Alisia Dragoon
Encyclopedia
Alisia Dragoon is a 1992 platform game
for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console. It was developed by Game Arts
, who also published the game in Japan. Aiding the software developer was animation studio Gainax
, who was responsible for the game's art and story. The player controls Alisia, a young woman who is on a quest to avenge her father and save the world. She can fire lightning from her hands and summon four faithful beasts to aid her.
The game was released in United States and Europe by Sega
, who packaged the heroine as a rugged gladiator instead of the dainty-looking sorceress she originally was. Due to the lack of substantial market penetration by the Mega Drive of Japan and the lack of publicity for the game overseas, Alisia Dragoon did not make a big impact on the video game market, despite the praise it received from several reviewers. The game was one of the first in the industry to present a female character in a leading role, capable of defending herself without male help.
Alisia attacks by shooting streaks of lightning from her hands. The attack automatically targets enemies in range, but gets weaker with each volley as Alisia's power is depleted. Her power recharges when she stops attacking; when fully charged, it allows her to unleash a smart-bomb-like attack, hitting every enemy on the screen. The energy system introduces an element of strategy into the gameplay, encouraging the player to manage Alisia's power to have her able to defend herself at critical moments.
Helping Alisia in her quest are her pet monsters. These creatures fly around the heroine on their own, attacking her foes, and blocking enemy attacks from hitting her. There are four pets, each with its own type of attack. The Dragon Frye spits fireballs, and the Boomerang Lizard hurls boomerangs. The Thunder Raven emits a thunder blast that affects enemies across the screen, and the Ball O' Fire burns enemies on contact. Only one pet can fight alongside Alisia in her quest, but the player can select any of the four (or none) as the active companion at any time.
Over the course of the game, Alisia and her monsters can improve their abilities by collecting power-up
s. These enhancement items are placed, mostly in hidden locations, throughout the first seven stages. The various power-ups can heal Alisia and her monsters, increase their maximum life bars
, improve their attacks, or grant invulnerability for a certain time. Life bars are lost by taking damage from enemy attacks and traps. When Alisia's pets lose all their life bars, they are removed from play and cannot be brought back until a "Revive" power-up is collected. If Alisia loses all her life bars, she can restart the level by expending a continue
. The game ends if all the continues have been used. Alisia Dragoon has no features for saving
the player's progress. After the game is completed, a screen is shown, charting the overall performance of the player based on the number of kills, the power level of Alisia's attack, and the frequency the pet monsters are used.
was described in the manual. Alisia is the daughter of a sorcerer, who has imprisoned the main villain, Baldour, in a cocoon and sent it into outer space. Her father is in turn tortured to death by Baldour's followers. When the villain crashes back to the planet and begins to awaken, Alisia sets out to defeat him and his followers. The American and European versions of the game promoted a different back-story. They advertised Alisia as a gladiator who champions the cause of the people with her four pet companions. Her task is to eradicate the evil monsters and the source of their production, a "silver star" that has crashed to Earth.
was in a collaboration with Game Arts
, the makers of the Lunar role-playing games, to produce an action video game. Gainax's video game product line tended to target a niche crowd who generally preferred dating simulations
and anime-based adventure games. Alisia Dragoon is a departure from this tradition. The animation studio handled the artistic end of the production, writing the story and creating the artwork that would be used for the design of the game's environments and characters. Several of its founders had worked on Hayao Miyazaki
's animated films, and the influences of Miyazaki's 1984 science fiction animated film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind were evident in certain levels of the game. Similarly, due to the predominance of mixing science fiction with fantasy themes in the Japanese animation circles at that time, Alisia Dragoon featured high-tech spaceships and robots alongside mythical zombies and dragons. The composition of the soundtrack was delegated to Mecano Associates, who had produced the music for other works from Game Arts, such as the action games Fire Hawk: Thexder 2 and Silpheed
. Game Arts, however, did most of the work in producing Alisia Dragoon, adapting the artwork into environments and creatures that can be rendered by the console hardware, and writing them as lines of software code.
's work.
