Dragon Spirit (NES) - Full Run with Blue Dragon (First Attempt!)

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PEG

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Published on September 30, 2020 8:18:23 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ4XYBGlud8

Game:

Dragon Spirit: The New Legend (1989)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 42:00

1,622 views

25

Full run through Dragon Spirit (ドラゴンスピリット), for the NES/Famicom. This was my first attempt playing the game using the Blue Dragon (normal mode), and I cleared it on my first try! I previously cleared the game using the Gold Dragon (easy mode), also on my first try, which is in a separate video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6kpef0PQAE).

Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
00:15 - Prelude Stage
02:04 - Area 1 - The Paleozoic Era
05:41 - Area 2 - Volcano
08:18 - Area 3 - Jungle
12:46 - Area 4 - Grave Yard
16:54 - Area 5 - Cave Road
20:30 - Area 6 - Glacier Land
25:34 - Area 7 - Deep Sea
28:38 - Area 8 - Dark Quarters
31:13 - Area 9 - Dark Castle
37:52 - Final Boss + Ending

Dragon Spirit is a your basic, run of the mill shooter for the NES where you pick up powerups and destroy everything in sight. The one thing that sets it apart is the opening sequence of the game. At the very start you must face off against the main villain and depending on if you win or lose the fight you get to play different stage progressions/difficulties.

If you lost the fight you play as the Gold Dragon and only see about 1/2 of the stages (see my run linked above), which are also shorter and have reduced difficulty. You also don't get the true ending.

If you win the opening fight, you play the normal difficulty as the Blue Dragon, where you must play through all 9 stages and and face the true last boss to get the real ending.

Dragon Spirit uses 2 main types of attack, one for aerial targets and one for ground, similar to old school arcade shooters like Xevious and Alpha Mission. You will find that some bosses can only be damaged with certain types of attacks, so keep that in mind.

As far as powerups go, there are many. In fact, there are so many and they show up so often that it was basically impossible for me to tell what any of them did. Some changed the color and attacks of my dragon and others change it's size, but I couldn't keep track of which ones did what or if one was really better than another. They all just kind of blend together.

You have a life bar in addition to having multiple lives at your disposal, so there are plenty of resources to go around. Because the game is so lenient with taking hits and losing lives, Dragon Spirit ranks among some of the easier shmups on the system. The Blue Dragon route is definitely quite a bit harder than using the Gold, but even still it shouldn't give experienced players much of a problem.

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