Dragon Spirit (Arcade)

Dragon Spirit
Developer: Namco Publishers: Namco (JP), Atari Games (NA) Platform: Arcade (Namco System 1) Released in JP: June 20, 1987 Released in US: August 1987 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has revisional differences.

To do: There are two unused songs - a stereo test and another that ended up being used as a ranking theme in Dragon Saber and possibly unused sound effects. There are more revisional differences, including a slower character speed and an introductory sequence in the first stage for the early revisions. The Arcade Archives release altered the hexagram on one of the items. Does it apply to other rereleases?

Dragon Spirit is a vertical shooter game about a dragon in a quantum state of beheadedness. Notable for being the very first video game to get its own artbook, and for being really dang hard of course.

Developer Credits

At address 0x1C00A in the audio CPU is a handful of credits:

Original	Translation
1987 NAMCO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DRAGON SPIRIT SOUND DATA. MUSIC COMPOSED & ARRANGEMENT BY SHINJI HOSOE. (KAIHATSU 1BU) MAIN PROGRAM:KYOTA TANAKA GRAPHCS:AAKAWA & MATSUOKA & ISHIKAWA. YOROSHIKU NE !!!	1987 NAMCO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. DRAGON SPIRIT SOUND DATA. MUSIC COMPOSED & ARRANGEMENT BY SHINJI HOSOE. (DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT #1) MAIN PROGRAM:KYOTA TANAKA GRAPHCS:AAKAWA & MATSUOKA & ISHIKAWA. HOPE YOU ENJOY OUR WORK !!!

(Translation: GlitterBerri)

(Dragon Source: Original TCRF research)

Version Differences

Newer versions of Dragon Spirit include an area select feature at the start of the game.