Forget XBox Live remakes and hot sauce peddling champs of yesteryear. Two true reminders of just how big the early 1980s were for arcade video games are finally available on DVD.
Dragon's Lair: The Complete Series and Pac-Man: The Complete First Season finally bring some of the Reagan-years video game licenses home.
The Dragon's Lair cartoon was first released by Ruby-Spears in 1984. Based upon the ground-breaking laser disc arcade game from 1983, the original series aired as an ABC Saturday Morning series. Perhaps due to the temporary death of the video game industry in North America around the same time, only 13 episodes were produced, with the series coming to a close in 1985.
Pac-Man proved to be almost as big of a hit as it's arcade counterpart. The Hanna-Barbera series debuted on ABC Saturday Mornings in 1982 and ran for two years. It featured most of the Pac-Man series characters to date, including Ms. Pac-Man and Baby Pac-Man with Super Pac-Man and PJ Pac (loosely based on Jr. Pac-Man) joining the series in it's second season.
Two holiday specials were produced for the Pac-Man series, Christmas Comes to Pac-Land and the Pac-Man Halloween Special. Graphics and music for the 1984 side-scrolling game Pac-Land were altered for the North American market to resemble the cartoon series and several characters, including the Pac-Family pets Chomp Chomp and Sourpuss, appeared in later entries and spin-offs.
The Dragon's Lair series was released in November and is available on Amazon.com by clicking here.
The Pac-Man DVD is set for a March 1 release and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com by clicking here.
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The author of this article, who has been gaming so long he remembers watching both of these cartoons when brand new, can be reached at PatrickScottPatterson.com and on Twitter @OriginalPSP.
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