Another game that no ones ever played or even heard of. I find that the majority of games that fall under the radar tend to so because they're mediocre - lukewarm snorefests that leave no lasting impressions even after a full play through. Challenge of the Dragon does not do that. One leaves the experience with the distinct impression that this game in fact sucks donkey nuts.
First thing you notice is right there on the title page we have credits. Grafix by Dan Burke. Thank God Mr. Burke did the grafix and not the graphics, because the graphics fucking blow. Look at the background in the third pic there, what the fuck is that supposed to be? Grass land? Swamp land? More like lazy-squiggly-verticle lines-land. The rest of the game ain't much of an improvement - badly animated monochrome characters fighting over a washed out background of %100 shit. Good job there, Dan.
Music by John Dwyer. I sure hope Mr. Dwyer's subsequent work was better than this travesty. True I've never composed music for an 8-bit game myself, but if I came up with this bullshit I'd expect people to kick my ass on sight. Because this is quite possibly the worst NES music ever - tinny, repetitive, ridiculous, one-note garbage. And you can't help but listen to it because there's like one sound effect throughout the whole rest of the game. The graphics and music in this game are nothing you want on a resume.
Gameplay involves you bumping into shit and missing jumps while random globs of semi-animated pixels juggle you into bottomless pits. The controls for this game are ridiculously wonky. You overshoot simple jumps, bounce off of walls, get juggled by flying birds, move like a fucking banana slug... argh. You're supposed to be a ninja in this game. Yeah ok, only the most inept loser ninja in existence.
You have one slashing attack, one kicking attack, and one jump kick. Fat lot of good it will do you since trying to actually hit something in the air is an exercise in a big fucking frustrating sack of fucking.. frustration. It's so bad that on the first level it's nearly impossible to kill a bird that travels horizontally across the screen and is easy to see from a mile away. Any other game ever made you could kill that bird. Fuck this game.
The story.. it's the usual princess gets kidnapped, walk left to right and save her that all games from the 80s had to have. Does it really matter why you're doing this crap when the game sucks so much? Tell you one thing, no woman is worth putting up with these frustrating controls. And they expect me to slog through ten levels of this bullshit? Blow me, Color Games. I am so glad I didn't actually spend real money on this game back in the day.
Bad graphics, crappy sound, generic storyline, and shitbucket controls should keep this game off of your Christmas list. As a matter of fact, you should hunt it down so you can destroy it. Civilization cannot prosper when there are monsters like this running around. Save the world. Destroy this game.
