Dragonlord

Colour Clash!

Have you ever spent time trying to learn a game only to walk away completely baffled and wondering why you bothered? Well, here is Dragon Lord, an extremely unusual multi-screen platformer released in 1990 by 16-32 Diffusion. We are playing the part of a huge dragon who appears to be living in a whole wide world of weird! The objective is to become the new dragon lord which means plundering through over a hundred screens looking for artefacts, killing some fascinating creatures and ultimately battling an evil guardian.

The gameplay is simplistic thus easy to pick up and it's fun breathing fire to scorch enemies. I found the map design laborious and would often end up getting lost so I spent my time burning down the bad guys!! However, the controls are clumsy because we are a massive dragon sprite moving around tight places.

The visuals are quite (ahem) unique. Pretty amateur artwork that looks like it was created by somebody with colour blindness. Ignoring that graphical nightmare, Dragon Lord’s sprites are massive and of a great and humorous variety! Sadly the sound effects are pretty much a joke; the less said the better!

I am disappointed with Dragonlord as I can see the potential but it doesn’t gel together. It has poor mechanics and the eye-bleeding graphics spoil what could have been an interesting idea. Having said that, I found myself having “just one more go” yet I cannot for the life of me think why. Perhaps I'm going mad?

Fancy plucking out your eyeballs in horror? Then get the download at Atari Legend.