Dragon Fighter (NES) Playthrough
319A playthrough of Sofel's 1992 action-platformer for the NES, Dragon Fighter.
In the land of Baljing, a small but prosperous town had earned the respect of the great dragon spirit. The spirit rewarded the people with a magical dragon statue, but in a fit of resentment, an evil sorcerer named Zabbaong destroyed the town. To combat this threat, the dragon spirit brings the statue to life. A mighty warrior, his name is Dragon Fighter.
Dragon Fighter is likely the least known of the half-dozen Natsume platformers brought to NES in North America. Sofel didn't do much to promote it and gave it a tiny print run, it saw little coverage in magazines, and it was released after the launch of the Super Nintendo. It bombed at retail, but that was no fault of the game itself. Even now, very few people seem to be aware of its existence, but I'd argue that Dragon Fighter is one of the few remaining gems in the NES library that has yet to be discovered by the masses.
It's a hack-and-slash platformer with a cool twist: you can turn into a dragon. As you kill enemies, your "metamorph meter" fills, and once the gauge is half-full, it begins to flash. At this point, you can transform by holding the up button during a jump, instantly turning the game into an auto-scrolling horizontal shooter.
Special power-ups will turn the dragon fighter one of three colors, and the color determines which charged attack he can use and which dragon he'll become. The green dragon fires a powerful three-shot spread, the red one belches a stream of flame that travels along the ground, and the blue one has a homing shot. You'll remain in this powered-up form until you land on solid ground, the metamorph meter runs out, or you die. The catch is that the metamorph meter only fills when you kill an enemy with your sword, so a considered approach to combat in needed to make the most of the dragon form.
The level designs are on the simple side (owing to the need to accommodate two styles of gameplay), but the controls are tight, the challenge builds at a satisfying rate, the graphics are good, and the soundtrack is excellent. It's not as flashy as Shatterhand ( • Shatterhand (NES) Playthrough ) or Shadow of the Ninja ( • Shadow of the Ninja (NES) Playthrough ), but the quality of Dragon Fighter's gameplay holds its own against Natsume's more famous titles. It gets a firm thumbs up from me.
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