This campaign is to fund a pitch animation about 60 seconds long.

Much like Bubsy, I wonder what happened to all the money in the first place. Both had initial success which spawned various sequels, or in DL's case, a line of platformers and PC adventures, not to mention cartoons. In a case like Bubsy, it pretty much died with the PS1 so it could've gone up their noses, but you can still buy Dragons Lair for next gen systems and stuff.

I hope none of the investors check out wikipedia...

"A Troll in Central Park": Budget: 23.5 million. "The film bombed at the box office, barely earning back 0.3% of its budget"

"Titan AE": Budget: 75 Million "Titan A.E. lost 0 million for 20th Century Fox."

Oh yeah! I remember seeing Titan AE in the theatre. It was actually really good but I was literally the only one in there except for the theatre staff and it was opening friday.

But 5 for Bluth, since Rats of NIMH is still my favorite animated feature and forever will be.

Game devs banking on nostalgia? Why I never!

Dragon's Lair, Space Ace etc. were just 30-minute-long QTEs. I can't figure out why anyone who actually played it would look back on this game with anything resembling fondness.

Well, unless "actually played it" is the factor here.

Hey, I *liked* Time Gal. It had anime girls getting eaten by dinosaurs; what's not to enjoy?

It must've been pretty mind-blowing to play these in the early 80s though, kind of like when Atari were working on racing games that were basically QTEs where they basically filmed themselves racing around at Go-Kart tracks for hours. In the era where Pac Man or Joust was about as graphically advanced as you could get, seeing someone "playing" something that looked like an actual cartoon would've been pretty neat, especially for those who didn't understand that you weren't really controlling the guy.

Speaking of FMVs, never played Time Gal, but I'd fully support a kickstarter to get Duelin' Firemen finished somehow.

Yeah, I think it was the novelty value of seeing animation THAT far ahead of anything else on the market at the time. Also, it's worth pointing out that Dragon's Lair didn't really catch on; the games were a success for a little while, but I think most people, even the dedicated fans, wised up to the cruddiness of QTE-based gameplay, moving on before it got tiresome.

Why developers nowadays can't figure this out, I have no idea.

(all kidding aside, Time Gal was pretty crumby, too.

I mean, most of the fail animations cut away LONG before the maw shot and swallow!)

I get some of the irritation, but I think QTEs work fine for some kinds of gameplay, and especially when they're not an all-or-nothing "choice". God Hand, for example, is chock full of little prompts when you stunned enemies, or when they tried to grab you, and other moments, and there it's just an opportunity to drop some extra hurt on bad guys or avoid it yourself, as it goes. QTEs did nothing to ruin the fun; quite the opposite, as anyone who's fought the Mad Midget Five can testify. RE4 was also great and had a lot of that too, but it also had plenty of "hammer the buttons here to not die oops you didn't know this hazard was coming so you couldn't mash fast enough! YOU DIED" moments, which were pretty bullshit if hilarious.

By contrast, Heavy Rain was a nonstop QTE marathon, where the whole story depends on your dumb choices blah blah, and I went in expecting to hate it for exactly that reason. I think I even opined out loud at the time "God, it's fuckin' Dragon's Lair all over again!" It turns out the gameplay was actually the most agreeable part about it, if only because fucking up some stupid sixaxis prompt just meant you faced a slightly different set of choices later, rather than you failing outright and having to start all over. Pity the story you play out ends up being rubbish regardless.

It also depends on the audience: I remember going to the computer store with my dad to check out PC FMV games that I couldn't afford (or had the system for) but it was fun anyway to watch his reactions when I did something really cool. And a couple of weeks ago we were watching football together and a commercial for Fallout 4 was on, and he was like "this isn't as realistic as those games you used to play." Like he didn't understand the difference between a pre-loaded FMV when you push a button like you would on a DVD and a fully interactive world.

Yeah QTEs are fun in small doses. I just got Saints Row 3 and I enjoy the Shen Mue-esque takedowns that you can choose to do, as well as some other wacky shit. RE4 always pissed me off though because, although also wacky, I'm not that good at remembering buttons on a console controller, since I'm pretty casual when it comes to games and couldn't tell you which is Square, A, Triangle, LB LT etc the way I could on a keyboard.

I actually played Dragon's Lair in an arcade in the 80's. There was nothing even close to it in terms of graphic fidelity. I personally never loved the game. I prefer Galaga, Donkey Kong, Frogger, etc. and later games like Raiden. But, back then Dragon's Lair LOOKED amazing next to anything else.

I did watch a guy complete Dragon's Lair on one play. It was epic. But, it was kind of like a spoiler for a movie once you saw someone else finish it.

50 cents to me was a small fortune. I would go to an arcade with a dollar in quarters and could make it last an hour. No fucking way was I going to be a "quarter pumper" and play anything like Dragon's Lair. I also hated the later 50 cent games that were always a gun, tank or plane and lasted about 3 minutes if you were lucky.

Yeah it was kind of like a proto "Let's Play." I like watching them sometimes to figure out if I'd like the game or not, but if I watch to the end then I see someone a lot better than me beating a game, which sometimes isn't that bad if it's a game I'd never really feel like picking up, like the God of War series. But then it's just like "ok that was fun, but do I like the game?"

Too bad to hear about Heavy Rain though. I was thinking about picking it up, since as far as playing games go, I prefer pinball, Killer Queen or maybe a fun diversion like Saints Row, which I have enough of, but would like something with a really cool story since I'm kind of a sucker for 90s PC adventures like Hell A Cyberpunk Adventure and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which basically had no gameplay but told a story in a cool semi-interactive way.

Oh. Thought I played DL before, turns out doing some research it was DL2. And I died on the first scene--hit by a rolling pin.

Yeah my first experience was Time Warp as well; I actually saw it at a bar last night with a big "PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK" sticker down by the quarter slot. I think I made it into the castle, but have since watched LPs of it all the way through. That one's kind of cool and psychedelic and just plain weird, but Bluth didn't have too much to do with it besides it being a Don Bluth Production, since he was busy making feature films by that point.

I guess if the film went in that direction it'd be kinda cool, but I'm guessing they're sticking with the original format like the USA Kids cartoon did.. :/

Me too. Mine's usually known as Quick Time Event :)