release there. The next laserdisc game to be announced was Data East's video game adaptation of the Japanese anime film Genma Taisen (1983), introduced in March 1983, with the game released internationally in June 1983. It introduced a new approach to video game storytelling: using brief full-motion video cutscenes to develop a story between the game's shooting stages; years later, this would become the standard approach to video game storytelling. Bega's Battle also featured a branching storyline. In the United States, the game that popularized the genre was Dragon's Lair, animated by Don Bluth and released by Cinematronics. Released in June 1983, It was the first laserdisc game released in the US. It contained animated scenes, much like a cartoon. The scenes would be played back and at certain points during playback the player would have to press a specific direction on the joystick or the button to advance the game to the next scene, like a quick time event. For instance, a scene begins with the hero, a knight named Dirk, falling through a hole in a drawbridge and being attacked by tentacles. If the player presses the button at this point, Dirk fends off the tentacles with his sword and pulls himself back up out of the hole. If the player fails to press the sword button at the right time, or instead presses a direction on the joystick, Dirk is attacked by the tentacles and crushed. Each unsuccessful move, however, would produce a few moments of black screen, when the LaserDisc switched to the scene showing the death of the character, which interrupted the continuous flow of gameplay found in other video game graphic systems of the time; this was a common criticism of some players and critics. There were generally two styles of laserdisc games that emerged. Those that followed the lead of Astron Belt integrated pre-recorded laserdisc video with real-time computer graphics and gameplay, making them more like traditional interactive video games. Those that followed the lead of Dragon's Lair integrated animated cartoon laserdisc video with quick time events, making them more like interactive cartoons. The latter style of laserdisc games were generally more successful than the former. Real-time gameplay Among those that followed the lead of Astron Belt, combining pre-recorded video with real-time computer graphics and gameplay, several were introduced at Tokyo's AM Show in September 1983, with its successor Star Blazer unanimously hailed