Dragon Buster

Dragon Buster is a show that's got a strange impact and an even stranger legacy. You play the character of Clovis, a brave knight with a sword and shield, a precursor to the boyish hero that is Link, except he's depicted in a bizarre cut-out style, and even sword-swinging is something that'll remind you of children's animations. It's kinda like something Rakuga Kids would do.

You walk around in sidescrolling dungeons and caves, defeating various typical fantasy monsters, but you have a surprising leeway in manouverability. Dragon Buster is the first game to use double jumps, double-tap dashing the powerful downward thrust, and also is an early adopter of the health bar before it would become more commonplace in similar action games. The game is rightfully framed as an adventure with slight RPG elements, where you can also store spell scrolls, and get various kinds of gear that enhance your attack and defense powers. Or other items(the crown and the sceptre) which can be used in a Druaga-like fashion to get the "true ending" which is just saving the princess in a lowbrow bikini or bunny suit(in that demands giving up on the sword and shield, which sucks horribly).

Just as the player and his impressive moves, the monsters too have impressive manouverability, attack abilities and patterns, that more often than not outmatch poor Clovis, and knock him back and render him helpless. A big issue with the game is that it's very hard to defend yourself or to counter-blow in wanting to deal damage, and that a lot of times you will just have to let yourself be pounded. Thankfully that's what the generous health bars are for, but for every hit Clovis spins back helplessly, and makes fighting enemies(especially bosses) so frustrating because it conveys a feeling you don't have any control.

The game is still much, much better than Druaga could ever hope to be because it has no gotcha moments where you're left stuck in the dark, and those few gotcha moments that remain are entirely optional. Play control is amazingly fluent but hard to master, and the input window is very short. The double jump is hard to pull off. Despite these shortcomings Dragon Buster provides an echo of the ideal action game for the new generation, and the bold, imperfect moves it made live on in countless of today's games.

Dragon Buster has 12 levels, after which it loops.