No joke - a true conversion of the classic Laser Disc arcade game is in the works

One of the biggest surprises unofficially announced at the Classic Gaming Expo last weekend in Las Vegas was the news that Dragon's Lair, the classic Don Bluth-animated, Rick Dyer-designed Laser Disc arcade game from 1983, is in development on the Game Boy Color.

Rick Dyer was apparently on the show floor showing videogame alumni and industry folk a one-level demonstration of Dragon's Lair on the handheld: the opening scene where Dirk the Daring (the game's hero) walks across the drawbridge and must escape a swamp monster when the wood breaks under his feet. According to the people who have seen the demo in action, the animation is a near-flawless port of the same scene from the Laser Disc original.

After seeing the FMV introduction and cut scenes in Activision's Tarzan, we know just how good these animated sequences can look on the colour handheld, and we're very confident that the development team responsible for Dragon's Lair on the Game Boy Color can do just as good a job. Granted, the biggest limitation is ROM size, but hopefully they'll be able to squeeze the 15 minutes of animation onto an affordable cartridge.

Courtesy of IGN.com