Dragon Unit (Arcade)

Dragon Unit was released in 1989 by the little-known Athena co., and it's an odd kind of hybrid platformer/beat em up. Odd because rather than being a platformer with beat em up elements, there are instead two kinds of stages: straight platformer stages and other stages that are mainly a long, flat corridor of enemies, but have two Guardian Heroes-esque planes to switch between by pushing the joystick up or down.

Other than that, and the fact that the shield the protagonist is carrying actually does block small projectiles, it's pretty unremarkable, mechanically speaking. There's lots of enemies, a whole range of power-ups and different weapons to collect and all the typical stuff you'd expect from a 1989 arcade platformer. Its charm lies in its presentation. At the most basic level, you can plainly see that the sprites are big, the colours are bright and lurid, and it looks pretty nice, though the black outlines on everything are a little ugly. Looking further than that, there's nice little touches, like how your knight's armour gradually falls apart as your health decreases until he's in his underwear, like a more gradual version of Arthur from Ghouls and Ghosts.

There's also a lot of visual variety in Dragon Unit. Even though there are only six fairly short stages, they all look completely different to each other, and mostly have their own sets of enemies, who are mostly big and always ugly and evil-looking, which is nice too. It's a game that mostly gets by on its atmosphere, the ugliness of the enemies, the overly saturated colours, and so on really make it stand out. At the same time, it's all very rough around the edges, I don't know whether it's down to a lack of experience on the part of the developers, or maybe budget or time contraints, but the whole thing looks, sounds and feels very unpolished.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, and I'd say it actually adds to the game's appeal. It could have given the impression of a game lazily knocked out to fill a quota, but instead it feels more like a labour of love, made by a team whose passion and creativity slightly outweighed their technical abilities. I'd say it's definitely worth a look and a credit feed through at the very least. There's apparently also a NES port, called Castle of Dragon. I haven't played it, but I can't imagine it being a game that makes the transition to such an underpowered console gracefully.

King Colossus (Mega Drive)

It's often an annoying cliche to compare 16-bit action RPGs to A Link to the Past, especially when lazy critics accuse the likes of Story of Thor and Soliel of being "Zelda-clones", when the only similarities are at the most superficial level. But in this case, there's a good point to be made, though it's done by contrasting this one with Nintendo's classic. The thing is, they're good  examples of the differences in the design philosophies typical to their host consoles.

First off, there's the tone and aesthetic of each game: if ALttP can be likened to a fun, colourful adventure anime that gets dubbed on the cheap and aired at 6am, then King Colossus is more like a grim late 80s fantasy OAV that gets dubbed with extra swear words and released on tape by Manga Video. That is, while Zelda does have some dark elements, it's mainly bright and colourful, with the tone being skewed towards fun and adventure. In contrast, King Colossus has your orphaned hero being sold into slavery by the old man that raised him, being forced to fight to the death in an arena as part of a ritual honouring an evil god. (And that's just the start of your hardships).

The contrasts carry over into each game's structure, too: unlike ALttP, KC has no currency to accumulate, nor does it have a large open world to explore. It's a lot more linear and arcadey in its execution. Pretty much the entire game is spent in dungeons fighting monsters (or in the colosseum fighting your fellow captives), with only short expository interludes between them. There's still a little exploration to be done within the dungeons, but the meat of the game is combat. It's fortunat, then, that the combat is pretty good. There's an array of different weapons to find, and not only do the get stronger as you go through the game, but they also attack in different ways. There's swords, axes and spears that attack in front of the player at different lengths, as well as crossbows that shoot over long distances, flails that attack in a circle around the player and others.

The only criticism that can really be levelled towards King Colossus is that it is a little bit too easy. I'm most of the way through the game at the time of writing (and I do intend to eventually see it through to the end), and I've only died at two or three points in the game. Other than that, though, it's a fun action RPG that's a little darker in tone than the usual and it's worth a try if you're curious.