How to play Dragon Defender online
- Move the dragon: arrow keys
- Fire: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (Reset)
Gameplay
Attackers enter from the right-hand side of the screen and your dragon has to fight its way through them. Ball-shaped enemies do not shoot, but they destroy the dragon if they run into it. Large saucers do fire at you and take four hits to destroy; every hit makes one smaller, until it is a small alien that moves up and down the screen. Along the bottom of the screen a creature tries to crawl past you, and you can bomb it on its way.
There is no manual available online, so details such as lives and point values are unknown. One player who remembered the game said the aim was mostly to keep firing and push your score towards ten thousand points.
Tips
- Finish off shrinking saucers. A saucer is only gone after four hits, so keep firing at the same one rather than spreading your shots.
- Dodge the balls. They cannot shoot, so the only danger is contact. Move out of their path instead of trying to outgun them.
- Watch the bottom of the screen. Bomb the crawling creature in quiet moments between waves, before it gets past you.
History
Dragon Defender is one of many 2600 games made in Taiwan and released under different names and labels across Europe. AtariMania lists copies from Suntek (dated 1983), SuperVision and unbranded Taiwanese labels, and AtariAge has releases by Ariola in Europe and Rainbow Vision in Australia. In Germany it was sold as Im Schutz der Drachen, and other versions appeared as Dragon Attack and Dragon Power. The game databases list no developer or programmer for it. Reception was poor: a player review on AtariMania called the graphics bland and the sound tedious.
