This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I love me some adventure games. It has always been one of my favorite genres, even when we were in the era of "Death of the adventure game." When I was in college, and everyone was playing cool games like "Black" for the PS2, I was downloading "A Vampyre Story," and "Runaway." I even recently bought and read a whole big tome about adventure games, that just made me want to dive into games that I might have missed. So, it was fate that when I was craving adventure games, that I ended up spinning at least one that I could play, yet one I had no experience with. We are talking about, the classic adventure game "Blazing Dragons."

I actually purchased this game, when I was on a PS1 buying frenzy. Something about re-collecting my childhood, etc... but I was looking for PS1 games that were relatively cheap and not just annualized sports titles. Blazing Dragons fit that bill, and when I learned it was a point and click adventure game, I was sold... well technically it was sold... to me. We are talking about the type of adventure game, where it is relatively low stakes, where you have an inventory full of trash, and you are solving puzzles by using said inventory items on items in the environment. It is what I consider the classic adventure game, even though I know full well that text based adventure games came before them.

In Blazing Dragons, you take on the role of Flicker, who is an inventor who is looking to marry the King's Daughter, but there is one problem. The Daughter is supposed to be wed to the winner of a knight's tournament that will also determine the successor to the current King. Then one thing leads to another, and not only are you trying to compete in the tournament but save the kingdom from danger, you know, normal stuff.

Outside of Maniac Mansion, I usually make a habit of not playing adventure games on a console. This genre just feels more at home with a mouse and keyboard, but I actually found it to control fine on the PS1. Sure, its a little weird to be moving the curser on screen with a D-pad (I could not get analogue to work), but seeing as this game has no death states, it also doesn't have weird timing puzzles that require to navigate quickly on screen, it didn't bother me to move the curser over things I needed. The first thing I am sure no one is asking, is about pixel hunting with a D-Pad, well luckily this game doesn't really have any of that either. Items you need to pickup or interact with are large enough that you aren't maneuvering the curser to highlight a single small entity to get something to work. You can always open the inventory with a single press of a button, and cycle through actions by using your shoulder buttons. It's nothing revolutionary, but at no point during my playthrough did I think, 'SIGH, sure would be nice to have a mouse and keyboard.'

One of the worries about diving back into any game that isn't fresh off the press, is that if it still looks and sounds ok that it won't be graining to play. I can say that Blazing Dragons still holds up. Now this is not a 3D game, and they are using techniques that older games used with hand painted backgrounds with sprites on top of them. This allows most of the interactive items to pop, so that you might know what can be picked up or might be used in a puzzle. Obviously this isn't always the case, but I like when adventure games used this approach. There are occasional cut scenes that are attempting to evoke the look of a cartoon, but these are fairly rare throughout the game.

While I wouldn't call the voice cast amazing, it is a far cry from the early days of voiceover as they do have some actual names here that lend their pipes to the game. Hell, they put it right on the cover of the game that they have Terry Jones and Cheech Martin. That is their big selling point, and if you don't care for those names... well too bad. Don't get me wrong, there are some just awful line reads in this game, and some characters are worse then others, but nothing stands out in being either the so bad it's good, or the so bad it's tough to get through camp.

Of course an adventure game is nothing without it's puzzles. Now I will preface this section by saying that I have been playing adventure games for awhile, so I know what to look for and some of that adventure game logic makes sense to me. So I can't truly come at this from a complete outsider perspective, but I can tell you that this was my first playthrough with the game and I only had to look up a single answer online because I felt truly stumped (something I normally, never try to do). In fact I was solving for puzzles before I had even come across the puzzle in game. You learn early on to pick up everything you can, and if you think you can combine something in your inventory to do so, even if you don't know why you are doing it yet. There was a stretch of time in the game where every puzzle I came across, I already had the full solution for, in my inventory and I just had to use it. I didn't have to spend time pondering what the solution might be and then work backwards, I had already surmised that I might need to combine these items in my inventory, and did so before having a reason. The one puzzle I had to look up, was simply because I didn't realize there was a place on the map I could actually visit. See, adventure games of this time when they wanted you to travel location to location, showed you a map and you clicked on it and just teleported there, since the rooms really aren't connected. Usually these maps have some flair on them, so that it visually isn't boring to look at, I mistook an actual location on the map to be a piece of flair, and never clicked on it to travel there. So I was beating my head against a wall wondering why I couldn't advance and why I felt I was missing a key item, only to realize there was a whole area I hadn't clicked on and then was able to solve the rest.

Back to the puzzles, where does that leave us in terms of difficulty for a comparison point. Well if anyone has been reading the excellent @zombiepie series about difficult adventure game puzzles, I will say that Blazing Dragons comes nowhere nowhere close to as difficult as the puzzles in "The Dig." I would probably even put these puzzles as easier then the Seminole adventure game series "Monkey Island." If you are wondering what Sierra game does this compare best to, I would say it's easier then all of them, since in Sierra games you could miss key items and die, which you can't do here. It scratched my puzzle itch, and spared me the frustration as having to "try everything on everything" since I could usually parse out what was needed for a given puzzle. Flicker, your avatar, will even drop hints occasionally, like "If only we could remove these quills, these hedgehogs would spin faster." It's not a perfect clue, but it maybe narrows down your search a little bit. Now since this is a console adventure game, there are some puzzles that break the traditional inventory/point and click style, and opt more for an active approach. For instance there is a dance contest, where you have to outdance (see outlast) someone else by correctly matching their moves by pushing the corresponding buttons. Hell one of the final puzzles is playing thumb war with another dragon, that requires you to control the thumb via controller. None of these are too difficult once you understand the ask that is being made, an interesting diversion that I'm glad the game didn't go overboard with.

Lets wrap this up, shall we. Blazing Dragons is a pretty alright old-school adventure game. It looks how I remember those games looking, with puzzles that I felt hit the right difficulty slider. There is no "Make a fake mustache out of cat hair puzzle," so I was able to play this game without feeling like I needed a guide next to me just to consult with following every animation transition. At the same time, this game isn't going to approach my mount rushmore of adventure games. Most of the humor didn't land for me, but it at the very least wasn't offensively bad either. All the characters had interesting quirks to make them unique, but the ones I found most interesting, we didn't really spend a lot of time with. For what it's worth, my wife thought Flicker was voiced by Danielle Radcliffe, but granted she was in a different room, wasn't watching TV, and doing something else entirely.. so you know take that for what it's worth.

Maybe I would have appreciated the game or humor more, if I was a fan of the cartoon that it is based on, but honestly I doubt it. You don't even need to have heard of the show (like me) to play this game. Did I miss a joke or something because of it, almost certainly, but I was still able to understand the plot, the motivations, and the puzzles without ever seeing a second of the show.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: Blazing Dragons a perfectly serviceable adventure game that harkens back to that period where adventure games were still close to their prime. It doesn't touch the prime of adventure games, you aren't going to confuse this for a Grim Fandango, Quest for Glory 4, or Monkey Island, but it's maybe only a tier or 2 below them. It scratched the itch I wanted it to scratch, and I don't regret having purchased a PS1 adventure game. Blazing Dragons is the 48th greatest game of all time.It sits between "Toad's Treasure Tracker" (47th) and "Loco Roco" (49th)

1. Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)

2. RingFit Adventure (Switch)

3. TBD*

*We did it, we are finally catching up to the point where I don't have another game on my completed list, that I haven't talked about. I have plenty of games I am currently playing, but I don't know which I will beat next to fill out that slot. At some point in the year, we will almost certainly catch up, where I don't have anything to write, until I finish a game. That could be a dark time, but we aren't there yet.*

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion). Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.