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A playthrough of Seta's 1990 action-platformer for the NES, Castle of Dragon. It's not a terrible game, nor is it a good one. Castle of Dragon is odd in how intentionally stiff its controls are, and like the arcade game upon which it is based, how insanely cheap it is, through-and-through, as well as how it generally reeks of a lack of polish. The best representative example of this that comes to mind is how the game penalizes you when you use the mace. It the most powerful weapon in the game, but it randomly deals damage whenever you use it. How fun! Since there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how it dishes out the dolors, swinging your best weapon ends up becoming something of an absolute crap shoot. Partner that with seemingly endless numbers of unavoidable enemy attacks and you get a game with a bloodlust that really does its best to hinder your fun. Eveything feels just a bit too flaky. At the very least, though you get one life and can't continue from the stage you died on, you do get to keep your weapons and extended life bar when you restart the game. Thankfully, there's no real reason to play this if you're looking for a more-methodical-than-the-norm NES platformer. Athena, the developer, released what was essentially a remake of this game - the 1992 Activision release Sword Master. There's little differentiate the general mechanics in terms of bullet-points, but unlike Castle of Dragon, Sword Master's control is completely solid, the framerate consistently stays well above 12fps, the enemies typically move in generally discernible patterns, and the graphics blow away those of nearly any other game on the NES. Sword Master was also an absurdly difficult game, but the challenge was a bit more fair in that one. I appreciated that a great deal. Anyway, if you want to play Athena's first pass at a concept, try Castle of Dragon. When you're done getting killed and are staring open-jawed at the pile of awesome ideas that was hampered by Castle of Dragon's inept execution, go ahead and move along to Sword Master. You'll promptly forget that this exists. ...well, except for a hidden Easter egg. Now, stop reading here if you are below the age of 18 or are otherwise sensitive to “adult“ imagery: Check out the end of the video. I tacked on the hidden “bonus“ ending scene, wherein the princess - experiencing an *extreme* wardrobe malfunction - comes bounding toward you after the last boss is killed. This alternate scene is shown if you hold down up, left, a, b, start, and select at the final cutscene before the credit scroll. Yeah, that's right. That's in an officially licensed NES game. Deformed though she may be, that's quite the image to slip by Nintendo's censors! :o ________________________________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games! Visit for the latest updates!
