Game:

Dragon Buster (1985)

Duration: 7:06

710 views

13

Naturally, after making a video for Dragon Valor, my curiosity was then turned towards the original game that Dragon Valor would be related to. Dragon Buster is an old 1984 (or, the game was developed and finished at the very end of 1984, but released in January of 1985) arcade game and like many old Namco (or Namcot) games, it was pretty simple...but so were many games in the early 80s and sooner. One thing that was very unique about Dragon Buster is that it was the first game to introduce the "double jump" (or so they say), a key piece of gaming history that would become super popular in many games now, particularly action games and action (J)RPGs. It ran on "Namco Pac-Land hardware", modified to support vertical scrolling. The game features side-scrolling platform gameplay and a "world view" map similar to various games (Mario Bros, games like Actraiser, etc.). DB is also one of the first games to use a visual health meter/bar.

In Japan, the game was ported to the Family Computer (the Famicom, which was a bit different, notably in that it had "endings" with text, whereas the arcade game just had short scenes with no text at the end of a "loop"), MSX and Sharp X68000; the latter version was later released for the Virtual Console in the same region on November 18, 2008. Dragon Buster has also been ported for the PSP and is available as part of Namco Museum Battle Collection. It was followed by a Japan-only Famicom sequel, Dragon Buster II: Yami no Fūin (which is actually said to be neat, so I will try to look at it next), and was later followed by the PlayStation game Dragon Valor, which was both a remake and sequel...as you know now, since I uploaded that one first!

In the beginning, a prince named Clovis was born the son of the kingdom's chief bodyguard to the royal Lawrence family. As a young child, Clovis was very mischievous and undisciplined, so his father thought it might be best to place him under the care of a monk who lived in the woods far from the kingdom. Under the monk's care, Clovis began to learn various aspects of knowledge, including how to be a superior swordsman. When word reached the monk that King Lawrence's 16-year-old daughter Celia had been abducted and held by a fearsome dragon, who wished to break the kingdom's spirit and coerce the kingdom to do his bidding, Clovis felt a sense of duty to chase after the dragon and rescue Celia in the name of his father. In order to save the Princess, he trained daily with the monk and learned to withstand injury, whether cut by swords or burned by flame, and still be just as capable a fighter as ever. Wikipedia has more information below, but to summarize, the game has some light RPG elements and you can increase your maximum vitality, get a couple of special attacks, use a couple of "sword techniques", etc...the controls can be a little stiff, particularly with jumping and the way you flail about when hit by certain enemies can create a bit of a situation, but the game isn't unbeatable. Music and visuals were about standard, I suppose!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Buster


- ADDITION -

Like Us On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegamingsanctuary/

Follow Us On Twitter: https://twitter.com/GS_Vyse_and_Bel

Visit Us At: http://www.gamingsanctuary.com