Zzap


Dragon Spirit
By Domark
Commodore 64

 
Published in Zzap #57

Dragon Spirit

The Princess Alicia has been kidnapped by the evil serpent demon Zawell (Extremely Original Plots Inc.). In a massive coincidence, you just happen to be transformed into a fire-breathing dragon, so you can rescue her!

Spewing fireballs from your three heads, you fly through eight vertically scrolling levels. As you fire, you simultaneously drop bombs, killing enemies on the ground and breaking open magic eggs which hatch bonus firepower icons (including extra head, shields, and longer range fireballs and bombs). This all seems easy enough but colliding with airborne enemies or bullets soon causes you to lose your head, or at least one of them! Two hits and you'll be quickly falling to earth - you'll also lose all extra weapons and heads.

Each of the multi-loaded eight levels is infested with many hostile creatures, some airborne (mainly formation-flying birds) and some on the ground which can't be hit but fire loads of bullets. There are also wombat squirrel thingies with beaks which start off on the ground, then launch themselves into the air. Plus, of course, the inevitable huge end-of-level nasties which include an even bigger fire-breathing dragon, giant spider, and huge, carnivorous pot plant - obviously a remnant from Day Of The Triffids!

Phil

Dragon Spirit

Oh no, it's yet another vertically scrolling shoot-'em-up. Okay, so instead of a spaceship, you control a dragon, but essentially the gameplay's much like dozens of other games with very little originality.

Worse still, the C64's graphics are some of the tackiest I've ever seen; mostly monochromatic, badly defined, with almost invisible enemy bullets to try and avoid.

You can be flying along thinking you're getting somewhere at last when suddenly the picture freezes - this symbolises your death by an invisible bullet, the dragon isn't even shown dying!!

Dragon Spirit

Although this problem is rectified on the Amiga, the large end-of-level creatures die in a similar way - no satisfying explosions whatsoever.

Still, despite being a bit slow, at least the Amiga game is fairly playable and a decent conversion of the mediocre coin-op.

Stu

The basic idea of a fire-breathing dragon as a shoot-'em-up hero seems novel enough, but on level one at least any other imaginative touches are sadly absent.

Dragon Spirit

Levels two and three are more interesting graphically, but playability is still rather repetitive. Yet, while fans of the coin-op should be happy with the Amiga game, it's hard to imagine anyone who'll enjoy splashing out a tenner on the C64 game.

Not only is this version lousy to look at, it's awful to play too. The dragon takes up half the screen, vertically, while the enemies are numerous and spit out lots of hard-to-see bullets!

C64

Presentation 30%
Multi-load levels on side B easy to use, but dying five seconds into a new level is still very irritating.

Dragon Spirit

Graphics 26%
The bullets are hard to see, backgrounds are poor and the end-of-level monsters are bad (level 2's sees the return of UDGs).

Sound 30%
Poor intro tune and very basic FX.

Hookability 26%
Being massacred by lots of semi-visible bullets is very discouraging.

Dragon Spirit

Lastability 22%
Very high - for masochists who have an aversion to any variety in their pain.

Overall 24%
Oh dear!

Amiga

Presentation 52%
Standard Tengen packaging, banal loading screen and intro tune.

Dragon Spirit

Graphics 72%
Very close to the arcade original with some good end-of-level monsters.

Sound 63%
Some nice spot FX.

Hookability 65%
Very tough and rather sluggish, but still quite playable.

Lastability 72%
Eight levels of improving graphic appeal provide a good long term challenge.

Overall 70%
A good conversion of an uninspiring coin-op.