Previous Next

A nation of cyborg monsters has taken on the universe and won. All races are enslaved and the future looks none too bright. That sounds to you like a great opening for a gutsy hero with a death wish and an amazing array of futuristic weapons? You'd be right, it is. So fetch out your Pro Cyborg Basher competition joystick with the reinforced micro switches and put on your best Deee-lite CD because it's shoot-'em-up time.

Saint Dragon is a mindless "zap-fest", and though there's a bizarre storyline tacked onto it, the game doesn't really pretend to be anything else. You control a half dragon/half cyborg monster and your mission is to see that the aristocratic golden dragon is safely returned to his palace cave with en suite damsel in distress. As you're half cyborg your body is armour plated, which means you can resist plasma bolts up the bottom but not in the head.

The game is played over five levels: the planet surface, the alien forest, the alien base, space and the alien hangar. Each of these offers an escalating challenge which should prove difficult enough for even the most hardened ST gamester to complete in an afternoon. Your dragon is a versatile beast whose segmented body is extremely useful in a tight corner. This is because it's especially manoeuvrable so you can rapidly learn to whiplash aliens into submission.

Bolted onto your toughened frame in time-honoured fashion, the usual array of weaponry is on offer simply by running over the appropriate icon. Fire-power available to aspiring galaxy conquerors includes lasers, ring lasers, fireballs and bouncing balls. In addition, there are a number of speed-ups and extra life icons as well as a hyper-weapon which makes you invincible for a time.

Graphics in Saint Dragon, lifted straight from the Jaleco arcade game, include are some well impressive end of level nasties. Animation is excellent throughout, the dragon scrolling smoothly and the aliens scuttling about effectively. Considerable attention has been paid to the backgrounds, which move in an effective parallax scroll, though this does judder somewhat when there's lots happening on the screen. The game's sound effects are average, with explosions and music in the main internally generated, so the volume on the monitor rapidly gets turned down.

Saint Dragon is a very well designed shoot-'em-up. The most important element of any game of this genre is its playability and on this score the game can't be faulted. Attention to graphics and collision detection make it easy to be precise about your movements around the screen and there are no annoying background sprite interruptions. Frustration comes from getting shot, rather than getting hit by an alien that's nowhere near you and it therefore has an addictive quality which has been missing from recent arcade shoot-'em-ups. It shooting armoured cows or bullet proof baths appeals to you, try this one for size.