The same way you beat any game in the 1980s and early '90s: lots of pattern memorization based on trial and error. In the arcade, that means lots of quarters.

Once a game like Dragon's Lair was memorized, you could play through the entire thing on only a couple quarters, to the astonishment of arcade bystanders.

Kids and teenagers had more time back then because smart phones and Instagram and YouTube didn't exist. People underestimate what a huge time sink those can be.

No one had Internet access. You could play a game, play an instrument, read a book, go to the mall and the arcade and maybe catch a movie, go outside, or watch whatever happened to be on the 3-4 network TV channels (or possibly cable if your family had the money). And TV back then was mostly terrible.

So if you had $10 in your pocket, that was an entire afternoon of entertainment at the arcade and movie theater.

I grew up in that time frame. Normally people would swarm around the machine and give advice.

Arcades were very social when it came to certain games.

It wasn’t that hard if you kept feeding it quarters. It took a lot of trial and error, but having infinite lives means it was eventually beatable.

you try to not play any arcade if you haven't seen anyone else play first, that cost you money :) My experience with Dragons Lair is that it was a nice game to watch, and a bad game to play, it was expensive and as someone else said in the thread it requires you to memorize the movements, it was never random

I assume lots of trial and error and following guides from magazines and such. Games like Dragon's Lair aren't really meant to be that winnable, they're just designed to get you to buy as many coins as possible to keep trying.

By perfecting it on the Amiga first

There was a remaster that was put out a few years ago: steam, gog. It was a nice piece of nostalgia finding it. From playing it on arcade difficulty and comparing it against the easier settings, it was pretty obvious this game was meant to suck up quarters. You just had to have everything memorized.

I remember watching a guy play an arcade game back in about 1990, I think it was spy hunter or something but the car could do a jump and side scrolled to the right. Not sure. Anyways, over the course of about 4 hours this guy plunked about $100 worth of quarters into the machine until he beat it.

10-year-old me was, uh, impressed to say the least. I tried playing it but I only had two quarters and lasted less than 3 minutes.

The mechanics of that game were more like a very fast choose your own adventure than the traditional move joystick left, spaceship go left mechanics.

Because the graphics were coming off a laser disk, they didn't generate on the spot. There were predetermined outcomes to every move.

When people figured this out, information started to collect in the magazines, and the game became beatable.

It's simple: they didn't.

My older brother's friend worked at an arcade. He opened up the panel and loaded this game up with credits for me. I still never got close to beating it

I (my mom) spent so much money on this game. It was in the laundromat near our home. My little brother and I would die so early on. Back then it took some time to figure what was going on with this game and what to do. We were so young so that's all I recall.

It’s seriously so hard. I think I’ve never made it past the second scene

The only arcade that had that game charge $2 or something like that for each credit. I tried it once and then never again.

Billy Mitchell or Todd Rodgers might claim to.

Lots of quarters. Arcade games were not designed to be beatable with one quarter. They wouldn’t make money if they did.

Cries in Sinistar. "Run, coward!!!"

I was in an arcade all day for multiple days watching others play. After four days of this I played and after two attempts I was able to finish it.

I wasn't great at Dragon's Lair, but I got super far on Dragon's Lair 2: Time Warp.

I watched someone beat it.... but no I was never able to do it

lots of pizza and tokens plus summer vacation

I remember Dan from game grumps being really good at that game.