gaming community and there are many fans that will not let go of their beloved Atari computers. One such fan has gotten Dragon’s Lair to run on this line of computers, with a bit of help.

Anyone that has gamed on an Atari 8-bit computer already knows that the stock models are not in any way going to rock anything resembling the arcade Dragon’s Lair game. That is true of this fan port.

This port uses an experimental cart called “Hashi”. This is a high throughput cartridge (read, it does all the heavy lifting) for the Atari 8-bit line of computers. That is fine, we have seen this in the past with other Full Motion Video game ports to various platforms - such as these FMV games on the Commodore 64 or this port of Dragon’s Lair for the ZX81.

What is going on here is the Hashi cartridge does all of the work in preparing the video and the Atari 8-bit is more or less simply used to display whatever video is sent to it. No matter how you prepare the video, what is shown on televisions is dependent on the quality capabilities of the main hardware.

In the case of the Atari 8-bit port of Dragon’s Lair you are in for some video that makes Sega CD look near HD quality in comparison. The animation is there, just the video quality is quite low - this is because of the Atari 8-bit computer. Should you care? Depends, if you are into seeing what old tech can do, then you are in for a treat. For everyone expecting a 100% true to the arcade port, come on, this is an Atari 8-bit computer.

Source: Upcoming & New 8 Bit Games Facebook page

Originally published on Retro Gaming Magazine.