Dragon Slayer

Dragon Slayer (ドラゴンスレイヤー, Doragon Sureiyā) is a series of video games developed and published by Nihon Falcom. The first Dragon Slayer title was an early action role-playing game, released in 1984 for the NEC PC-88 computer system and ported by Square for the MSX. Designed by Yoshio Kiya, the game gave rise to a series of sequels, nearly all of them created by Falcom, with the exception of Faxanadu by Hudson Soft. The Dragon Slayer series was historically significant, both as a founder of the Japanese role-playing game industry, and as the progenitor of the action role-playing game genre.

The series encompasses several different genres, which include action role-playing, action-adventure, platform-adventure, open world, turn-based role-playing, and real-time strategy. Many of the early titles in this series were PC games released for the PC-88, PC-98, MSX, MSX2, and other early Japanese PC platforms, while some were later ported to video game consoles. The series also features video game music soundtracks composed by chiptune musician Yuzo Koshiro and the Falcom Sound Team JDK.

Dragon slayer (disambiguation)

Dragon slayer, or similar, may refer to:

Dragon Slayer (video game)

Dragon Slayer (ドラゴンスレイヤー, Doragon Sureiyā) is an action role-playing game, developed by Nihon Falcom and designed by Yoshio Kiya. It was originally released in 1984 for the PC-8801, PC-9801, Sharp X1 and FM-7, and became a major success in Japan. It was followed by an MSX port published by Square in 1985 (making it one of the first titles to be published by Square), a Super Cassette Vision by Epoch in 1986 and a Game Boy port by the same company in 1990 under the name Dragon Slayer I (ドラゴンスレイヤーI, Doragon Sureiyā Wan). A remake of Dragon Slayer was also included in the Falcom Classics collection for the Sega Saturn.

Dragon Slayer began the Dragon Slayer series, a banner which encompasses a number of popular Falcom titles, such as Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu, Sorcerian, and Legacy of the Wizard.

Gameplay

Dragon Slayer is regarded as an early example of the action RPG genre, which it laid the foundations for. Building on the prototypical action RPG elements of Panorama Toh (1983), created by Yoshio Kiya and Nihon Falcom, as well as Namco's The Tower of Druaga (1984),Dragon Slayer is often considered the first true action RPG. In contrast to earlier turn-based roguelikes, Dragon Slayer was a dungeon crawl RPG that was entirely real-time with action-oriented combat, combining arcade style action mechanics with the RPG mechanics found in traditional RPGs like Wizardry and Ultima.

Romancia

Romancia (ロマンシア), also known as Dragon Slayer Jr., is an action-adventure game developed by Nihon Falcom in 1986 for the PC-8801, PC-9801, MSX, and Sharp X1 computers. A later Famicom version was developed by Compile and published by Tokyo Shoseki. An enhanced remake was released for Windows in 1999 by Unbalance. It is the third in the Dragon Slayer series, preceded by Xanadu and followed by Dragon Slayer IV. Romancia is a simpler and brightly colored game in comparison to the other Dragon Slayer titles, hence the name "Dragon Slayer Jr."

Story

The game begins with Prince Fan Freddy (ファン・フレディ) outside the castle. As in Xanadu, Fan can speak with the king for some free equipment. The goal is to rescue Princess Selina (セリナ) within 30 minutes.

Gameplay

Movement is controlled with the arrow keys, and attacking is done with the action key. Unlike Xanadu, there are almost no statistics, and zero customization. The game consists largely of two screens with a few small sub-areas. The player has only thirty minutes to complete the game, further illustrating the light and accessible nature of the title versus the oppressive underground complexes of Xanadu. Despite this, the game is still rather unforgiving and the player will likely need to use trial and error or a walkthrough to solve some of the puzzles.