Dragon Buster

a.k.a. ドラゴンバスター

published by Namco in 1987-01-07, developed by Namco / Tose, running on Nintendo Entertainment System

type: beat 'em up
genre: Fantasy
perspective: side view
player options: single player

languages: jpn

2/5

Personal review

"Dragon Buster" for the Famicom is a port of a 1984 Namco arcade game. The game consists of 12 rounds, each represented by a more or less big overworld map with several levels each. Inside the levels you kill standard enemies with your sword and lots of mid-level bosses inside of rooms. These bosses might open up the passage to the next level or leave extra items behind. Sounds not too bad for a 1987 game but the game suffers from its extreme repetitiveness. There are four or five different graphic sets and you will see them repeating a lot. Every level feels the same. After two or three sub-levels you will have seen everything the game has to offer. After that it becomes very tedious and boring making your way through the more and more labyrinth-like levels. Graphics are not on par with the arcade version; I expected more from a port that comes three years after the arcade game. Controls are rather complicated. Dragon Buster was one of the first (if not the very first) game that implemented mid-air jumping. Pulling this of is not easy though and the controls generally annoyed me.