''DragonStrike'' is a 1990 video game based on the ''

Dungeons & Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TS ...

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...

tabletop role-playing game A tabletop role-playing game (typically abbreviated as TRPG or TTRPG), also known as a pen-and-paper role-playing game, is a form of role-playing game (RPG) in which the participants describe their characters' actions through speech. Participa ...

Gameplay

''DragonStrike'' is a

flight simulator A flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and the environment in which it flies, for pilot training, design, or other purposes. It includes replicating the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they rea ...

in a

high fantasy High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot.Brian Stableford, ''The A to Z of Fantasy Literature'', (p. 198), Scarecrow Press, ...

setting. The player character is a knight who flies on the back of a

metallic dragon In the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game, dragons are an iconic type of monstrous creature. As a group, ''D&D'' dragons are loosely based upon dragons from a wide range of fictional and mythological sources. Dungeons & ...

equipped with a

lance A lance is a spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior or cavalry soldier (lancer). In ancient and medieval warfare, it evolved into the leading weapon in cavalry charges, and was unsuited for throwing or for repeated thrusting, unlike s ...

and various magic items (among other things a magic orb that acts as a

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, we ...

in the game). The player's dragon can use its recharging magical breath to attack and can also attack with its claws or bite if the dragon passes closely above enemies (likewise, should the dragon pass closely beneath enemies, the player character might attack with his sword). Opponents in the game include evil dragons with and without riders and other flying monsters such as

manticores The manticore or mantichore (Latin: ''mantichōra''; reconstructed Old Persian: ; Modern fa, مردخوار ) is a Persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in western European medieval art as well. It has the ...

, wyverns, sivak draconians and beholderkin known as gas spores. Flying too close to the ground is another hazard for the player as enemy archers are present in some areas. Completing successful missions provides the character with more

hit points Health is an attribute in a video game or tabletop game that determines the maximum amount of damage or loss of stamina that a character or object can take before dying or losing consciousness. In role-playing games, this typically takes the f ...

and the opportunity to obtain a more powerful dragon. Depending on what dragon the player chooses (between a bronze, a silver, or a gold dragon) the ending and missions become slightly different.

NES game

A game of the same title was published by

Pony Canyon , also known by the shorthand form , is a Japanese mass media publishing company founded on October 1, 1966. The company publishes mainly physical home media on compact discs, including music, films and TV shows and video games. It is affi ...

for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. Despite an almost identical title screen and box cover, it is noticeably different from versions of the game for other systems: instead of being a first-person flight simulator, it is a top-down

scrolling shooter In computer displays, filmmaking, television production, and other kinetic displays, scrolling is sliding text, images or video across a monitor or display, vertically or horizontally. "Scrolling," as such, does not change the layout of the text ...

, with only 14 missions instead of the original 40. The only aspect in common with the original computer game is the plot, which was also reduced.

Plot

The game is set in Krynn, world of the '' Dragonlance'' saga, during the

War of the Lance The ''Dragonlance Chronicles'' is a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which take place in the Dragonlance setting. This series is the first set of Dragonlance novels, and is followed by the ''Dragonlance Lege ...

. The main character is a young knight of Solamnia who progressively climbs the ranks of knighthood and is assigned to different dragon mounts. The story starts halfway through the action of the previous title, ''

'', after the metallic dragons joined the fight alongside the Knights of Solamnia, and it ends roughly at the same time, with a major victory of the forces of the god Paladine. On the other hand, the main character of the NES remake is a dragon without any rider. The action starts at the same time as the original, but it ends later, featuring an ending that is different from the one in the novels and in the tabletop modules.

Publication history

Westwood Studios Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westw ...

had

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

other SSI products, but ''DragonStrike'' was its first original game for SSI. It was designed by

Louis Castle Louis Castle is an American video games designer. He is known for co-founding Westwood Studios, designing the PC game ''Blade Runner'', and collaborating with Steven Spielberg on the '' Boom Blox'' and ''Boom Blox Bash Party'' video games for th ...

and Brett Sperry. The game was first released in 1990. ''DragonStrike'' was also ported to the

PC-9801 The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2000. The platform established NEC's dominance in the Japanese personal computer market, and, by 1999, more th ...

and

X68000 The is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation. It was first released in 1987 and sold only in Japan. The initial model has a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM, and lacks a hard drive. The final model was released in 1993 wi ...

by Crosstalk in 1992.

Reception

SSI sold 34,296 copies of ''DragonStrike''. The game was reviewed in 1990 in '' Dragon'' #161 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars. '' Computer Gaming World'' in 1990 called ''DragonStrike'' "a superlative and innovative product" that appealed to both fantasy and simulation gamers, although the magazine wished that it could import

Gold Box Gold box may refer to: * Decorative boxes made in gold *'' Gold Box'', a series of video games of 1988 to 1992 * Gold box (phreaking), a phreaking box to create a bridge between two telephone lines {{disam ...

characters. In a 1992 survey of science fiction games, the magazine gave the title four of five stars, stating that as a clone of '' Dragonriders of Pern'' "Sadly this product did not receive the attention or play that it deserved"; a 1994 survey of strategic space games set in the year 2000 and later gave the game three-plus stars. A reviewer at GameSpy stated that "Westwood tudioswas finally hitting its stride as a developer with another forgotten classic and badly underrated DragonStrike." The reviewer also stated that the game "looked great for its time, with beautiful VGA graphics and primitive fractals used as a terrain engine, and unlike later dragonflight games, it rewarded thinking, strategizing, and taking the time to assess the situation before striking rather than pure reflexes" and that while the flight model was a bit simplistic, "DragonStrike is long overdue for a remake."

References

External links

* *
Review
in ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET ...

''
Review
in ''

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'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Dragonstrike (Video Game) 1990 video games Amiga games Commodore 64 games DOS games Dragonlance video games Flight simulation video games NEC PC-9801 games Nintendo Entertainment System games Sharp X68000 games Single-player video games Strategic Simulations games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Frank Klepacki Westwood Studios games