Dragon's Lair II

STORY / GAMEPLAY
An evil wizard kidnapped lady Daphne and used a ring of mystical power with which he can manipulate the strings of time. Dirk's only chance to save the lady is his trusty sword and a rusty old time machine that he has to use to dive into the time stream. Unfortunately he'll probably end up getting lost along the way. In Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp, you control Dirk the Daring as he travels his way through time. Time Warp is the sequel to the phenomenally popular Dragon's Lair laserdisc game by Rick Dyer and Don Bluth. Like the original game, Dragon's Lair II is completely cell-animated by Don Bluth's company. You don't freely control Dirk the Daring but rather you move the joystick or push the sword button at a given time, where you must act to a moment of danger for our hero. So all you have to do is to make the correct move at the appropriate moment so that Dirk will survive the scene. This means that just by pressing "Right" doesn't mean Dirk will move right. If you fail to do so, the game shows a scene of Dirk's death and you must try again.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is nothing but a memory test of correct joystick movements at the right moment. But the whole presentation (visuals and sound) are quite impressive, even as a six-disk animated demo! Otherwise, this game is damn hard to beat.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Amiga port has impressive graphics although there are several details and colors missing from the original laser-disc version. The cartoon-ish visuals have 16 to 32 colors on-screen and the variety in the camera perspective makes a very decent visual show for a couple of minutes. The animations are based on the laser-disc arcade version with the mandatory cuts due to the memory limitations of a floppy disk format. Take a look at the impressive screenshots and you'll realize what I mean.
The sound is great and reminds us of a cartoon movie as it features sampled sound effects and soundtracks to accompany particularly eventful scenes. Back in the 90s I used this game to impress my friends but nothing more, as the game was too difficult to play!