Rise of the Dragon

The Good
In the late Eighties, a small company called Dynamix created Project Firestart, an action/adventure game for the Commodore 64. It had features that were uncommon at the time, including cinematic sequences, video images, and action sequences. All three of these game mechanics formed the basis for Rise of the Dragon, their first MS-DOS adventure game.

Anyone who have seen Blade Runner will know that Dragon shares many similarities with the movie, in both story and style. The only difference is that we are investigating what happened to the mayor's daughter, not tracking down Replicants who pose a threat to society. Maybe it is also a coincidence that your character is also named Blade, and that the game is set in Los Angeles?

The games makes use of an internal clock, which updates every five seconds and is on the top-right of the screen, above your inventory. Like in real life, events happen at certain times. The inventory also has a clock, but with buttons that let you go forward a minute or a whole hour. Having these forward buttons is ideal for skipping time because you spend most of the time doing nothing until near the end of the game. Dragon is the only Dynamix adventure game where a clock is visible on-screen as you interact with the environment.

The graphics are quite impressive. All of the environments look as if they are taken right out of a comic book. The only difference is the animations in most of the environment, some of them, particularly the outdoor environments, blend in with the game's setting (ie: it is always dark and gloomy, no matter where you go or what time of day it is). Beautiful cinematic sequences are scattered throughout the game, and tell the player that something really big is happening. The game's introduction – where we discover what happened to the Mayor's daughter – is superb. Dragon comes complete with a comic book that continues where the introduction left off, where the mayor comes into Blade's apartment instead of contacting him on vidphone.

The realism the developers added to the game is amazing. Nearly everyone you meet remembers what you did to them. There are dialogue branches, and saying the wrong things to your contacts will result in them getting angry, which will jeoparize your chances of getting new leads. Character portraits often accompany the dialogue, and they are complete with facial expressions that reflect the mood they are in.

The music and the sound effects are great, often blending in with what is happening on screen. The game supports popular sound cards at the time, including the Adlib, SoundBlaster, and Roland MT-32. The introduction even contains digitized speech that can only be heard if you are playing with SB. In my opinion, the game's speech is nothing compared to what you hear in the Sega CD version, which does include full speech throughout the game as well.

There are arcade sequences scattered throughout the game, and these are similar to the action scenes in Project Firestart, released one year earlier. These arcade sequences are fun, but the controls need to be getting used to. They also work just like any arcade game – you shoot, jump over things, walk under things, turn off switches, and other stuff. They usually take about two minutes to get through, and it is worth it if you want to see yourself defeat your adversary. If these arcade sequences are too hard, then the game will eventually let you skip them and move on. Dragon gives you the opportunity to save your game before each arcade sequence, and this is ideal if you want a break from all that adventuring and just want to kill some bad guys.

The game can be replayed, especially if you want to take different dialogue branches to achieve the same result. For example, you can cheer your girlfriend Karyn up by giving her some flowers in one game to get a set of keys. Then, in your next game, you can make her angry and still get your keys. Let's say you skip those arcade sequences in one game, but you want to complete them in the next. There are also those alternate paths you need to consider to achieve what you need to do.

The Bad
As I said, you spend a lot of time doing nothing in the game, and the developers could have added more stuff for you to do. Why not do extra stuff at the warehouse instead of just blowing it up, or doing more stuff at other locations?

The Bottom Line
If you played Project Firestart or watched Blade Runner, then you know that the roots of Rise of the Dragon can be traced back to these two titles. With great comic book graphics and excellent sound that blend in with the game's atmosphere, Dragon is sure to please any cyberpunk fan out there. It's worth getting a copy of this game from eBay or other retailer, since it includes a comic book that sets the scene up quite nicely. Out of all the three adventure games Dynamix created, Dragon still remains one of my favorites to this day.

The Good
Rise of the Dragon for the Sega CD takes advantage of the CD storage capacity by having most of characters dialogue read by actors. Where as the original DOS version of the game had to rely strictly on-screen text.

