"Disclaimer: My fingers were totally independent of my body during the typing of this review"

I can't believe I'm typing this. Many of these words are totally incongruous, but here they lie rooming together like fraternity brothers in the same sentences anyway. I, Snow Dragon, am sitting here at twenty minutes past eleven at night writing a positive review for a game made by Color Dreams. Chalk it up to excessive fatigue if you want, but I have reason to believe that this game does not fall flat on its face in the first two minutes of play, as most games manufactured by Color Dreams do. Certainly the appearance of the cartridge helps none - baby blue chassis and an odd shape that signals right away that Nintendo in no way licenses these games. Most Color Dreams titles do not deserve to be buried in the same landfill as the Atari 2600's detestable E.T. The Extraterrestrial. But here is one that presents evidence enough to move me to say that if you must expose yourself to one Color Dreams game within your lifetime, it ought to be this one.

Since I can detect no elements of a story from anything related to the game, I will not even try to make one up, for the sole reason that doing so would make me look quite the fool because of my poor wording in circumstances wherein I am forced to come up with something on the spot. It will then suffice that you go through the land of Lorin (easily derived from the level map) beating up a nonstop barrage of ninjas and other martial artists. You cannot bag on a story like this, no matter how wafer-thin it is. Isn't this what every Jackie Chan and Jet Li movie is like below the threadbare plot that merely serves as a blanket for an hour-and-a-half of unbridled action? How far this story carries itself, or even if it goes beyond Lorin, is a mystery to me, inasmuch that this is an incredibly difficult journey on top of being a mildly entertaining one.

The gameplay is similar to that found in Double Dragon in that you must defeat a predetermined number of foes before advancing to the next piece of screen. There are usually five or six screens worth of ninjas in a level, give or take. These henchmen are followed up by a boss who requires an ungodly amount of hits to defeat. You are helped out by vials that give you the ability to throw enemies off their focus when thrown with the Select button and special containers and hearts that increase your life. Although five hearts appear on the status bar at the top of the screen, your vitality seems to be limitless. Given the number of hearts you can collect, you can take roughly ten million hits before your heart meter even starts to deplete a little bit. Unlike Double Dragon, you have the same repertoire of moves throughout CotD's entirety. This is limiting and makes the game a bit easier, but when it's ninjas we're talking about, there's usually not much room for complaint.

Color Dreams usually manages to crank out some pretty sickening color palettes, and it seems that their trademark off-pinks and grays are used here in addition to the strange prevalence of brick red. This does not entirely work against this game, however - some things about it actually make it appealing. The use of shadow on the faces on the map of Lorin actually look pretty good, and who'd have known that teal is a decent shade for a protagonist to wear? The bad guys, however, need to work on their lime green and carnation pink wardrobes. Maybe there's a big and tall ninja store for that sort of thing. In any case, here it appears that Color Dreams did not botch the color scheme as badly as they often do. Being kinder to my eyes makes this easier to play, and it is now less of a task to concentrate on ease (or frustration factor) of control with an eyesore in front of me. Whoever Dan Burke (the man credited with the graphics at the title screen) is, I'd like to thank him for this and ask if he is at all related to Delta.

Quake II must have taken lessons in sprite movement from these guys - they're so stiff! And they appear to glide at breakneck speed everywhere they go! For the most part, it looks as if nobody moves their legs too terribly much except to plant their foot in somebody's crotch. When you walk, you move with kind of a sweep and a slide that can make it hard to land properly on small platforms. Jumping is a task when you have to hit a precise spot, and therefore you'll need to watch what you're doing and try to restrict your fights to stable arenas. Weapon use is hit-and-miss, and if you try to jump and swing a sword, you're just going to screw yourself up. Basically, it's as if your ninja is also a robot, which might make a great concept for a game, but I'll save that for a development team who cares. Moving too fast will be your downfall, and it's hard to make expert use of the D-pad and jumping function. By and large, it should not be too difficult to use weapons; if you're aiming at something, chances are it will hit that designated spot. There are problems with spotty hit detection and braking physics that should have been addressed in quality control, if in fact Color Dreams ever had such a department.

Totally unrelated aside - now that I think about it, the story would probably be about a challenge against a dragon, wouldn't it? I'm so dumb sometimes.

I would just ignore the sound in Challenge of the Dragon - it's not too terribly great, and just about anything goes better with the thrill of fighting other ninjas and bosses. There's not much to be taken in by your ears for this round of gaming - the sound I can remember with the most clarity is the sound of the green vial going off when you throw it in the air. I get this odd feeling that Color Dreams never quite excelled in this particular area. Do you get it too? It feels kind of like someone poked your brain with their finger.

This has been a rather short review, covering the essentials of this game and whatnot, but I'm trying to get a fair amount of information in while realizing that I will only get five-and-a-half hours of sleep tonight. I've also been playing the game at the same time as I've been writing this, and I must say that I really don't find this to be just a horrible game. That blue cartridge might look a tad comical in your Plastic Tub O' Cartridges(tm) sitting in the company of all those gray ones, and no, I still cannot believe I'm saying this, but Challenge of the Dragon frankly is not that bad a game. Certainly it beats the living heck out of Pesterminator and Menace Beach, and it still is not even close to being one of the best games ever, but it is among Color Dreams' own personal best. You might hate yourself for buying it, and I might get hate mail and letter bombs for recommending a game made by this company, but ... qué sera sera.

Come to think of it, wouldn't it be mighty disappointing if there wasn't even a dragon in this game at all? Maybe I'll find out if I ever beat it. Fat chance - this one will keep you held back awhile, even if you somehow manage to master those controls.

Challenge Accepted
-- Graphics not bad as far as Color Dreams goes
-- Fun to play once you get into the swing of it
-- Being able to master the controls makes it an iota simpler
-- A Color Dreams game, fun? It should get props just for that

Dragon Behind
-- Graphics still kinda remind me of vomit on a screen
-- Controls leave much to be desired
-- Sound virtually nonexistent
-- Pretty hard, though through no design of the layout (it's all the control's fault)

Score: 6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/19/02, Updated 09/19/02