Hamster has revealed that the next entry in its long-running Arcade Archives series is Namco's 1984 title Dragon Buster.
Notable for being one of the first arcade games to fuse RPG elements with the ability to select your level based on a world map, Dragon Buster followed in the footsteps of Namco's similarly influential coin-op Tower of Druaga and includes many other innovations, such as the ability to dash and double-jump.
Because it was never ported to any systems in the west, Dragon Buster's contribution to gaming is largely ignored outside of Japan. In its homeland, it got conversions to the NEC PC-8801, Sharp MSX2 and Nintendo Famicom – it didn't arrive in the west officially until it was included in Namco Museum Volume 2 for the original PlayStation. More recently, the Famicom port was included as part of Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1, which is available on Switch.
A Japan-only Famicom sequel called Dragon Buster II: Yami no Fūin was followed by the PlayStation remake Dragon Valor.
If you're interested in digging into this slice of gaming history, then Dragon Buster launches tomorrow (9th December) for the usual price of $7.99 / €6.99 / £6.29. While you're at it, you might also want to check out the exhaustive feature on the game over at Hardcore Gaming 101.
Comments 22
But... it's already in the Namco Museum Archives Vol. 1?
I usually champion for these Arcade Archives releases, but new re-releases of the ones that are already on existing Namco collections baffle me.
@CharlieGirl
Sometimes individual releases are better than those found in the compilation releases.
They've given the individual care to minimise latency, be as accurate as possible, provide various configuration options, and sometimes introduce quality of life improvements.
For example, the SEGA AGES versions of Sonic 1 and 2 are far superior to what's found in the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis Classics release. The former has a bunch of bonus modes and the addition of the Drop Dash move, the latter is just a fairly basic emulation with notoriously severe input delay.
Haha, that map screen. I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh at games that are as old as I am.
@NeonPizza
Myself, I love that games like the Arcade Punch-Out!! are accessible to consumers, and that I can boot up old favourites like Puzzle Bobble 2 (Bust-a-Move 2) or League Bowling and play them in handheld mode.
@NeonPizza
I'm sure you can, though that doesn't sound very legal, but then there are often few options when you want to get the very best experience possible and have to take things into your own hands.
Modern flat LCD-type displays are always going to suffer some level of latency, as will wireless controllers. I remember the WaveBird's latency on the GameCube and Wii being surprisingly bad that I had to switch bad to wired.
Punch-Out Wii is a favourite, I thought the presentation was strong and loved that they didn't hold back on treating the international characters as the caricatures they were.
I’d really prefer if we got some more games form the late 80s/90s era of arcades because more simplistic games like this don’t warrant the 8 dollar price tag, plus they don’t hold up as well IMO
I like Dragon Buster.
I also like "Tales of Dragon Buster", the minigame unlockable in Tales of the Abyss for PS2/3DS
@NeonPizza Oh? I didn't know that! I just assumed it had the arcade original. Okay, see, now I understand this release a little better.
@RupeeClock Fair point. I do really admire the amount of care Hamster puts in to ensure arcade accuracy, and the online leaderboards on each release is a nice touch. Some of the Namco re-re-releases do vex me a bit, admittedly.
Sounds interesting. This one tempts me to pay full price.
Can we all just take a minute to appreciate that, with maybe a few exceptions, Hamster has been releasing a retro game port to the Switch every week for almost five years?
@BoilerBroJoe After 5 years, that will be $2000 if you bought them all. I guess that is cheaper than buying the arcade cabinets. 😝
If these are lifetime purchases, I don’t mind dropping $8. But will these transfer to Switch 2.0?
Ah, good, I wanted this one. I used to see it in the '80s and was never any good at it, so hope to get better.
@Tandy255 That's a totally fair question. I dropped a pretty penny on Wii U VC games assuming that we'd be able to carry them over to the Switch for free or a very low fee (remember when we all signed up for the Nintendo Network ID, the successor to Club Nintendo that was supposed to keep track of all our purchases across systems?). That said, I don't think it's impossible the next system may maintain our purchases, especially if it's an upgrade. And in my view the possibility of paying again down the line is still better than the certainty of paying again via a subscription service. But as I've said before, I don't want to get rid of options for anybody: give us both!
Either way, it's just nice to see such frequent and regular offerings. If Nintendo came close to that with their online services, I'd be WAY more likely to relent to a subscription.
I'm sure at some point this was a cool game. And maybe if I played it when it was new I would feel that way. But looking at this for the first time in 2021?? yikes. =P
@CharlieGirl That's the Famicom version, as it says in the article above.
Bustin makes me feel good!
@NeonPizza: It was the sounds of Punch Out!! that made it one of my favorite arcade games. I can still hear the bell ringing and announcer’s voice in my head. It was an integral part of that ambient murmur arcades had in the 80s (or at least the ones I went to).
Grabbing this. Hoping for Rastan or Gladiator next week.
Not too sure on this one. Tried it a bit before and it wasn't sure if it was for me. Didn't the Famicom port add power-ups to spice it up at least a little bit?
I mean, I know it was certainly an influential game. Probably one of the earlier games that could be considered a side-scroller hack-n-slash. I think some called it a platformer, but that seemed a bit of a stretch.
@NeonPizza It might be uglier but I think the Famicom port tried to at least improve the gameplay with some kind of power-up system.
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