is an action role-playing game developed by Nihon Falcom and designed by Yoshio Kiya. Reprinted from It was originally released in 1984 for the PC-8801, PC-9801, X1 and FM-7, and became a major success in Japan.
It was followed by an MSX port published by Square in 1985 (making it one of the first titles to be published by Square), a Super Cassette Vision by Epoch in 1986 and a Game Boy port by the same company in 1990. A version for PC-6001mkII was in development but was never released. A remake of Dragon Slayer is included in the Falcom Classics collection for the Sega Saturn.
Dragon Slayer began the Dragon Slayer series, a banner which encompasses a number of popular Falcom titles, such as Dragon Slayer II: Xanadu, Sorcerian, and Legacy of the Wizard. It also includes Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, which would later spawn over a dozen entries across multiple subseries.
Gameplay Dragon Slayer is an early example of the action role-playing game genre, which it laid the foundations for.Kamada Shigeaki, レトロゲーム配信サイトと配信タイトルのピックアップ紹介記事「懐かし (Retro) (Translation), 4Gamer.net Building on the prototypical action role-playing elements of Panorama Toh (1983), created by Yoshio Kiya and Nihon Falcom,Sam Derboo (June 2, 2013), Dark Age of JRPGs (7): Panorama Toh ぱのらま島 - PC-88 (1983), Hardcore Gaming 101 as well as Namco's The Tower of Druaga (1984), Dragon Slayer is often considered the first Japanese action role-playing game. In contrast to earlier turn-based roguelikes, Dragon Slayer was a dungeon crawl role-playing game that was entirely real-time with action-oriented combat, combining arcade style action mechanics with traditional role-playing mechanics.
Dragon Slayer featured an in-game map to help with the dungeon-crawling, required item management due to the inventory being limited to one item at a time,Kurt Kalata, Dragon Slayer , Hardcore Gaming 101 and featured item-based puzzles similar to The Legend of Zelda. Dragon Slayers overhead action-RPG formula was used in many later games.Kurt Kalata, Xanadu, Hardcore Gaming 101 Along with its competitor, Hydlide, Dragon Slayer laid the foundations for the action RPG genre, including franchises such as Ys and The Legend of Zelda.John Szczepaniak (2016), The Untold History Of Japanese Game Developers, Volume 2, pages 42-49
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