Dragon Spirit: The New Legend

The Short

Pros

- Awesome top-down shooter where you play as a DRAGON!

- Powerups are cool and do neat things (give you more dragon heads, etc.)

- Both an easy and a difficult mode based on how you play the first level

- Infinite continues

- Two levels of fire like Xevious

- Nine stages (on hard) and all are a reasonable length

- Game plays extra-good on the NES Advantage with turbo on

Cons

- Easy, even on the harder difficulty

- Getting hit loses both a life AND your power-up. Lame!

- Graphics are pretty hideous

- Music is also ho-hum

- Guy on the box/cartridge art looks like a doofus

MIGHTY DRAGON SPIRIT!

The Long

There was no lack of shmup (or just "shooters" if you are normal) games on the NES. From Lifeforce to Gradius to the majority of crap on Action 52, the NES did it's best to compete with the arcade fads with ports of the popular titles. Dragon Spirit: The New Legend is a port of the Arcade (and also TurboGrafx-16) game Dragon Spirit, and while it isn't the best shooter on the NES, Dragon Spirit: The New Legend still manages to bring enough uniqueness to the board to be worth looking into if you have any fondness for the genre.

Go forth, mighty DAG-RON. 

Let's just cover a few important things first: this game, at its core, is pretty mediocre. The graphics, aside from the absolutely awesome dragon transformation cutscene at the beginning, look abismal. They are cluttered and grainy, and it can be very hard to see what you are shooting or even what is in the foreground and what is in the background. The animations are dull, and aside from a few graphical tricks on a couple of levels, the game just looks like a mess.

The other thing not worth writing home about is the music. While not bad, it certainly is far from catchy or memorable, and just serves as basic background noise. Instead, why not listen to some Dragonforce while playing? It'll make you play better, I promise. 

Fight dragons with dragons. 

That aside, there's actually a lot of fun to be had with Dragon Spirit: The New Legend. First off is the idea that you are a dragon who was once a dude. Basically, the game opens with a simple "starter" level where you play as the original dragon transformer guy. In a rather clever trick, if you lose on this first level, the game lets you play as a different, easier character for the rest of the game (with fewer stages and a "bad" ending) while as if you win you unlock the harder character and the full nine stages. After the first stage the original dragon-dude settles down and has two kids, and if you sucked you play as the girl (sexism!) and if you did well you play as the guy. Both cases you get the most awesome dude-->dragon transformation sequence ever.

By the end of this review, this dude will be a dragon. 

Then it's off to actually play the game. The story doesn't really play any other role until the ending, so you can politely pretend it doesn't exist.

The game plays like your usual top-down shooter, with a few chinks. First, you're a dragon. Second, power-ups actually change the way your dragon looks. You get multiple heads (up to three!) which increase firepower, invincibility, rapid-fire fire, and more. What sucks is that when you get hit, you lose most of your powerups (similar to Legendary Wings) and also lose a hit (out of three if you are the blue dragon, six if you are the gold). It's double punishment (in Legendary Wings your powerups were your life, and maxing out gave you three hits before being downgraded) which can be kind of obnoxious, but it just makes you play much more carefully.

Another neat trick is the Xevious style shooting. Similar to that game, you have button for shooting enemies in the air, and the other for carpet-bombing stuff below. Multiple heads mean multiple bombs, and unlike regular shots these have no limit to the number on screen (meaning a turbo controller is your friend). Switching back and forth is fast and frantic and quite fun, though you can't shoot both the air and the ground at the same time. Keeps it strategic.

You don't want to wake the dragon. 

The stages themselves with regard to gameplay layout aren't particularly unique, though it does throw a hefty amount of (easy) enemies at you, and you start shooting dinosaurs in the prehistoric time (awesome. Dragons vs Dinosaurs) which is pretty rad. The game itself isn't particularly hard; you'll probably get at least half way through before having to continue, even if its your first time playing the game. The best feature is the game has unlimited continues (the only downer being you have to start the beginning of the stage over) as well as mid-stage checkpoints, though the checkpoints aren't as frequent as one might like. 

The bosses are also relatively cake. You can do the common Lifeforce exploit of sitting right next to their weak point and holding a turbo button (or mashing fire) and shooting an insane number of shots into it for a quick kill. But they do try to spice things up, including a boss that can only be hit with the ground-level bombs, but shoots out air-level enemies (that you'll have to dodge or shoot down) and requires some strategy. Again, not to difficult, but difficult enough to be satisfying.

Protip: If a sword talks to you, always do what it says. 

As it stands, while you could argue Dragon Spirit: The New Legend pretty much plays it by the book, there's a lot to love in this game. The slightly easier difficulty curve made it more accessible and a lot more fun for me to just pick up and play, and the goofy premise and the fact I got to yell about dragons every time I got another head (or lost one) was also pretty amusing. As it stands, while this isn't the best shmup/shooter on the NES, it's a solid one, and if you haven't played it before I suggest picking it up and giving it a shot.

Just...squint a little and play some Dragonforce or Rhapsody of Fire while you do so.

Three out of five stars. 

I warned you! "I mean...he was a dragon man..."