is a text-based adventure

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

developed and published by

Square In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length a ...

for the

Family Computer Disk System The commonly shortened to the Famicom Disk System or just Disk System, is a peripheral for Nintendo's Family Computer home video game console, released only in Japan on February 21, 1986. It uses proprietary floppy disks called "Disk Cards" f ...

in Japan in 1986.

Gameplay

The game plays as a command-style adventure game. The game's interface resembles that of a

point-and-click Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and cl ...

graphic adventure interface for a console. The game made use of visual icons rather than text-based ones to represent various actions, and it featured a cursor that could be moved around the screen using the

D-pad A D-pad (short for directional pad or digital pad; officially referred to by Nintendo as a +Control Pad) is a flat, usually thumb-operated, often digital, four-way directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern vi ...

to click on the icons and examine parts of the scenery.

Plot

It is set in a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

setting, where the main character, Hugh, and his girlfriend Cynthia are traveling in space, but are attacked by a crystal dragon: Hugh escapes with the help of a mysterious woman, but Cynthia is kidnapped. Hugh must find the dragon and save his girlfriend.

Development

Many of the game's scenes involve animation, which was a specialty of Square, at the time, and ''Suishō no Dragon'' features a variety of drawings, particularly those of girls. Anime artist Gen Sato served as the character designer and illustrator on the staff, and Nippon Sunrise (currently Sunrise Inc.) contributed to the animated parts of the game and also provided animated footage for the games commercial. The year the game came out, 1986, saw the release of Famicom Disk System with cartridges three times the capacity of a ROM cassette and a storage equaling 1 megabyte, which many software developers including Square waited for and then took advantage of, causing the game to come out at the end of the year.

Reception

The fake scene, detailed below, reportedly caused a spike in sales for the game.

Legacy

The most iconic scene in the game is the frame where one of the heroines, Cynthia, is depicted standing with her arms spread outwards. This drawing inspired a famous fake game scene created by ''Family Computer Magazine'' (''Famimaga''); a prominent video game magazine published by

Tokuma Shoten is a publisher in Japan, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. The company was established in 1954 by Yasuyoshi Tokuma in Minato, Tokyo. The company’s product portfolio includes music publishing, video game publishing, movies, anime, magazines, ...

. The magazine explained that it was possible to start a game of with Cynthia using a cheat, though this is not actually possible in the game. An altered screenshot showing the heroine losing her clothes was included alongside the article. This was not done to fool readers, but to test whether the magazine's content was being copied by other game magazines. This fake scene developed popularity on its own, and many users were made aware of this scene even if they had never played the game before. This phenomenon is described in Kouta Hirano's gag manga, , which was serialized in the ''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the ...

'' game magazine. The game's fake sequence was also referenced in the credits of ''Hyperdimension Neptunia V''. ''Suishō no Dragon'' was adapted into a manga titled , published in the Gamest Comics collection from April 1999, and drawn by Kouta Hirano.

References

External links

Official website (Square Enix)

''Suishō no Dragon''s television commercial
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Suisho no Dragon 1986 video games Video games about dragons Famicom Disk System games Famicom Disk System-only games Japan-exclusive video games Point-and-click adventure games Science fiction video games Single-player video games Space opera video games Square (video game company) games Sunrise (company) Video games developed in Japan Video games featuring female protagonists Video games scored by Nobuo Uematsu