From Dragon’s Lair to Rock Band: The Evolution of a Game Mechanic

It’s interesting to see how many games evolve from a common mechanic, yet have drastic differences. Let’s consider what’s currently known as the “Rhythm” genre. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are the reigning champs. I describe this game mechanic as “Linear Digital Timing,” or LDT for short. It has these rules:
-The player’s actions are tied to a fixed linear medium (like a video clip or a music sample).
-The player uses digital input ( e.g. tapping a button on or off, or pushing a joystick from center to right).
-When prompted, the player must do the specified input in a specific window of time.
Example: in Guitar Hero, you react to a linear song (like “Roxanne”), where you need to strum a note (where the digital fret button and strum switch must be “on”) at the exact time the note passes the strum window. Do it correctly, and a note plays. Miss, and you are penalized.
But Guitar Hero and Rock Band were far from the first to do this. Remember Dragon’s Lair?

1983: Dragon’s Lair was the first LDT game.

The player controlled Dirk the Daring as he rescued Princess Daphne from Singe, the evil dragon. It had…

-Linear movie-quality animation to show the situation and the player’s actions.
-Digital inputs of 4 joystick directions and 1 “sword” button.
-Animated flashes of light to indicate when and which input to use at that exact time.
Each ‘level’ was maybe 20 seconds long and required 4-5 inputs. Success brought more video with another input opportunity; failure (even a simple mistake) meant a loss of life, and restarting the video sequence. Three lives, and Game Over.
Despite this harsh penalty and limited interactivity, there was nothing even close to Dragon’s Lair’s experience at the time, and it made a ton of money.
Late 80’s-Early 90’s: Before long, though, many other copycat Laser Disc games and awful, Full Motion Video games followed this limited mechanic, and players got real tired of it. The LDT mechanic was thought to be dead.
1995: I created Sega’s Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (Sega CD).

I was given only 3 months to make the game, and I could shoot no new video. I figured the only way to achieve this goal was to resurrect the Dragon’s Lair LDT gameplay, but modernize the LDT mechanic. We made the actions more interactive and player-friendly by:

-Increasing the inputs to 7 (the 4 joystick moves + punch, kick and block buttons) This gave the feeling of “controlling” the video fight moves.
-Choreographing all of the player inputs to mirror the characters combat moves on video. Specific actions were now being fired off each second or faster, 60 or more a minute!
-Showing onscreen exactly how much time you had to complete an action.
-Adding a health bar, where players received “health dings” if they made a mistake, and would “recover” during non-interactive video clips.
-Including variable scoring, so players who hit the correct inputs quickly got the most points.
Each of these new ideas made the core gameplay much more engaging. It turns out that these additions were key to evolving the LDT mechanic we all know and love today. But video was the wrong medium — it was simply too restrictive. Music, it turned out, was much better.
1996: Parappa the Rappa (Playstation).

Parappa the Rappa both simplified and expanded the mechanic by:

-Telling you when and what buttons to press at a fairly slow, steady linear beat.
-Creating a simple “health” meter (Cool/Good/Bad/Awful were the feedbacks).
-Allowing you to also press buttons between the required inputs to generate a “freestyle” beat (previous LDT games penalized the player for such actions).
This game created the idea of forcing a “beat” to simple songs but also letting the player “express their musical ability.” This game is popularly referred to as the “first rhythm game,” though it built on previous LDT genres. Setting LDT to a music beat, however, was indeed revolutionary.
1998: KONAMI’s Dance Dance Revolution, (which was a descendant of KONAMI’s own Beatmania/Hip Hop Mania in 1997.)

KONAMI became masters of the LDT mechanic, this time having the players using their feet instead of hands!

-Linear pop songs to dance to.
-8 input combinations (4 digital foot pads that could be used singly or in combination with each other).
-A steady stream of inputs to stomp at the correct time (and difficulty increased the pace).
-More personal “Perfect, Great, Good” feedback per individual input for health & generate different scores.
-Added bonuses for not missing inputs (called Combos, though it’s really not a combo).
I’m pretty sure the creators of Parappa and DDR had never seen my humble Power Rangers game, but all three of us hit upon the new ideas required to resurrect the LDT mechanic.
1999: KONAMI’s Guitarfreaks is a hit in Japan, but not in American arcades.

But their idea of “DDR meets Guitar” was not overlooked for long…
2005: Red Octane’s Guitar Hero and its rock-star fantasy gameplay would become a phenomenon.

But it is clearly our old friend, the LDT mechanic, in fancy rocker duds:

-Hot licensed Linear songs.
-6 digital inputs: 5 frets + 1 strum with multiple combinations to “hit the note” correctly.
-Tons of required inputs in time to the beats of the song.
-A health meter that can recover with good play.
-It has the “combo” bonuses.
GH even added three new optional “twists,” augmenting the LDT gameplay by:
-“Energy notes” (which if hit in perfect sequence can add to your “energy bar”).
-“Star power” (getting enough energy allows you to tilt your guitar to active a 2x multiplier to your current score multiplier).
-“Whammy bar” (which extends the value of the energy notes, as well as making a fun ‘twangy’ sound).
2007: MTV Games’ Rock Band makes virtually no changes to the base LDT mechanic, but becomes one of the hottest sellers of the holiday season.

So, all you rockers, thank old Dirk the Daring for the core mechanic that is keeping you and your friends up late at night. Now, someone please create a way for me to play Dragon’s Lair with my dancepad, using my guitar tilt to activate my sword, and we’ll have come full circle.