Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll (NES)

I'm almost certain this has nothing to do with actual dragons.

Okay, I'm in a forest, people keep walking up to me, and I knock them out with one delayed punch each. For some reason there's a noticeable pause between me pressing the button, and someone getting hit. All the other controls are fine, it's just the attacks that have a delay.

But what's this? The sky darkens and out steps a purple haired girl. A bit ominous.

Then she started throwing shurikens at me, so I retaliated with a blinding fast combo of delayed punches and kicks. I took a bit of damage in the process, but I eventually came out victorious.

Okay, killing the purple haired girl gets me a token apparently. No idea what that does.

I walked right a bit and the same thing keeps happening, a group of enemies come at me, followed by someone in purple who jumps around and does special attacks. This guy kicked my ass though.

Excellent, some platforms, now I'm getting somewhere. Unusually, the game uses up to jump, which threw me off at first until I got used to it.

Crap, I jumped just as a fireball flew out from the right, and it hit me in mid air, knocking me into the bottomless pit. Game over.

Yeah, I'm done with this now, I give up.

Fuck yeah! Never give up! I can finish this level.

Okay I've found a door this time, so that's something new. I've been mostly jumping over enemies instead of fighting them, so I'm racing through the level making some real progress this time.

Haha, look at that dumbass, walking off the ledge into the pit.

Wait, I recognise this part of the level. Crap, the level loops around... I've been walking around in circles!

Okay, I have a new plan. I keep killing enemies until purple guys appear, then I keep killing them until they give me a way off this level.

So far I've collected a fist token, a foot token and a shuriken token from these purple enemies, and each seems to act as a power up for one of my skills.

Yes, last enemy dropped the key, so I can finally get that door open and leave the first level!

Huh, this is different? I'm playing a fighting game now?

I guess so. I have to hit the targets that appear on my opponent, and block when the targets appear on my character. It's very simple, but I still manage to keep screwing it up.

Still, I'm good enough to win this training fight, and then I can get back to the main game!

Why won't you let me go back to the game? My master himself jumped in the ring to beat the crap out of me for failing to master this ridiculously simple gameplay.

No, don't make me do it again, I don't want to do it all over again.

Okay, I did the training screen again and two more practice fights to get back here, there's no way I'm letting you beat me this time you asshole.

Apparently I'm going to be fighting some other martial artists at some point, including this guy who apparently trained against a bear. Sounds impressive at first, but then how good can a bear be at teaching martial arts?

Level two, more walking right and punching people.

Whoa, some kind of six armed flying demon this time? Fortunately he's no match for my infinite shuriken button hammering technique.

So the game is going to keep alternating between platformer stage, then three fighting stages then?

These fighting stages are boring the hell out of me. And I don't like the way the crowd in the background lights up and starts hissing at you when you win a match. It's creepy.

I mean I'm not saying that I'm finding these fights overly easy, or that the platformer part of the game was particularly interesting.

But compared to this, walking right and punching red people doesn't seem as bad somehow.

Okay, that's the last opponent down, can I get out of here now?

Whoa, what the fuck just happened? Who's this? Why does he just appear at the end of the last match and kick the crap out of me?


Not that I'm complaining. Next game!