A fighting game that feels like it was built with home consoles in mind. This features a more cartoon style than most and adds RPG elements into the mix in the form of items to equip and upgrade. This is a very promising system, but ultimately the fighting itself lets it down.

To progress, you repeatedly play tournaments. You’ll get experience for your items as well as money to buy new ones (which can include new special moves). While some of these include clothing, it only affects your stats, not the visuals of your character. As you play more matches, these will “evolve” into new items.

It creates a good incentive to play the story mode repeatedly, even if it does feel the same every time – not even the text dialogue at the start of each match changes. There are a bunch of other modes, such as practice and multiplayer modes, so there are plenty of things to do – it’s just that the gameplay itself isn’t up to scratch for it.

But Flying Dragon also includes a second fighting game.

An additional mode, called “Virtual Hiryu” is also available as a much more traditional fighting game. This features a different cast of characters in a different visual style – more generic taller characters. This lacks the RPG elements but does have other features such as a “grading” system telling you what to do.

The fighting feels very similar and still isn’t very good – this one felt even easier to cheese with button mashing, too. In a way, this feels like they didn’t have enough confidence in their main mode and wanted a “normal” way to play as well.

Flying Dragon has some interesting features, and is essentially two games in one – the second containing more features and options than most other fighters so far on the N64. It’s just unfortunate that it’s not that fun to play.

Fine

As it is, there’re some fantastic options which are far outweighed by a frustratingly slow, peculiarly uninvolving series of 60 second rounds.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #27. Review Score: 73%

Remake or Remaster?

In Japan, the “Hiryū no Ken” series that this is part of has many games, so a collection to preserve them would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Flying Dragon