Dragon Sword is a cancelled beat-em-up style game that translates the gameplay of Golden Axe and Streets of Rage into 3D. It was in development by Interactive Studios, but ended up getting cancelled when MGM Interactive decided that it likely wouldn’t sell enough copies to turn a profit. The prototype has a good portion of the game available, although the final three levels are just basic arenas with a few enemies, so I think they may be from a different mode. The few levels before these can’t be accessed, so I think those are the actual final levels.

After selecting one of four characters (although the lizard chicken looking character on the select screen isn't in the game, so you start the game as the basic enemy type instead), you punch and kick your way though hordes of enemies. It doesn’t to anything new for the genre, but it’s a much, much better adaptation than Fighting Force. There are lots of weapons dotted across the map, so you’ll find yourself using those for large periods of the game.

One interesting feature of the prototype is that you can load the game playing as any enemy or NPC, and for the most part they work fine – if they added special attacks to the enemies (and perhaps basic attacks for the NPCs), these would have been great as unlockable characters. Interestingly, the placeholder icon for many is Darth Maul.

This would have been a decent beat-’em-up game, especially when played in co-op.

Fun

And finally, Interactive Studio – the people behind Glover – are working on Dragon Sword, a repotedly impressive action-adventure RPG in the traditonal fantasy style. Think experience points, dwarfs and Mithril armout. More news, invariably, as we get it.

N64 Magazine #29

Should it be finished?

One of the developers said “Dragon Sword was a great game at the time, but it was a third person battling game. There would be no point bringing that back as it would just look aged.” and I think they have a good point.