Flying Dragon

Overview

Flying Dragon is a Nintendo 64 fighter with several unique traits common to the game series that shares its name, but not found in many other games. To start, it is actually two fighting games in one; a realistic rather formulaic arcade-style fighter as well as a more cartoonish (or chibi-style) looking more outlandish fighter with several then-uncommon RPG elements such as leveling up and accessory equipping. The commonality between the two was that the "cast" is the same with similar though not identical move sets.

Gameplay

For the most part, Flying Dragon plays like any post Street Fighter era fighter. There are basic combos that tend not to exceed 4 to 5 hits. The moves between characters differ between the games only if they're too outlandish to be featured in the more realistic styled fighter.

The chibi-styled fighter is by far the more substantial of the two experiences. It features a story mode with each character getting its own ending and several characters locked early on that need to be unlocked. Each match warrants a cash reward at the end which can be used to purchase or unlock various things in the game. In addition, there are unique items you unlock or purchase throughout this mode that you can equip to enhance your character in various ways such as a boost in speed, an additional move, superdefense, etc. Some can be used in-game such as health refillers or magic gauge fillers but have conditions such as only being usable once a match or requiring a full magic gauge.

Series

While not marketed as such, especially in North America, Flying Dragon is the 4th or 5th entry in the Flying Dragon series, and is in a lot of ways just a remake of the previous games.