How the heck does Dragon Buster work

King of Posters
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What do the little pickups mean? Why do some enemies have visible health and others don’t? Why is every enemy in this level a mini boss?

Dragon Buster is a Namco game that I know nothing about outside of its opening fanfare and that the protagonist can rotate his arm in 360 degrees and that the creator demanded they patch the recent Hamster port to fix that the player character’s arm rotate properly when facing the opposite direction.

Do you love dragon buster? Hate it? What’s the appeal? Tell me your dragon buster stories and thoughts here

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Does busting make him feel good?

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i only understand it thanks to it being featured on game center cx

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if it’s an early Namco arcade game, then the person who covers early Namco arcade games covered it:

that said, this isn’t really the original Dragon Buster, or a traditional home console port either. This is from a plug-and-play console with a unique boss rush-type mode, as mentioned in the Hardcore Gaming 101 writeup: here’s an actual full copy of the article, mysteriously not replicated on the current site.

Surprisingly, this special version is actually dumped and appears to be mostly emulated… see this Arcade Database entry for scant details.


What I'd like to know is how the pseudo-sequel Dragon Buster II on Famicom ended up so Hunt the Wumpus-influenced. Especially since it's believed to have been developed by TOSE...
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because of his head always facing the same way the main character looks like his head is copy pasted like one of those “insert yourself here” cartoons

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I was just playing this on that Namco NES pack for the Switch and wondering the exact same thing. It’s a weird ass game.

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can’t claim i actually know the details of how dragon buster works but the arcade game is really fun to dive into every once in a while

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Really admire how diverse in style the sequel got and how deluxe the Tales of cameo minigame is:

I kinda like how in the MSX version, it just looks like the hero has a magic sword that spins around him like Vergil Summoned Sowrds

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I thought I’d played this but it must have been a fangame from retroremakes (RIP rr) or something, because this looks different in some way… less cute maybe