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Some
days fly by without a whimper. Some days
get noted in the Shmup history book. One
of those days was when that young
impudent upstart of an emulator RAGE
added Dragon Breed to it's slew of
supported shooters. I was reminded of
when Dragon Breed popped up in my
favourite arcade in Glasgow (the Treasure
Island, now a mere shadow of it's past
glorious self) and I dutifully pumped my
10 pees into its bowels. Damn I miss
those days:)  Anyway,
they're back with the revitalised
emulated version of a real classic Irem
shooter, so fret ye not. Featuring a
small boyish type character, sitting
astride a huge dragon (the real star of
the piece) the game eschewed shootemup
convention (Watch out, I'll be using that
other EDGE cliched term in a minute, see
if you can spot it UK fans!) by adding a
much needed extra element of control.
Your dragon had several different
powerups, each of which had significantly
different weapon styles, even allowing
you to curl up and protect your rider.
Best of all was the control you had over
the tail, which you could arse-bash the
aliens with. This seminal title mixed the
best elements of R-type (detailed bosses,
holdie-downie blast shots and damn hard
gameplay) with a more random, less
strictly structured level design. The
graphics are still pretty much unmatched
today, with a unique fantasy/alien feel
to them, and unlike some contemporary
shooters, these graphics did not get in
the way of the game.
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Power-ups can be acquired by
shooting small green dragons that appear
intermittently throughout the levels, or
they can be collected from the ground on
foot. The power-ups resemble lanterns
with a coloured sphere in the middle.
There are four different
power-ups, each of which provides a
different weapon to the dragon.
Collecting multiple power-ups of the same
colour makes that weapon more powerful.
The dragon changes colour depending upon
which power-up has been collected.
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