I don't really know how many years have passed since a friend of mine and I were talking while he was playing at it.
I remember it was somewhat funny and decided that one day I would have played to it again, or better, play it (since I was just more or less watching it the first time), and I finally managed to play, this time with my partner.
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It's somewhat hard to talk about this game, it's old, it's dated, the timings and the button you have to press are half of the time not clear and you just end up trying all the combinations, stretching a 10 minutes experience (for real, just look at it on youtube) into a two hours one.
The 2D animations, that are the main reason why we decided to give it a shot, are nice (especially the backgrounds) and funny, and sometimes even very good, but they are also so short, cut so fast, like for the death scenes, that you basically have not the time to see them!
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But, in the end, we had fun.
Between the hilarious "save me" by the princess, and all her final (and beautifully animated) speech you will hear more time than the Riku's one, the, the funny Lizard King and his gold magnetic pot (why is it magnetic anyway?), the ominous Grim Reaper (seriously I love its design), the abstract Colored Balls, and so on, there are so many different scenes that entertained us.
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Yes, it gets boring at times, and frustrating, but it was also somewhat funny to try all the different combinations just to understand if we were missing one, missing a timing, and in the meantime looking at all the various death scenes, that, just because of the amount of time you see them, become sort of iconic, as for the intro to the scene itself you will see right after.
The Giddy Goons ones, we spent so long in there! We hadn't realized yet the, even if the game has timing, it's not that difficult (we played on easy) and so we thought we had to press X at a very specific time, and also, only realized there that if the score does not go up, you are just looking at a death scene. We thought that UP was the right button just to realize that it wasn't after 10 minutes of attempts!
It was funny to understand how to better play at the game by looking at these little "meta" details (like the score), it can feel like cheating maybe but it made the experience more compelling.
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An important thing to keep in mind is that we played the Home version without visual or audio hints (the audio was more because it was annoying). I advise you to play it like this, otherwise you will just see what to do and it loses its "goofy" charm (you can still peek the score for a little help).
We also were 2 playing it, switching controller every game over (5 lives). I think this is an important reason why we enjoyed it, and if I had to play this alone I would have probably enjoyed it less or very little altogether. The cool thing about this game, that I think makes it enjoyable even today, is how you can have fun seeing each other failing but then helping the other with the correct moves you have already discovered, or just keeping track of them while the other plays. You will find yourself saying directions out loud even when not playing both to help but for a weird sense of immersion.
The various scenes are nice, but not particularly good or compelling, but when you see them with someone else, it makes it easy to laugh at them, and after a while it feels like a little journey in this sort of wonderland.
The game sometimes will present you with a room you have already encountered (but usually mirrored): in other contexts, it could be sort of annoying/dragging (and it is of course), but here it manages to give a good feeling, a sort of "oh no this again" or "I know what to do". I can't really explain this well but it was fun and compelling.
I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much alone.
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I'm glad I've finally managed to play it again because, even if, in the end, it is just an old "quick time event" game, it felt refreshing.
We still have 2 other games in the Dragon's Lair collection to play and I feel we will, just after a nice break to avoid being sort of overwhelmed by it.
This time we could also summon someone else to play it with us, who knows, might be even funnier.
