Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

"Slamming my fingers in a car door...or playing this? Someone find me a car..."

Games that are based on movies are generally bad and this point has been proven over the years with games like Double Dragon from the Neo Geo system, Street Fighter: The Movie and several others that have made their way into the gaming world. In this particular action game, you take control of Bruce Lee through his life story but with nothing but problems from the start! There is no basis to the game, other than running through his life and fighting the different fight scenes that you saw in the movie, and with the very limited fighting systems as well as a weapon feature that includes a poor usage of the infamous nunchuku, Bruce Lee would have given this game a snap kick to the nuts!

-Game Play 1/10-

You take control of Bruce Lee through his life as portrayed through the movie, with a difficulty level that is so sky high it'll make you sick! The limited battle system that you do have revolves around some Street Fighter type control movements and then a button press, but the overall feeling of the game is hindered by the fact that all of your moves are limited in their range and how powerful they actually are. You've got a couple of different stages that you can go through, that allow you to take on the demon, but after hours of playing this game, I have to say that fighting that particular boss is damn near impossible to do and is, to this gamer, impossible to beat! You'll face off against that terror when you run out of lives, and you can consider it your chance to cheat death and continue on with the game, but other than that, you're looking at the same boss like characters in each stage. In some instances, you'll be able to use the nunchuku against your opponent, but the learning to use it and use it effectively is yet another game play blunder!

-Control 1/10-

Horrible by even Jaguar standards, the control is slow, unresponsive and overly hard to use. Different attacks rely on your use of chi, which is also mis-balanced in terms of having to have a certain amount of chi in order to perfrom even the most basic moves! Blocking? Don't even think about it because the blocking system is also challenging to learn, which forces you to learn a whole new control set. You'll find that using the weapons is the true down fall, in which your nunchuku uses three different forms, all of which can be linked together, but takes a ton of time to learn to use effectively!

-Visuals 1/10-

Sparse and drab, the backgrounds will strike you as ultra simple and without much thought put into it! The character animations move stiffly, like they are forced across the screen, and even the use of weapons is done in a completely simple fashion. The detail in Dragon is set to a minimum, without any real flare or interesting things that the movie had to offer, so if you're looking for a visually satisfying game, you might as well look somewhere else, because this title definitely fails in that category!

-Audio 1/10-

The music doesn't make an impact and the sound effect of Bruce Lee wooing is enough to make your ears bleed! The stages all have a looping tack that is similar to the last, and anyone with a brain in their head will find something to put on the CD player to take away the headache that creeps up after about twenty minutes of play! The game isn't sound intensive, so the need for the audio being on isn't a must like some games, and this is a relief, because it's all horrible!

-Overall 1/10-

This is the true example of a poorly done and poorly made game based off of a rather interesting movie! With horrid control, game play that features a near impossible difficulty and audio that will give even the most stoic gamer a head ache, Dragon deserves to be on the bottom of anyone's game collection. For a quarter or less, you'll find that Atari should pay people to play this title, and you'll also see why, in some peoples opinion, Jaguar was doomed to fail.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 10/12/01, Updated 10/12/01