GOTD 5/18/2016: Dragon Spirit (Turbografx)

[celerystalker]

Dragon Spirit for the Turbografx is a home port of Namco's arcade vertical shooter of the same name. You play as a powerful, fire-breathing dragon transformed from a man who must save a princess. It is designed much in the mold of Xevious, where you have a button to fire forward and another to drop down attacks from above onto ground-based problems. In the arcade, it was a vertical monitor game, but it is condensed to fill the whole horizontal screen on the Turbografx. There is a sort-of vertical mode to be accessed by soft resetting 57 times, which I like, but is annoying to do. I say sort-of because it doesn't stretch the verticality of the display, but instead just letter boxes the screen to better preserve to arcade porportions.

While the Turbo version does a great job of bringing the arcade look and feel home, there is one big negative I want to get out of the way. In the arcade, you have a much smaller hit box, as enemy projectiles would pass harmlessly under the ends of your wings. Here, even grazing the outermost tip of your wings will register a hit, making you one giant, easy target. That said, it plays rather well, with smooth, intuitive controls, and a simple but effective powerup system. There are two different colors of dragon eggs on the ground, blur and red/orange. The blue are dragon powerups, and will add up to two additional heads to your beast with which to incinerate your opponents. The red ones offer up fire powerups that increase the power and fire rate of your flame. Getting hit will not only lower your life bar by one, but will remove a head and lessen your fire level by one. Flashing enemies, however, will drop magical items that last until you take another hit, like rapid shot, wide shot, invincibility, max fire, and more. It all comes together as a smooth if simplistic, classic shooter.

Graphically, Dragon Spirit is bright and colorful, and really preserves the look of the arcade game. The sound is on point as well, even though the music does seem a bit quiet to me in this version. The last few levels are completely different from the arcade, though, and I'm really not sure which I prefer. Overall, though, for its time it really brought the arcade experience home with a bang, and I dig iy for that reason. There are better shooters on the system, but it's one of the best in its 2016 price range, as a complete copy can be had for about $30 without the outer cardboard.

There is also an arcade/PC Engine sequel, Dragon Saber, and an NES version called Dragon Spirit: The New Legend, in which so much has changed that it feels like a spinoff, but is honestly probably a superior game in design.

Played this one?