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Dragon Slayer (MSX)

Dragon Slayer (MSX)

According to some Japanese websites, Falcom's Dragon Slayer is Japan's first action RPG. I'm not entirely sure how accurate that it is - it was released in 1984, the same year that Namco's infamous Tower of Druaga was unleashed in the arcades. Both games essentially laid the foundations for future series like Hydlide, Ys, and of course, The Legend of Zelda. Both games are, in today's age, overly complicated and almost entirely unplayable. The name "Dragon Slayer" became the label that many future Falcom games were released under, which were produced by a man named Yoshio Kiya. Despite the connection in name, most of the titles are actually pretty different from one another, despite some minor similarities: Dragon Slayer Series: I: Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu III: Romancia IV: Drasle Family (Legacy of the Wizard) V: Sorcerian VI: Legend of Heroes VII: Lord Monarch VIII: Legend of Xanadu The original Dragon Slayer looks like a Rogue-style dungeon crawler, but the rules are slightly different. The deal is, you're some guy who's stuck in a dungeon and needs to kill a dragon. Unfortunately, you're about the worst person anyone could have ever chosen to go dragon slaying. You start the game barehanded, and a run-in with even the measliest of enemies will send you to your grave. You can grab a sword, which...doesn't help much. Maybe you can kill a zombie or a mummy or two, but pretty much everything else can and will walk all over you. And thus, begins the foundation of every Japanese RPG - The Grind. The only way to make yourself more powerful is by exploring the dungeon and finding power stones littered throughout each level. By returning a power stone to your house (yes, you live in the dungeon, apparently), you'll slowly increase your Strength statistic, and thus might be able to kill slightly more powerful enemies. You'll also find coins lying around the landscape, which will boost your HP when you return home. You have access to some magic spells, although none of them are used for offensive purposes. They're mostly used to break down walls, transport throughout the dungeon, or bring up a map. All of your magic is powered by little bottles that are also haphazardly strewn around the place. You can also find a cross, which protects you from damage but prevents you from attacking anything; a ring, which lets you push blocks; and a key, which will unlock treasure chests. Unlike many games of this type, the levels aren't randomly generated, so the same objects appear in the same locations every time. Map of Phase 1 - Saturn The kicker is, you can only hold one item at a time, and you can't pick up anything else either. You can stockpile coins and magic potions, although you'll need to drop whatever else you have in your hands before you can grab anything. Needless to say, this makes practically everything more difficult - you're constantly dropping and picking up stuff, and transporting the power stones one by one to the house is monstrously time consuming. You can actually push your house, in case you find a cache of power stones, but it still doesn't make the game any less tedious. And you'll need to do this, a lot, back and forth and back and forth, gathering stuff and killing enemies. There are lots and lots of weird enemies. There are your usual bats and monsters and stuff, but there are also dinosaurs, gigantic dismembered feet, Frankenstein heads, friendly looking-penguins, vicious kangeroos, television screens, and other bits of oddness. Combat is handled in much the same way as early Japanese Falcom RPGs - you bump into an enemy, and keep bumping into them, watching as both your hero's and your enemy's hit points slowly crawl towards zero. Killing enemies does give you experience, which as far as I can tell, determines the maximum HP you regain when you revisit your home. (It may affects what spells you get too, I'm not entirely sure.) It's a war of numbers, and nothing more. One of the worst things that can happen is getting trapped between enemies in the many narrow corridors found throughout the maze. All of the enemies are programmed to make a beeline straight towards your hero, and if you get blocked...well, unless you have some magic, so you can either transport or break down a wall, you're pretty much screwed. In fact, there are a lot of things that can screw you over good. Some enemies will drain more than just life - others will sap magic, experience, and even strength. I don't think I need to elaborate on how much it sucks to spend a whole hour carrying power stones back and forth, slowly building it up to