Rise of the Dragon

aka: Blade Hunter: Rise of the Dragon, Rise of the Dragon: A Blade Hunter Mystery, RoTD
Moby ID: 98
DOS Specs
Included in

Description official descriptions

The year is 2053, and Los Angeles has turned into a grim place ruled by crime and corruption. William 'Blade' Hunter is a private detective who once was a police officer. He is asked to investigate a horrible murder of the mayor's daughter, whose body was mutilated. As Hunter begins to search for clues that would help him solve the crime, he uncovers a conspiracy involving a deadly drug and a powerful criminal syndicate behind it.

Rise of the Dragon is a futuristic first-person adventure game. The game's visuals are reminiscent of a comic book, with digitized photos of actors and hand-painted backgrounds. Unlike most other adventure games of the time, it relies less on inventory puzzles and more on specific choices made by the player. The game has an internal clock and requires the player to plan the protagonist's moves ahead in order to be in the right place at the right time. Dialogues with multiple choices are utilized as a gameplay tool; a wrong choice will often lead to a premature end of the adventure.

There are two side-scrolling action sequences in the game; both can be bypassed without penalty if the player character dies several times in a row. The Sega CD version does not allow the player to skip these sequences. In addition, it uses a different color palette with a greenish tint, and has voice-overs for the dialogues.

Spellings

  • ライズ オブ ザ ドラゴン ~ブレイド・ハンター・ミステリー~ - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

19 People (17 developers, 2 thanks) · View all

Designer and Director
Art Director
Conceptual Art and Characters
Game Development System
Artists
Programmers
Arcade Programming
Audio Director
Music and Sounds
Original Score
Dialogue and Text
Original Story
Quality Assurance Manager
Documentation Design, Layout and Writing by
Special Thanks to
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 77% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 90 ratings with 12 reviews)

Dark Sci-Fi Crime thriller with some mature content

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.

SEGA CD · by Edward TJ Brown (118) · 2015

Better and Worse than the DOS version

The Good
This is the same game others have talked about with the DOS version so I won't echo their comments. The SegaCD version's main advantage is that it has pretty good voice acting added in. This ads more depth to the game than I got from the DOS version. If it weren't for a few things, this would be my favorite version.

The Bad
There is no way out of the arcade sequences. Why put it in the DOS version, but not the Sega CD one. The date scene gets cut off after the toast. Aparently Sega thinks we're allowed to see all kinds of violence, but not a french kiss and implied sex.

And the largest problem. Visualy it does not look as clean as the DOS version. The Sega CD has a very limited color pallete and it shows. However the changes they had to make, do do something interesting with the atmosphere once you get used to it. Take a look at the screenshots

The Bottom Line
If you've played the DOS version and loved it, get this version if you can and compare the two.

SEGA CD · by Jessie Cook (24) · 2002

Hey, have you forgotten your key again?!..

The Good
Rise of the Dragon occupies a special place among adventure games of the early 1990's, being oddly similar to the Japanese specimens of the genre. Basically, the gameplay here is wrapped around the plot, and the focus is on natural, story-dictated advancement rather than on the essential Western adventure gameplay mechanic (puzzles). However, the game manages to squeeze quite a bit out of this less than promising template and, astonishingly, even introduce its own interesting ideas concerning adventure game design.

There is simple logic and realism in the game, which create an illusion of choice. Go out of your apartment without having collected your keys and you'll have a tough time getting back. Of course, you can always make your girlfriend angry by flirting with other women, and she'll flung the keys at you. However, you won't be able to solve the game without her help, so maybe you'll need to figure out another way to get back in. This kind of branching gameplay, as primitive as it is, feels uniquely refreshing after rigidly composed inventory puzzles or maddening "triggers" Japanese adventures are so fond of. Too bad it is barely used in this game.

The atmosphere in Rise of the Dragon is well-done. Beautiful backgrounds with occasional animation reflect the grim futuristic setting nicely. You can see people moving on the streets, neon signs flashing, apartment shaking when a helicopter flies by, etc. Events are presented with lovely comic book-like panels, emphasizing the game's dramatic pace. Despite the very simple interface, some objects that have nothing to do with the progression of the game can be examined, sometimes eliciting comments and thoughts from the main character. The game also has excellent sound effects and fitting music that further enhance the atmosphere.