The acting is actually quite good -especially the voice actor for Blade - and its probably some of the best example of voice acting in a classic point and click graphic adventure game.

The port over to the Sega CD did mean having fewer on-screens colors to work with in comparison to the PC. To address this hardware limitstions, the designers choose to give the game an green tint to the futuristic city.

It actuallys makes the game's environment seem a bit more mysterious. It is hard to describe, but the look and feel of the game reminds me of the first Matrix film.

The designers of this game did an excellent job in creating a dark sci-fi world that you want to explore and learn eveything about.

This game is an excellent story in the adventure game genre and one of the best games ported over to the Sega CD. It is a shame that this game was not ported over to a newer game system.

The Bad
Rise of the Dragon maintains most of the mature themes from the original DOS game, i.e. profanity, drug use (albeit a fictious one) and the many death sequences and bad alternative endings.

The Sega CD game certainly earned its MA-17 label by Sega's own short lived video game rating council.

It's alll rather tame compared to the content seen in Grand Theft Auto, but in the early 1990s home console systems tended to be much more leery about mature or taboo content in a game.

The censorship seen in the Sega CD port is mostly concerned about sexuality. Mild Some of the DOS violence was toned down, although the biggest censorship issue seems to have been all about s-e-x.

Sexual jokes and innuendos are left in tact, but French kissing and implied sex scenes were cut. Their is also a dancer in a night club who was much more "visible" in the DOS game.

Apparently, some things in the video game were just too mature for a CD game given a MA17 label. It is unclear whether or not Sega ordered the content changes or maybe the designer thought did so "voluntarily".

The censorship does not alter the story line significantly. However, given how the game was already classified as being for older games, it seems silly that the original content was censored.

The Bottom Line
Rise of the Dragon is a DOS classic adventure game that is well designed for the CD format. The futuristic setting is diverse and technologically advanced, but also ripe with corruption, urban decay, vice and a serious drug problem. Its a littke bit film noir, and a little bit Blade Runner.

The Good
Rise of the Dragon was Dynamix's first attempt at a purely graphical adventure, and it was largely succesful. While some people dismissed it as too easy, I found it quite immersive. Gameplay is achieved best with the mouse, where you use the pointer to examine elements of your location, manipulate objects, and throw switches. Its easy to learn, but it doesn't cheat--you have to equip your gun before you can fire it, for example, and if you leave your gun eqipped all the time, you run the risk of scaring the people you run into (because they can see your gun brandished).

The music is great, not because it reaches out and grabs you, but because it doesn't try to. The music is always underneath the scenes, and in some places, does a fantastic job of representing what the character is supposed to be feeling. A particular favorite section of mine is the very first scene where you're in your apartment; even with a simple Adlib card, the music you hear while exploring your surroundings not only does an excellent job of describing how you feel, but almost attempts to describe how your environment feels, if such a thing is possible.

The graphics are very good; each screen was illustrated traditionally on canvas and then digitized. While many of the themes are borrowed liberally from Blade Runner, some areas of the game manage to find their own vision.

The Bad
You would think that graphics digitized from original art would look really great, but some screens are not dithered as well as they could be, which is annoying if you're nitpicky about those kinds of things. (To judge for yourself, take a look at the many ROTD screenshots here on MobyGames.)

ROTD runs in realtime, which is normally a good thing; you can't just sit around poking at everything. But this can get frustrating as well--at one point you have to save your girlfriend while a timer is ticking down to zero in the background. This is unnecessarily manipulative.

Worst, though, is the inclusion of a weak action sequence thrown in at the very end of the game, which is completely inappropriate (and also very hard to win!). Thankfully, if you die too much in the endgame arcade sequence, the game offers to let you skip it to see the ending.

The Bottom Line
Rise of the Dragon is one of my all-time favorite games. If you haven't played it, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.