215. Dragon Fighter (Natsume, Famicom, 1990)

Dragon Fighter is a action platfomer developed by Natsume, who also made some of the best Famicom action platfomers, including Tokkyu Shirei Solbrain and Yami no Shigotonin Kage, so needless to say I was excited when the name popped up on the title screen.

From the get-go, Dragon Fighter is clearly an 8-bit game firing on all cylinders. The graphics are lush for 1990, and the music and animation are also top-notch. Gameplay is fairly standard for the time and involves you progressing through a set of stages, fighting enemies on the way to a boss at the end of each. Your basic sword swing attack is lovely. The audio-visual experience of swinging the sword at an enemy and them getting hit is fantastic, one of the best basic attacks on the Famicom. Unfortunately, the jump is just kind of there. It's decently high but travels almost no horizontal distance, so it's mostly useful for lining up shots against enemies above you.

One of the other big features of Dragon Fighter is that you can also transform into a flying dragon, but it depletes a second health meter that you fill by attacking enemies in your human form or picking up dragon energy that enemies occasionally drop, so there is some strategy as to when to use your dragon ability. There is also a charge attack when you are in human form, but it curiously take about 1.5 times as long to charge up as a shot in Mega Man (or most other games with charging). Still, waiting what feels like 3 full seconds only to unleash a powerful shot that hits does feel great, even if the waiting itself doesn't.

You can also occasionally pick up one of three powerups that to change your character's color, charge attack, and dragon attack. Each different color / attack style feels pretty equal in terms of usefulness (i.e. there is a homing charge attack but it does less damage), which makes Dragon Fighter feel a bit more modern than its contemporaries.

Enemy placement can feel overwhelming at times, though most enemies have an easy to memorize, but fun to fight against behavior, though the enemy variety is not very good, as each level only has 2-4 different enemy types. Some enemies drop health, but it is still not a super easy game. I got to the first boss with only 2 hits left, so it took about 5 tries, but once I memorized the pattern, the execution was not too difficult. While the first 2 levels are fairly simple to get through, the third level really ramps up the difficulty with enemies that take more hits and more enemies that shoot at you, coupled with flowing water sections where the platforming is more difficult.

4/5, another upper-shelf Famicom platfomer from Natsume, though not their best