Reviews

this is a nice vertical shoot'em up from 1989, a little different from the others: in fact, as you MAYBE can guess from the name of the game, you are a dragon. which is nice. usually fantasy creatures like dragons are attached to boring rpg's or slow text adventures, but this time there's really action as you try to spit fire on various flying creatures and throw something at others placed on the ground. what do you throw at the latters, supposing it's not fire? personally, i have a good hypothesis.

A port of the Namco arcade shmup, this was something I never could seem to get into in the arcades no matter how much I played it, but I have to say the Spectrum version is pretty good indeed.

The graphics are pretty nicely detailed, okay all blue but the main sprite and the enemies look pretty good and the game has some nice title music at the beginning. Its pretty tricky but with prolonged gameplay you'll soon get the hang of it.

Overall its pretty decent.....considering Domark released it!

Vertical shoot'em up. Conversion programmed by the arcade specialist C.F.Urquhart. The game has lots of weapons, details. Moves good, Scrolls good, even has a touch of colour.

Counts with lots diferents enemy, aerials and terrestrials ( which you'll destroy with second fire-button ). Also has very big final bosses.. all different. No surprise, the game is multi-load. Lots of stuff, and professionally made. It sounds decent too, with a lovely AY tune rendition of the original coin-op theme.

Just one problem.. from third level onwards the graphics turns very detailed and is very hard too look all enemies.

All in all, one of the best vertical shooters on Spectrum.

1989 Domark Ltd (UK)
by Christian Urquhart, Paul Johnson, and A. Madden

Another conversion of an arcade coin-op shoot 'em up. Nothing new here, this has been done dozens of times before, but it's quite enjoyable and addictive. The fantasy theme is quite nice, with dragons on the mix instead of plains or spaceships and actually quite well rendered. And the action as a good pace and doesn't get boring. I just dont like the cyan monochrome scheme, but that is just me being picky.

First ever review from Grandad YOR. Absolutely thrilled to bits. One day I'll be showing my new grandson these games and maybe in around twenty years time if all is good and well he'll be posting his own reviews here!

Back on topic now. As a shooter it isn't bad at all and in fact it's really playable. In terms of look and style it reminded me of Gemini Wing only with less colour clash and so it was easier to progress as you can at least see what you're hitting and what you're meant to be avoiding, which you can't do in Gemini Wing because the graphics are a mess. Here they are a lot cleaner and better detailed which makes a world of difference. Nice game overall, pity I'm crap at it but then it's my first time on these Speccy games in a few weeks so I'm bound to be rusty.