near-maximum, and then having it all stolen by prolonged run-in with a green monkey. There are also ghosts that run around, steal items and place them at random points in the level. Dragon Slayer is the worst kind of RPG. It's the kind of game that's almost entrancing because it's so huge and complicated and difficult, and the "fun" lies in trying to overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds. But amongst all of the trudging about and item collecting and random deaths and bizarre design flaws, there's really no sense of reward in anything you do. Ultimately, you get addicted, and then you either beat the level or you die - and either way, you just feel empty afterwards. There's not even any of that trademark awesome Falcom music - other than the pain-inducing ditty at the beginning of the game, there's no real soundtrack. But then again, Dragon Slayer was made in 1984 - just playing the role of some little dude on a TV screen was its own reward. Dragon Slayer was initially released on the PC88. Needless to say, it's pretty ugly, although I've seen screenshots of a different version using a brighter color palette. A year later, a port was released to the MSX by Square (yes, that Square - it was one of the first titles they published.) The graphics have "improved", in as much as the sprites are more solid, but they still have very few colors. Although the basic gameplay is the same, the levels are entirely different, and nearly all of the enemies have changed. There are also a lot more warp portals placed around, which is pretty bizarre. There is a password system (through the use of a spell, actually), so you can skip between levels. Dragon Slayer was later ported to the original Gameboy in 1991 by a company called Epoch. The levels are based on the PC88 version, and it's practically the same. The dumpy monochrome graphics are actually an improvement over either home computer version, although it's still rather spartan, and the accompanying music is amazingly atrocious. However, your movement is impossibly slow, which makes this version even more unplayable than the others, if that were even possible. I'm not even sure if the game is even beatable without running out batteries, if you can subject yourself to the game that long. Dragon Slayer also showed up on the first Falcom Classics collection for the Saturn (along with Xanadu and Ys) and once again, uses the PC88 version as its basis. This is by far the best version of the game, as a lot of little thing were done to make the game bearable. Right at the beginning, you're given a sword, a key, and a single power stone, which at least puts you at the bare minimum requirements to kill some lower level bad guys. Spells can be assigned to the A or B buttons, which makes things easier. Even the combat has been toned down, so you don't get crushed as easily as before. The Saturn mode lets you walk diagonally and places the status bar at the top of the screen, while the Original mode keeps it on the right. While some of the redrawn sprites don't look as amusing as the PC88 version, there are a few neat touches - after getting burnt by the dragon's flames, your hero remains singed for a short awhile as he comically walks around. The new music naturally gets quite repetitive, but it's pleasant for a short while. Alas, the game is still a huge grind, and as much as the improvements make the game bearable, there should have been some way to, say, makes the enemies weaker so it would actually take less than an hour to beat a freaking level. You can save the game, at least, but it doesn't really ease the pain. Links Dragon Slayer 1 Site in Japanese devoted to the game. Game Set Watch - Falcom Classics compilation An excellent review of all three games.

Dragon Slayer (MSX) Dragon Slayer (MSX) Dragon Slayer (PC88) Dragon Slayer (PC88) Dragon Slayer (Gameboy) Dragon Slayer (Gameboy) Dragon Slayer (Saturn) Dragon Slayer (Saturn) Dragon Slayer (Saturn) Dragon Slayer (Saturn)

Comparison Screenshots

PC88	MSX
Gameboy	Saturn

Dragon Slayer Gaiden: The Crown of Sleep - Gameboy (1992)

Dragon Slayer Gaiden

Dragon Slayer Gaiden

Dragon Slayer Gaiden

Epoch, the folks behind the Gameboy port of Dragon Slayer, apparently decided to take the license and make their own game. Dragon Slayer Gaiden is a big departure from the original game and is much closer to an action RPG like Final Fantasy Adventure or Legend of Zelda. There's also an attack button, which is pretty rare for a Falcom-related game. Other than the fact that there's a dragon to kill, and enemies spawn from gravestones, there's no real relation to the original. Otherwise, it's a pretty okay game, if not particularly noteworthy.

Dragon Slayer Gaiden