Americans and Europeans were more enthusiastic toward the game than were the Japanese, although there were a few negative appraisals. GamePro
magazine said that Alisia Dragoons responsive controls, coupled with the hectic action and handsome graphics, made the game highly desirable for owners of the Genesis console. The Lessers of Dragon
magazine were equally impressed with the gameplay, praising Alisia Dragoon for its "solid arcade action" that satisfied their "need for fast reflexes". Mean Machines
s Julian Rignall
praised the game for its pet monsters design, calling the management of the pets in the game an encouragement toward tactics. His fellow reviewer, Richard Leadbetter, said the game was visually attractive with "beautiful sprites" and "amazing backdrops". He found the gameplay challenging, being forced to conserve energy as the game "[threw] everything but the kitchen sink at [him]". Rignall agreed with Leadbetter on the game's difficulty, which along with the secret rooms and power-ups to be discovered made Alisia Dragoon an excellent action platform game that had long-lasting appeal. Of the hundreds of Genesis games, Mega
magazine rated Alisia Dragoon among the top 100 games, calling it "[probably] the best dragon-based platform game around." Despite the positive sentiments, sales of the game outside Japan were weak.
Sixteen years after the game's release, Todd Ciolek of Anime News Network
reviewed Alisia Dragoon and repeated much of the same sentiments as the Mean Machines reviewers. Noting Gainax's catalog of games, he said that Alisia Dragoon was very different from the rest; instead of targeting hardcore fans of anime and focusing on exploitive themes, the game's appeal was for everyone. In light of this, Ciolek called Alisia Dragoon "the best video game Gainax ever touched" and "a spectacular ride in its own right".
Alisia Dragoon was one of the first video games to challenge a gender bias
prevalent in the industry at the time. In the early 1990s, the video game market was skewed toward the young male demographic, and games more than often portrayed women as damsels in distress
, submissive and requiring rescue by the male protagonists. Along with Street Fighter II
, Streets of Rage
, and Wurm: Journey To The Center Of The Earth
, Alisia Dragoon featured a female leading character who can defend herself without the help of males, offering female gamers another choice in the games they play.
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis console. It was developed by Game Arts
Game Arts
is a Japanese video game software developer located in Tokyo, Japan. Originally established in 1985 as a computer software company, they have since expanded their enterprise to produce for a number of game console and handheld systems...
, who also published the game in Japan. Aiding the software developer was animation studio Gainax
Gainax
is a Japanese anime studio famous for productions such as Gunbuster, The Wings of Honneamise, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann which have gone on to critical acclaim and commercial success, as well as for their association with...
, who was responsible for the game's art and story. The player controls Alisia, a young woman who is on a quest to avenge her father and save the world. She can fire lightning from her hands and summon four faithful beasts to aid her.
The game was released in United States and Europe by Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
, who packaged the heroine as a rugged gladiator instead of the dainty-looking sorceress she originally was. Due to the lack of substantial market penetration by the Mega Drive of Japan and the lack of publicity for the game overseas, Alisia Dragoon did not make a big impact on the video game market, despite the praise it received from several reviewers. The game was one of the first in the industry to present a female character in a leading role, capable of defending herself without male help.
Gameplay
In Alisia Dragoon, the player controls the female protagonist, Alisia, in her quest to save the world by defeating the evil forces that killed her father. The game consists of eight levels of side-scrolling environments; Alisia has to jump across gaps and kill the undead enemies that stand in her way. Each stage is completed by defeating the boss, a stronger-than-normal enemy, at the end.Alisia attacks by shooting streaks of lightning from her hands. The attack automatically targets enemies in range, but gets weaker with each volley as Alisia's power is depleted. Her power recharges when she stops attacking; when fully charged, it allows her to unleash a smart-bomb-like attack, hitting every enemy on the screen. The energy system introduces an element of strategy into the gameplay, encouraging the player to manage Alisia's power to have her able to defend herself at critical moments.
Helping Alisia in her quest are her pet monsters. These creatures fly around the heroine on their own, attacking her foes, and blocking enemy attacks from hitting her. There are four pets, each with its own type of attack. The Dragon Frye spits fireballs, and the Boomerang Lizard hurls boomerangs. The Thunder Raven emits a thunder blast that affects enemies across the screen, and the Ball O' Fire burns enemies on contact. Only one pet can fight alongside Alisia in her quest, but the player can select any of the four (or none) as the active companion at any time.
Over the course of the game, Alisia and her monsters can improve their abilities by collecting power-up
Power-up
In computer and video games, power-ups are objects that instantly benefit or add extra abilities to the game character as a game mechanic. This is in contrast to an item, which may or may not have a benefit and can be used at a time chosen by the player...
s. These enhancement items are placed, mostly in hidden locations, throughout the first seven stages. The various power-ups can heal Alisia and her monsters, increase their maximum life bars
Health (gaming)
Health is a game mechanic used in role-playing, computer and video games to give value to characters, enemies, NPCs, and related objects. This value can either be numerical, semi-numerical as in hit/health points, or arbitrary as in a life bar....