The Bad
There is a bit too much of trial and error, particularly during the final part of the game or in some of the puzzles. The platform sequence near the end of the game has clunky, stiff controls, and is too hard. It was nice of the game to allow me to skip it and go straight to the final cutscene, but the feeling of achievement and reward was gone. An easier arcade sequence or at least the possibility to save within it would have been more appropriate.

The story is just one big cliche. I couldn't see the necessity of blatantly ripping off the movie Blade Runner in such insignificant details as the hero's name - and honestly, "Blade Hunter" is one of the worst protagonist names I've come across. It all boils down to the confrontation against a cartoony villain; there are no twists or psychological insights of any kind, and all the characters are completely one-dimensional and forgettable.

A much more serious problem is the game's size. More often than not I felt that the developers were showing me brilliant sketches rather than a complete, full-fledged product. For example, the hero's apartment is a fantastic location, but there is no other one like that to explore. Only a few spots allow interactivity, while most others are disappointingly empty. Branching plot could have been done much better as well. I understand that hooking up with a prostitute won't make your girlfriend happy, but why make the game unwinnable because of that?

Rise of the Dragon starts strong, but cannot stay on the same level throughout. By the end of the first game day you'll have seen and experienced pretty much everything the game has to offer. Afterwards, it mostly consists of a fairly monotonous routine: repeated trips to the same barren locations, a few minor discoveries here and there, and a flat, predictable cartoony showdown without any significant events along the line.

The Bottom Line
Rise of the Dragon might be what Japanese adventures always wanted to be: a smooth, cinematic experience that transcends its apparent weaknesses. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much. Despite the obvious talent behind it, the game comes across as a rather shallow and rudimentary product compared to its more developed Western siblings.

DOS · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2015

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

Rise of the Dragon appears to have been coded in Turbo C++.

Messages

Messages hidden in the main executable:

Boy, am I tired. Better get some sleep in about an hour. You have chosen to run the game with only %s bytes of memory! You are on your own! (this is presumably when the user has decided to run the game without enough free DOS memory available)

References

  • One of the patrons in the Pleasure dome is named "FU BAR".
  • David Wolf makes an appearance outside the Pleasure Dome--he strolls past in a tuxedo if you wait long enough. (David Wolf was the main hero of Dynamix's earlier game David Wolf: Secret Agent.)
  • In Heart of China, another game from Dynamix, if you talk to some people in Ho's bar, some people will say "Bahumat lives!". A reference to the main villain in Rise of the Dragon.

SEGA CD version

The Sega CD has automatically-converted graphics from the 256-color originals, but (probably due to the Sega's limited color palette and palette restrictions) everything has a green cast. Check screenshots for comparison. Also some things were cut from the game: an ammo clip besides a telephone, all but one strippers in the bar and a sequence in which the protagonist has sex.

Versions

Rise of the Dragon was released in two separate packages for the PC: A 256-color VGA/MCGA version that took up about 7 megabytes, and an EGA/CGA version that, understandably, took up half that size. The 16-color EGA version, on the other hand, has mostly redrawn graphics based on the 256-color originals.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1991 (Issue #88) – Special Award for Artistic Achievement
    • November 1996 (15th Anniversary Issue) - #83 in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #12 Most Innovative Computer Game

Information also contributed by PCGamer77

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Related Sites +

  • Game Nostalgia
    Provides extensive background info for Rise of the Dragon, pictures of the cast, full credits with shots and info about the design team, specific details about the game, various goodies, all musical themes, shots of every location in the game, saved games, a list of reviews, including a "nostalgic "review and tech specs.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 98
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Trixter.

SEGA CD, Amiga added by POMAH. Windows added by Cavalary. Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Shoddyan, Sciere, martin jurgens, Patrick Bregger, Starbuck the Third, ZeTomes, Shankao, Kayburt.

Game added March 20, 1999. Last modified January 27, 2024.