Newsletter 79: “Dragon’s Lair” and Junk Culture

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one is from November 2017, about how nostalgia fools us into thinking things from our youth were interesting when they were actually terrible.

The return of Stranger Things to Netflix — I haven’t seen it yet but will surely watch it with the same “yeah, this is fine, I guess, this is passable” to-watch-while-folding-laundry half-interest as I watched the first season — has rekindled interest in the old “Dragon’s Lair” video game. I’m embarrassed to say I am old enough to have played “Dragon’s Lair,” repeatedly, as a kid, and that I am still infuriated by the game today.

Apparently “Dragon’s Lair” shows up in Stranger Things 2, and just thinking about that game is bringing back a rush of ugly memories. Polygon has a good history lesson on “Dragon’s Lair,” why the game was so popular, how impossible it was to play, how expensive it was, how often it constantly broke down. I did not need this primer, though, because a larger percentage of my childhood than I’d care to admit was spent trying to figure out that…