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There's no-one who likes reviewing games from obscure foreign software companies more than me, that's for sure. This one's from Idea, a little-known Italian outfit whose only other recent product that springs to mind is Swords And Galleons (which I reviewed too, funnily enough. I think I'm beginning to spot a pattern here...)

At the heart of the game is a series of horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up levels, where you fly a dragon along picking off baddies and trying not to get hit by anything. At the end of each one you're given a cash reward, variable depending on how many baddies you've downed. These bits are actually quite good. Nothing special, mind you, but competently put together with smart graphics and a good dragony feel.

Then there are the 'strategy' bits - a shop and a tavern - which appear between stages and are obviously an attempt by the programmers to reassure themselves that Dragon Fighter is as big a game as any other. Here you can try to boost your earnings by gambling, and then fritter them away on add-ons and extra energy. I'd rather not have to bother, quite honestly.

If these spurious extras had been dropped, and a little more attention lavished on the arcade side, we might have something here. A scoring system would have helped for a start. And when I die, I like to know why, rather than just have the screen go black! Unless the dragon's standing on a platform at the time, in which case (oh dear) the game locks up and has to be turned off! (And there's a rather off-putting odour lingering in the box, for some reason). In the face of all this, the scrolling aspect looks decidedly limp and the whole game nosedives into a black hole of mediocrity.

Slick but insubstantial. Clifford wouldn't be impressed.