Game:

Dragon Master (1994)

Duration: 9:33

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Ermmm... yeah. Dragon Master is a nice enough "looking" fighter... that's about it. Released in 1994 by the South Korean company, Unico Electronics (유니코 전자), the company released several games during the 90s and eventually became known as Konami Korea (as a distributor of Konami titles in Korean territories), and this is one of their games. Saying the game is "inspired" primarily by Capcom's "Street Fighter II" and SNK's "Art of Fighting" would be putting things mildly... if you look around Youtube, you can see several instances of how deeply the game ripped off other fighting games and it's a wonder how they weren't sued. While the character's special moves are original enough, the actual character animations were ripped straight out of the most popular fighters from the early 90s.

If it was just a blatant ripoff, it wouldn't be so bad, but it has a broken gameplay system where characters can be scooped up off the ground mercilessly, where characters can execute infinite or 100% combos due to being dazed by small repetitive combos and even GRABS, and where characters can be juggled in a ridiculous fashion. The audio is also subpar and the character balance is terrible. There are eleven characters (eight main, two sub-bosses, one boss) and a lot of characters moves are similar to one another, but some characters' attacks are cheaper or hit more than others. The character used in this video, Deliza, can shoot a fireball that takes approximately 90% of a character's health AT FULL HEALTH and she has two moves that can lead into infinite dizziness!!! The scariest part? She's not the cheapest character from a technical standpoint! Yeah...

The game also shows the main characters' moves (though some moves are not shown) but ironically left out how to CHARGE ENERGY. The game has an energy system with a spirit gauge (below health... hmmm... didn't Art of Fighting have that?) that runs down when attacks are used or when a character is damaged, which limits the usefulness and frequency of some attacks when it is low. You can charge energy to refill this gauge, but it is not made clear how to do so (though the computer does so often). It's not really necessary since you usually have enough energy to defeat any opponent, but it's the principal. Simply put, this is not a game worth playing IMO.