Uploaded September 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Full run through Dragon Spirit (ドラゴンスピリット), for the NES/Famicom. This was my first attempt playing the game using the Blue Dragon (normal mode), and I cleared it on my first try! I previously cleared the game using the Gold Dragon (easy mode), also on my first try, which is in a separate video (youtube.com/watch?v=V6kpef0PQAE).
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
00:15 - Prelude Stage
02:04 - Area 1 - The Paleozoic Era
05:41 - Area 2 - Volcano
08:18 - Area 3 - Jungle
12:46 - Area 4 - Grave Yard
16:54 - Area 5 - Cave Road
20:30 - Area 6 - Glacier Land
25:34 - Area 7 - Deep Sea
28:38 - Area 8 - Dark Quarters
31:13 - Area 9 - Dark Castle
37:52 - Final Boss + Ending
Dragon Spirit is a your basic, run of the mill shooter for the NES where you pick up powerups and destroy everything in sight. The one thing that sets it apart is the opening sequence of the game. At the very start you must face off against the main villain and depending on if you win or lose the fight you get to play different stage progressions/difficulties.
If you lost the fight you play as the Gold Dragon and only see about 1/2 of the stages (see my run linked above), which are also shorter and have reduced difficulty. You also don't get the true ending.
If you win the opening fight, you play the normal difficulty as the Blue Dragon, where you must play through all 9 stages and and face the true last boss to get the real ending.
Dragon Spirit uses 2 main types of attack, one for aerial targets and one for ground, similar to old school arcade shooters like Xevious and Alpha Mission. You will find that some bosses can only be damaged with certain types of attacks, so keep that in mind.
As far as powerups go, there are many. In fact, there are so many and they show up so often that it was basically impossible for me to tell what any of them did. Some changed the color and attacks of my dragon and others change it's size, but I couldn't keep track of which ones did what or if one was really better than another. They all just kind of blend together.
You have a life bar in addition to having multiple lives at your disposal, so there are plenty of resources to go around. Because the game is so lenient with taking hits and losing lives, Dragon Spirit ranks among some of the easier shmups on the system. The Blue Dragon route is definitely quite a bit harder than using the Gold, but even still it shouldn't give experienced players much of a problem.
Full run through Dragon Spirit (ドラゴンスピリット), for the NES/Famicom. This was my first attempt playing the game using the Blue Dragon (normal mode), and I cleared it on my first try! I previously cleared the game using the Gold Dragon (easy mode), also on my first try, which is in a separate video (youtube.com/watch?v=V6kpef0PQAE).
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Start
00:15 - Prelude Stage
02:04 - Area 1 - The Paleozoic Era
05:41 - Area 2 - Volcano
08:18 - Area 3 - Jungle
12:46 - Area 4 - Grave Yard
16:54 - Area 5 - Cave Road
20:30 - Area 6 - Glacier Land
25:34 - Area 7 - Deep Sea
28:38 - Area 8 - Dark Quarters
31:13 - Area 9 - Dark Castle
37:52 - Final Boss + Ending
Dragon Spirit is a your basic, run of the mill shooter for the NES where you pick up powerups and destroy everything in sight. The one thing that sets it apart is the opening sequence of the game. At the very start you must face off against the main villain and depending on if you win or lose the fight you get to play different stage progressions/difficulties.
If you lost the fight you play as the Gold Dragon and only see about 1/2 of the stages (see my run linked above), which are also shorter and have reduced difficulty. You also don't get the true ending.
If you win the opening fight, you play the normal difficulty as the Blue Dragon, where you must play through all 9 stages and and face the true last boss to get the real ending.
Dragon Spirit uses 2 main types of attack, one for aerial targets and one for ground, similar to old school arcade shooters like Xevious and Alpha Mission. You will find that some bosses can only be damaged with certain types of attacks, so keep that in mind.
As far as powerups go, there are many. In fact, there are so many and they show up so often that it was basically impossible for me to tell what any of them did. Some changed the color and attacks of my dragon and others change it's size, but I couldn't keep track of which ones did what or if one was really better than another. They all just kind of blend together.
You have a life bar in addition to having multiple lives at your disposal, so there are plenty of resources to go around. Because the game is so lenient with taking hits and losing lives, Dragon Spirit ranks among some of the easier shmups on the system. The Blue Dragon route is definitely quite a bit harder than using the Gold, but even still it shouldn't give experienced players much of a problem.
![Twin Cobra (Arcade) - 1-ALL Clear [2-9] 3,703,660 Pts](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/J_xaYpa5xBA/mqdefault.jpg "Twin Cobra (Arcade) - 1-ALL Clear [2-9] 3,703,660 Pts
Full run of the first loop (and most of the second) for Twin Cobra. This is the international version of Kyuukyoku Tiger, made by Toaplan.
Stage Listing:
00:00 - Intro / Stage 1
05:00 - Stage 2
09:15 - Stage 3
13:35 - Stage 4
17:45 - Stage 5
22:37 - Stage 6
26:51 - Stage 7
31:22 - Stage 8
35:41 - Stage 9
39:54 - Stage 10
43:08 - Final Boss / Fortress
44:13 - Loop 2
Twin Cobra is basically the easy version of KyuKyoKu Tiger, released for international audiences (outside of Japan that is). It shares all of the same levels of the Japanese version but alters several important characteristics of the gameplay.
I guess you could call this a balance revision for the most part although it does also allow 2 player simultaneous play which the previous version did not have. A lot of Toaplan games had revisions like this with several alterations to accommodate the 2nd player.
Anyway, the main changes basically boil down to:
1) Your ship is now red and you have a slightly faster ship speed!
2) Extends come at every 150K instead of every 200K!
3) Lower rank, enemy firing speed
4) NO CHECKPOINTS!!!
....
5) You have nerfed firepower :( Basically you can only have 3 shots on the screen at a time instead of 4. This does make quite a bit of difference and renders many quick kill strategies with the blue weapon useless now. So you will probably need to use the green weapon for some of the bosses now.
So you do get a whole lot of buffs, especially the removal of the checkpoints, which makes for a more approachable and accessible game.")
