Arcade Archives: Dragon Spirit (PS4|5 - Switch)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Arcade Archives: Dragon Spirit (PS4|5 - Switch)

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DANGER ZONE (XVI)
WHEN YOU'RE DRAWN TO THE GROUND BY THE DRAGONS


More Namco shooting for you.
This time is Arcade Archives: Dragon Spirit.


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Medieval Warfare.

At first, Dragon Spirit resembles a Xevious clone as it uses the same gameplay core mechanic: Full frontal fire for air-to-air enemies, and the air-to-ground fire for enemies on the surface, which is a new, yet easy to learn mechanic for those who are new in the genre and it works perfectly well in this game, even if the sight was removed, requiring some "eye-balled" calculated bombarment which, unless you have some experience with Xevious, it might be annoying until you get used to it. One of the new features of the game was the multi-screen long scenery which is revealed by moving your dragon to either left or right, breaking the common limits of the standard screen layout allowing both more mobility in favor of the player and wider enemy placement. With the concept of vertical shooting evolving, the game also provides the player with new features to improve his/her combat capabilities: The first one was the inclusion of two life points (or "Hit Points"), allowing you to go much further in the game before losing a life. Your shots can be powered up by picking two different items: The blue orb that grants your dragon an extra head to fire an additional fireball stream and an air-to-ground projectile, and the red orb that increases your fire power after picking three of them. You can get items not just by bombarding eggs, but also by taking down flashing enemies, but these ones can carry other items besides power ups. One of them is the Earthquake that causes temporary destruction to all ground based enemies, the "Small Dragon" that reduces your size, but at the cost of downgrading your hard-earned extra heads. You can also get an item that grants you larger fire blasts or homing fireballs that chases all airborne enemies in sight which was an unique feature back then since there wasn't too many shmups in '87 that included weapons with homing capabilities. Unlike Xevious that seems to loop forever, Dragon Spirit has a limit of 9 stages prior to unlocking the ending, which for its time, it was quite new as most arcade games lasted forever until the player was finally defeated.



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This is gonna be a gut-crunching situation...

While everything seems to be fine with the gameplay as they've decided to stay on the basics, yet adding new features, they've apparently forgot to test the game before releasing it. The reason of this?, The game's difficulty goes from "Arcade Fun" to "Out of Control" after reaching level 3. The hitbox of the blue dragon is almost its whole body, except for a few pixels of its wingspan, making something as simple as dodging a 5 bullet curtain a chore, and one hell of a chore is gonna be since the game will exploit this disadvantage constantly and you'll be taking a hit more sooner than later. Losing 1 hit point means a lot of troubles, starting off with losing your hard earned power levels which is absolutely annoying considering you have to pick three fire items without dying or being hit once. Also, the items have this tendency of moving AWAY from the player rather than float for a while and then leave if you don't pick them, so you will be chasing the item most of the times or seeing how it evades you without being able to do something about it. Having an HP gauge is useless as it gets drained almost instantly with no chance of having a recovery between hits (a precursor of Turridamage indeed). Dying is the same as Gradius and R-Type: Being kicked out to a checkpoint. Although the "New Version" tries to compensate the problem by granting you a respawn with two heads after continuing, this is a short term solution. As you keep pushing forward in the game, things just turn for the worse. Stage 5 is a stage where you are confined on a crushing walls tunnel where there's a few safe spots and you have to calculate the size of the gaps when you escape due to the already mentioned hitbox problem. This spiked problem repeats on Stage 6 where you'll be ambushed by ice stalagmites that pop from the walls.



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They took out Strider 1!

If you've thought the hit detection, the sudden traps and the useless life bar issue were too tough, the game pulls one harsh move after another, being Stage 8 the worst of all as it blocks visibility and you can only increase your field of vision for a while by picking items, but most of the times you'll end up getting killed by unseen bullets or enemy collisions. I don't know what was Namco thinking back then, but this is the opposite of challenge and enters on fucked up, bullshit tactics, and don't get me started with Stage 9 with those pillars that literally become a bullet hell along with the annoying homing axes thrown by the blue ogres, and they're annoying as hell since the wall that splits the path is useless because the damn axes pass through it as if the game pulled an Auto-aim cheat of some sorts. ¿You've thought Silver Surfer was infamously hard? Oh, no. You've gotta check Dragon Spirit if you're looking for a good definition of the word "pain". I think the AVGN should give this one a try, it's waaaaay more harder than the Marvel superhero shmup. If I've finished the game it was throughout the "Save State Abuse" in the Arcade Archives release. Yeah, I said Arcade Archives. Namco already released this game in many consoles and PC's before. The Amiga, the arcade accurate X68000, the NES and even into Namco Museum compilations on PS1, PS2, XBOX and Gamecube. Dragon Spirit made its debut on the PS4 and Switch as part of Hamster's (still ongoing) Arcade Archives series, and thank goodness for that version. If it wasn't for the save state function and the autofire settings I wouldn't be seeing beyond stage 3.



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BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL!!

Graphically, the game looks like your standard classic shooter that fulfills its purpose on bringing colorful, vibrant worlds to pixel life. But the best part is how well animated are the creatures on the game, which is surprising for an 1987 arcade game. Is no After Burner II or Golden Axe, but it manages to bring a well detailed world with simple color palettes.
What is most interesting is the game's setting based on fantasy and medieval folk by using themes like dragons, ogres, monsters and the princess in distress, breaking with the very common Science-Fiction and the (then) quite occasional World War II and Modern Day Military themes of the arcade games back then.

The music is the predecessor of Tecno Soft's trademark Electronic-Hard Rocking style of the Thunder Force series as they can easily fit on Thunder Force II. Along with the fast pace in most of the stages, the frequency and percussion of the soundboard is on-par with that of the Genesis they will DEFINITELY make you think this is a Tecno Soft game instead of Namco.


TRIVIA SPIRIT
- Despite its difficulty, it was one of the highest grossing arcade games of 1987 in Japan.
- Dragon Spirit was the second Namco arcade game distributed by Atari Games
(the renamed/restructured Atari Inc.).
- The Arcade Archives manual tag the enemies as AIRCRAFT.
- Most critics wrongly called Dragon Spirit's setting as "Paleozoic" when it is actually Medieval.
- The problem with the life bars will be carried on later games like Baraduke/Alien Sector and Dangerous Seed.
- The "Small Dragon" item can be compared with the "Reduce" shield type from Gradius III.




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We've barely made it.

While being an exercise of extreme difficulty, Dragon Spirit keeps its place as one of the first shmups that break the common routines of the genre offering something new and different. Unless you're some arcade super-pro with Hugin and Munin level of bullet dodging skills or you're looking for a pain worse than Silver Surfer, then pick it. Average "Video-pilots" and casual gamers avoid this one.



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Despite being a classic shmup with good music, the extreme difficulty can be frustrating/rage-quitting for most players.
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