Dragon Spirit (Arcade 1987)

If you played NES back in the 80s then you probably played or at least heard of Dragon Spirit. It was certainly one of my favorite games back in the day, and it’s one that I feel I have just about memorized. So imagine my surprise when I played the Namco Museum version and found out that I am now quite bad at Dragon Spirit. I couldn’t get to a single boss. The preset high score is 80,000 and I couldn’t even get 20,000. Yes, Dragon Spirit is very, very hard.

Dragon Spirit is a classic vertical shooter with a fun Paleozoic setting. It’s a nice change of pace from the more typical military or pacific setting of so many other vertical shooters. What I always enjoyed about this game is the strange enemies. It is filled with prehistoric cryptids that attack relentlessly and often become shrapnel after being shot. I know it’s the kind of thing I complained about in Baraduke, but the enemies in Dragon Spirit are predictable. You can learn their patterns and get better as you play. This makes the difficulty more about skill and less about randomness. This is just how an arcade game should be.

I can see why Dragon Spirit is fondly remembered today. It plays great, looks great, and offers quite a bit of challenge without feeling unfair. It’s certainly one that I am glad to have on console because it would quickly make my quarters disappear. For the Ironclad List of Correctness I am going to slot it into the third spot. That really highlights the surprising quality of Namco Museum Vol. 5. Dragon Spirit is a very good game, but It’s still a vertical shooter not that much different from so many other vertical shooters. Still, if you see it at your local retro arcade or pick up one of the Namco collections that includes it make sure you play it. Just don’t expect to get very far for a while.

1. Pac-Mania

2. Metro-Cross

3. Dragon Spirit

4. Baraduke

5. The Legend of “Valkyrie”

Next time: I got a couple of Atari games in the mail. Maybe I’ll write about those.