BILLW@SRI-AI.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (08/05/83)
From: William "Chops" Westfield <BILLW@SRI-AI.ARPA>
n018 2-Aug-83 08:18
BC-VIDEO 2takes
By ALJEAN HARMETZ
c. 1983 N.Y. Times News Service
HOLLYWOOD - The cozy relationship between Hollywood and video games
has moved a step closer to marriage. ''Dragon's Lair,'' a
coin-operated laser-disk video game with stereophonic sound and real
animation, reached arcades two weeks ago and has become an instant
sensation.
''I've never seen a game this crowded,'' said Lance Boyd, assistant
manager of Castle Park Arcade in Sherman Oaks, where ''Dragon's
Lair'' is earning twice as much money as ''Pole Position,'' the game
in second place. ''There have literally been 15 people crowded around
the machine.''
IN Video's in Los Angeles, a television monitor lets
customers watch others play the game while they wait their turn. In
Boise, Idaho, patrons are taping $5 bills instead of quarters to the
machine, signifying their intention to play game after game before
relinquishing the machine. The game - which costs 50 cents to play,
double the usual price - is averaging more than $1,000 a week per
machine around the country.
If laser-disk games are saccessful, they will be a shot in the arm
for the wilting video-arcade industry. Arcades are currently
saturated with games, and auctions of game machines from arcades
whose owners have gone broke have increased dramatically.
The manufacturers are hurting, too. According to a June report by
Christopher Kirby, a video-games specialist with Sanford C. Bernstein
and Co., an investment research company in New York, about 200,000
video-game machines are being shipped this year, less than half the
480,000 shipped in 1982. However, the Kirby report also sees
laser-disk technology as one way of lifting the ''sagging fortunes''
of the arcades.
According to industry analysts, arcade income has dropped some 25
percent from last year's $7.3 billion nationwide. The Atari division
of Warner Communications, last year's stock-market darling, reported
a second-quarter loss of more than $310 million last week. Much of
Atari's loss came about because of steep competition in the
still-thriving home-video game arena.
The laser-disk arcade games now being introduced will begin to show
up in homes a year from now. Coleco Industries, a leading maker of
electronic games, has purchased home-video rights to ''Dragon's
Lair'' for $2 million, for example.
''Dragon's Lair,'' a sword-and-sorcery adventure in which Dirk the
Daring tries to rescue a captive princess, is the first laser-
disk game to reach the arcades. A second such game, Sega's ''Astron
Belt,'' has been introduced in Japan and is now being test-
marketed in San Diego.
Because of its random-access memory, a laser-disk game does not
follow a preset pattern. In ''Dragon's Lair,'' the player makes
choices that change the course of the adventure. Whether the player
''drinks'' a potion or ''dives'' through a wall determines what
happens next to Dirk the Daring. And the seemingly endless rooms and
corridors full of lizard kings and metal thorns, or the collapsing
wooden bridges, rarely come up in the same order twice. ''Dragon's
Lair'' is, in essence, a mini-movie that must be played to determine
its ending.
(MORE)
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