DRAGON SABER
After Story of Dragon Spirit
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ドラゴンセイバー
©1990 1991 Namco Ltd
Release : 1991-12-27 (¥6800)
HuCard (4 Mbits) NC91005
Shooter / Vertical
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Dragon saber is a vertical shooter by Namco and conversion of the arcade
game of the same name originally released in 1990, itself sequel of Dragon Spirit.
The game takes place far into the future, at a time when humanity's growing egoism and lack
of respect for life and nature causes chaos on the Earth, slowly leading to its inevitable
destruction. Monsters and evil creatures now roam the planet and in a desperate plea for
help, the Sun goddess Aria asks two courageous knights, Huey and Siria,
to go on the most perilous mission ever undertaken by mortals. Armed with a magical saber
and the power to transform into fire breathing dragons, the warriors embark on a heroic
journey to save the world. Dragon Saber follows the precedent established by its
predecessor - players are able to hit enemies in the air as well as on the ground, and
colored eggs scattered around each level gives them the opportunity to increase their
dragon's firepower (blue egg) or base damage (red egg). However, the game offers some
new features over its prequel - each player can now charge up powerful blasts of
energy (by releasing the fire button for a few seconds) and different kinds of
dragon power-ups have made their appearances, such as lightning bolts or
Enery Wings, each one with their own super attack! Dragon saber
consists of eight levels and features a two-player simultaneous option.
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The arcade game Dragon saber was originally released in 1990 (picture on the right) and was a
significant improvement over its prequel Dragon Spirit. It featured a
two-player simultaneous option, excellent scaling and rotating effects and the
difficulty level was a bit more balanced (although the game is still
punishingly hard). The game was curiously only ported in Japan to the PC Engine
(1991) and was later included in Namco Museum Encore (Playstation, 1997).
This PC Engine port is overall really faithful to the arcade game. Although
the screen aspect ratio is (obviously) different, the gameplay remains almost
unaffected by it. Unsurprisingly, some of the visual effects have also been
omitted - for instance, in the second stage, the ground doesn't split open
anymore and just slides sideways, the huge bursts of lava were removed and the impressive
canyon dive from stage five is, of course, nowhere to be seen and was replaced by
a fast vertical scrolling.
See Dragon Spirit (Pce-Hu) for more information
about the Dragon Spirit game series.
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Text from the end sequence:
Heroes - "Huey, Siria, How kind of you to come!"
Siria - "I have just been controlled by this evils spirit till now.Human
kept violation this planet simply led by their egoism in the past. As a
result of that the evil spirit was born. I confined that evil spirit in
this body of mine... Your spirit of pureness defeated the power of the
darkness in this world - now I can entrust you with everything of this planet"
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Game Staff (Copied from the end credits) :
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Dragon Saber
Staff
Produce
Max
haro 7000
Program
Mimi
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Graphic
Bob
Mark 2
Rairu
Daiya
Sound
Nobi
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Special thanks
M. T
Poritan
Sakusaku Koya
Bacchus hal
Psychic
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May this not be the future of our planet..
Namcot
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O
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Click on picture to enlarge |
S
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Arcade Mode:
Hold Select and press Run to reset the game. Do this operation thirty times
(you can just hold select and keep pressing Run) to start the game in arcade mode.
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
O
V
s
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I'm always really surprised (and somewhat offended) when players report
that Dragon saber doesn't add much to its prequel.
I mean, what about the two-player simultaneous mode? What about the new dragon
power-ups and the power blast? What about the amazing and creative bosses?
Dragon Saber really improves upon everything its predecessor did, and if
you like Dragon Spirit, then you will love Dragon saber.
The only bad point about the game is its high difficulty level. Well,
the original arcade game was brutally hard and this PC Engine version
has a nice progression curve (which goes out the window in the last couple of
stages though - for instance, the collision detection in the ice cave
is a bit loose and unfair in my opinion).
All in all, I highly recommend Dragon saber to any shooter fan out there -
great graphics, wicked soundtrack and excellent gameplay,
and the two-player simultaneous option is a blast.
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