, improve their attacks, or grant invulnerability for a certain time. Life bars are lost by taking damage from enemy attacks and traps. When Alisia's pets lose all their life bars, they are removed from play and cannot be brought back until a "Revive" power-up is collected. If Alisia loses all her life bars, she can restart the level by expending a continue
Continue
Continue may refer to:*Continue , an option to continue a video game after all the player's lives have been lost*Continue , a 2008 Cantopop album by Pakho Chau*Continue , a programming language keyword-See also:...
. The game ends if all the continues have been used. Alisia Dragoon has no features for saving
Saved game
A saved game is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. This saved game can be reloaded later, so the player can continue where he or she had stopped...
the player's progress. After the game is completed, a screen is shown, charting the overall performance of the player based on the number of kills, the power level of Alisia's attack, and the frequency the pet monsters are used.
Story
Similar to most action games on the Sega Genesis (known as the Sega Mega Drive outside the United States) console, the plot in Alisia Dragoon is simple and short. The game goes straight into the action, tasking Alisia to kill everything in sight. After defeating the final boss, the player is treated to a cinematic cut scene of Alisia's triumphant return to her home. For the game released in Japan, much of the back-storyBack-story
A back-story, background story, or backstory is the literary device of a narrative chronologically earlier than, and related to, a narrative of primary interest. Generally, it is the history of characters or other elements that underlie the situation existing at the main narrative's start...
was described in the manual. Alisia is the daughter of a sorcerer, who has imprisoned the main villain, Baldour, in a cocoon and sent it into outer space. Her father is in turn tortured to death by Baldour's followers. When the villain crashes back to the planet and begins to awaken, Alisia sets out to defeat him and his followers. The American and European versions of the game promoted a different back-story. They advertised Alisia as a gladiator who champions the cause of the people with her four pet companions. Her task is to eradicate the evil monsters and the source of their production, a "silver star" that has crashed to Earth.
Development
In 1992, Japanese animation studio GainaxGainax
is a Japanese anime studio famous for productions such as Gunbuster, The Wings of Honneamise, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann which have gone on to critical acclaim and commercial success, as well as for their association with...
was in a collaboration with Game Arts
Game Arts
is a Japanese video game software developer located in Tokyo, Japan. Originally established in 1985 as a computer software company, they have since expanded their enterprise to produce for a number of game console and handheld systems...
, the makers of the Lunar role-playing games, to produce an action video game. Gainax's video game product line tended to target a niche crowd who generally preferred dating simulations
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
and anime-based adventure games. Alisia Dragoon is a departure from this tradition. The animation studio handled the artistic end of the production, writing the story and creating the artwork that would be used for the design of the game's environments and characters. Several of its founders had worked on Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's animated films, and the influences of Miyazaki's 1984 science fiction animated film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind were evident in certain levels of the game. Similarly, due to the predominance of mixing science fiction with fantasy themes in the Japanese animation circles at that time, Alisia Dragoon featured high-tech spaceships and robots alongside mythical zombies and dragons. The composition of the soundtrack was delegated to Mecano Associates, who had produced the music for other works from Game Arts, such as the action games Fire Hawk: Thexder 2 and Silpheed
Silpheed
is a video game series developed by Game Arts and designed by the late Takeshi Miyaji. It made its debut on the Japanese PC-8801 in 1986, and was ported to the Fujitsu FM-7 and MS-DOS formats soon after. It was later remade for the Mega-CD and has a sequel called Silpheed: The Lost Planet for the...
. Game Arts, however, did most of the work in producing Alisia Dragoon, adapting the artwork into environments and creatures that can be rendered by the console hardware, and writing them as lines of software code.
Reception
Due to a small customer base in Japan, Alisia Dragoon sold few copies on its release (April 24, 1992); the console it was made for, the Sega Mega Drive, was not a popular device in Japan, selling 3–3.5 million units (10% of all Mega Drives/Genesis sold around the world). The game was published earlier by Sega for United States and Europe, on March 30. However, it was a subdued release; Sega did not place major advertisements for the game in the media. To localize the contents for the Western market, the video game publisher made several cosmetic changes to Alisia Dragoon. Instead of a big-eyed heroine drawn in typical anime styling, Alisia was portrayed as a golden bikini wearing female barbarian on the box covers outside of Japan. The Western version of Alisia was likened to the scantily clad females in artist Boris VallejoBoris Vallejo
Boris Vallejo is a Peruvian-born American painter. He immigrated to the United States in 1964, and he currently resides in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He frequently works with Julie Bell, his wife, painter, and model....
