DragonStrike (DOS)

DragonStrike

Platform: DOS Year: 1990 Developer: Westwood Associates Buy: Amazon

For other games in the series see DragonLance.

DragonStrike is a combat flight simulator based on the world of DragonLance. You play a dragon rider who must engage evil dragons and various other monsters of the DragonLance world. You battle your foes with your DragonLance and the breath weapon of your mount.

This is probably the first fantasy-themed flight simulator. Unfortunately, the 3D engine used in the game hasn't aged well, the view port is small, and the controls take awhile to get used to. Having to maneuver your dragon, the position the DragonLance, and alter your speed is difficult to do on the keyboard. However, the full-screen graphics for each cut scene are very attractive.

DragonStrike was also released on the Amiga, Sharp X68000, PC-9801, Commodore 64, and NES, however, the NES port is a completely different game since the NES couldn't handle the DOS game's 3D engine.

The DOS version has the richest set of music written entirely by Paul Mudra, although its PC Speaker beeps for sound effects aren't as impressive as Amiga's version's screams, sounds of flapping wings and other digital sound effects.

Screenshots

The title screen. Cut scene for the first battle. Loading a saved game. Making a dent on the enemy's territory. Battling several red dragons at once! The setup menu.

Music

Paul Mudra composed the traditional musical score in AdLib Visual Composer with the default AdLib instrument bank and converted it to MUS using AdLib Convert. Some of Mudra's music was later used in the Amiga, Commodore 64, PC-9801, and Sharp X68000 versions.

Missions 1, Missions 2, Missions 3 tracks are all unique to DOS port. All the others, with a sole exception of Game Over tune, were arranged for five ports, excluding the NES port featuring unique music. Oddly enough, Game Over was additionally not arranged for the Commodore 64 version.

Mudra also composed the NES version with Frank Klepacki, but it appears none of the music from the DOS version made it into the NES version.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Length	Listen	Download
01	Introduction	Paul Mudra	1:05		Download
02	Cut Scenes	Paul Mudra	1:51		Download
03	Missions 1	Paul Mudra	0:28		Download
04	Missions 2	Paul Mudra	0:26		Download
05	Missions 3	Paul Mudra	0:55		Download
06	Promotion	Paul Mudra	0:15		Download
07	Ending	Paul Mudra	0:46		Download
08	Game Over	Paul Mudra	0:15		Download

Credits

• Ripper: TheAlmightyGuru
• Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru
• Game Credits:
  • Music & Sound Effects by: Paul Mudra credited as Paul S. Mudra

(Source: manual.)

There are no in-game credits, but they can be found in the manual.

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

The MUS files are located in the install directory along with the SND file. They were logged into DRO format by using AdLib Play through DOSBox 0.74, and then recorded with AdPlug 1.8.2. The "Auto-detect Song End" option under Playback was turned off in order to have the song trail off properly.

The VGM files were logged during gameplay, by loading a game to keep the music playing. Fileswapping methods were used to play different songs during the title screen, specifically by naming one of the eight music files "DSTUNE1.MUS".

The game's background music doesn't loop.

Audio Devices

Music
Sound

(No Source - There is no audio setup. The game automatically detects any AdLib-compatible sound card, and uses PC speaker for sounds.)

Releases

USA Title: DragonStrike Platform: DOS Released: 1990-0?-?? Publisher: Strategic Simulations, Inc.

Links

• mobygames.com/game/dos/dragonstrike - MobyGames.
• gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564820-dragonstrike - GameFAQs.
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonStrike_%28computer_game%29 - Wikipedia.