As in the original Dragon Spirit, players must take control of a prince transformed into a dragon by a flash of lightning: the first controls "Huey" and the second player controls "Siria", which means that two players can now play simultaneously; Huey also looks like an 8192-colour version of Prince Amul from the original game, and both players can now press and hold their Firing Buttons to make their dragons spit flames continuously. Several new enemies and powerups have also been introduced - and, much like in Phelios, Huey and Siria can take up to four hits before dying, which means that if they have set it to "1" they will die immediately when they gethit. Also, if the arcade operators have set the "LEFT" option to "S", the number of lives the players start out with depends on how many coins they insert into the cabinet ; the game's title screen will also display this information below its name as a result of this setting being in effect.
Development
Dragon Saber was the creation of Namco artist Yoshihiro Sugiyama, being his first time as a planner for a game. Sugiyama wantedthe game to feel like a true continuation of its predecessor Dragon Spirit in terms of its storyline and world, as he felt the NES sequel was mostly just a rehash of the original and had a rather generic premise. He also wanted the game to appeal to anyone instead of mostly hardcore shooter enthusiasts, and one that many could find a degree of satisfaction in. Once the story was completed, Sugiyama began work on the game's lore and fictional world, wanting it to be one that players hadn't seen before in similar games beforehand.
Ports
There were three ports of this arcade game in Japan; the first was for the PC Engine in 1991, which was exclusive to Japan. The second was a part of the Namco Museum Encorecompilation for the Sony PlayStation that was released in 1997, and the third was the Virtual Console Arcade release in 2008 and 2009, which was also exclusive to Japan.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Dragon Saber on their January 1, 1991 issue as being the most-successful table arcade game of the year.