's work.
Americans and Europeans were more enthusiastic toward the game than were the Japanese, although there were a few negative appraisals. GamePro
GamePro
GamePro Media was a United States gaming media company publishing online and print content on the video game industry, video game hardware, and video game software developed for a video game console , a computer, and/or a mobile device . GamePro Media properties include GamePro magazine and...
magazine said that Alisia Dragoons responsive controls, coupled with the hectic action and handsome graphics, made the game highly desirable for owners of the Genesis console. The Lessers of Dragon
Dragon (magazine)
Dragon is one of the two official magazines for source material for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and associated products, the other being Dungeon. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, The Strategic Review. The...
magazine were equally impressed with the gameplay, praising Alisia Dragoon for its "solid arcade action" that satisfied their "need for fast reflexes". Mean Machines
Mean Machines
Mean Machines was a market-leading multi-format gaming magazine released between 1990 and 1992 in the United Kingdom. Its style was popular with gamers of the time for its irreverent humor, anarchic editorial tone and style, and its sometimes outrageously outspoken reviews.- Origins :In the late...
s Julian Rignall
Julian Rignall
Julian "Muppet" Rignall is a longterm publishing veteran with experience launching and managing numerous video game magazines and websites...
praised the game for its pet monsters design, calling the management of the pets in the game an encouragement toward tactics. His fellow reviewer, Richard Leadbetter, said the game was visually attractive with "beautiful sprites" and "amazing backdrops". He found the gameplay challenging, being forced to conserve energy as the game "[threw] everything but the kitchen sink at [him]". Rignall agreed with Leadbetter on the game's difficulty, which along with the secret rooms and power-ups to be discovered made Alisia Dragoon an excellent action platform game that had long-lasting appeal. Of the hundreds of Genesis games, Mega
Mega (magazine)
MEGA, subtitled '100% pure Mega Drive' was a monthly magazine, published in the United Kingdom, aimed at users of the Sega Mega Drive and its additions, the Mega CD and 32X. During its time, as one of the main Mega Drive publications, Mega covered the golden age of the Sega Mega Drive; from 1992 to...
magazine rated Alisia Dragoon among the top 100 games, calling it "[probably] the best dragon-based platform game around." Despite the positive sentiments, sales of the game outside Japan were weak.
Sixteen years after the game's release, Todd Ciolek of Anime News Network
Anime News Network
Anime News Network is an anime industry news website that reports on the status of anime, manga, Japanese popular music and other otaku-related culture within North America, Australia and Japan. Additionally, it sometimes features similar happenings throughout the Anglosphere and elsewhere in the...
reviewed Alisia Dragoon and repeated much of the same sentiments as the Mean Machines reviewers. Noting Gainax's catalog of games, he said that Alisia Dragoon was very different from the rest; instead of targeting hardcore fans of anime and focusing on exploitive themes, the game's appeal was for everyone. In light of this, Ciolek called Alisia Dragoon "the best video game Gainax ever touched" and "a spectacular ride in its own right".
Alisia Dragoon was one of the first video games to challenge a gender bias
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
prevalent in the industry at the time. In the early 1990s, the video game market was skewed toward the young male demographic, and games more than often portrayed women as damsels in distress
Damsel in distress
The subject of the damsel in distress, or persecuted maiden, is a classic theme in world literature, art, and film. She is usually a beautiful young woman placed in a dire predicament by a villain or monster and who requires a hero to achieve her rescue. She has become a stock character of fiction,...
, submissive and requiring rescue by the male protagonists. Along with Street Fighter II
Street Fighter II
is a competitive fighting game originally released for the arcades in . It is the arcade sequel to the original Street Fighter released in and was Capcom's fourteenth title that ran on the CP System arcade hardware...
, Streets of Rage
Streets of Rage
Streets of Rage, known in Japan as , is a side-scrolling beat 'em up released by Sega in 1991 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. It is the first installment of the Streets of Rage series which was followed by Streets of Rage 2 and Streets of Rage 3. The game was also converted over to Sega's Game...
, and Wurm: Journey To The Center Of The Earth
Wurm: Journey To The Center Of The Earth
W.U.R.M.: Journey to the Center of the Earth, released in Japan as , is a multi-genre video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991 by Asmik....
, Alisia Dragoon featured a female leading character who can defend herself without the help of males, offering female gamers another choice in the games they play.