DragonStrike

• Title — DragonStrike • Developer — Westwood Associates • Publisher — Strategic Simulations • Designer — Louis Castle Brett Sperry • Composer — Paul Mudra (MS-DOS, NES) Frank Klepacki (NES) Yasuhiro Kawasaki (PC-98) Yoshio Kobayashi (PC-98) • Released — 1990: Amiga, C64, MS-DOS March 1992: PC-98, X68000 August 1992: NES • Genre — Combat flight simulation • Modes — Single-player • Platforms — Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, PC-9801, X68000, NES

• Illustration — Gameplay screenshot (Amiga) DragonStrike is a flight simulator in a high fantasy setting. The player character is a knight who flies on the back of a metallic dragon equipped with a lance and various magic items (among other things a magic orb that acts as a radar in the game). The player's dragon can use its recharging magical breath to attack and can also attack with its claws or bite if the dragon passes closely above enemies (likewise, should the dragon pass closely beneath enemies, the player character might attack with his sword). Opponents in the game include evil dragons with and without riders and other flying monsters such as manticores, wyverns, sivak draconians and beholderkin known as gas spores. Flying too close to the ground is another hazard for the player as enemy archers are present in some areas. Completing successful missions provides the character with more hit points and the opportunity to obtain a more powerful dragon. Depending on what dragon the player chooses (between a bronze, a silver, or a gold dragon) the ending and missions become slightly different.

The game is set in Krynn, world of the Dragonlance saga, during the War of the Lance. The main character is a young knight of Solamnia who progressively climbs the ranks of knighthood and is assigned to different dragon mounts. The story starts halfway through the action of the previous title, War of the Lance, after the metallic dragons joined the fight alongside the Knights of Solamnia, and it ends roughly at the same time, with a major victory of the forces of the god Paladine. On the other hand, the main character of the NES remake is a dragon without any rider. The action starts at the same time as the original, but it ends later, featuring an ending that is different from the one in the novels and in the tabletop modules.

Westwood Studios had ported other SSI products, but DragonStrike was its first original game for SSI. It was designed by Louis Castle and Brett Sperry. The game was first released in 1990.

• Illustration — The NES version is a scrolling shooter. Ports of DragonStrike for the PC-9801 and X68000, developed by Crosstalk, were published in 1992. A game of the same title was published by Pony Canyon for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1992. Despite an almost identical title screen and box cover, it is noticeably different from versions of the game for other systems: instead of being a first-person flight simulator, it is a top-down scrolling shooter, with only 14 missions instead of the original 40.