DRAGOON MIGHT
Original Release: Konami, 1995, Arcade
An obscure fighter from Konami that attempted to compete on SNK's turf, but didn't make it
Dragoon Might (Arcade, Konami, 1995)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
I don't think Konami ever took a serious run at competing with the likes of Capcom and SNK in the 90s arcade fighting game scene, but they did take a few pokes at the genre during that time. Dragoon Might appears to be their run at Samurai Shodown's turf specifically, incorporating weapons and screen-scaling. It really feels more like a traditional fighter than a weapons-based one, almost like a prototype of what Guilty Gear was going for.
Don't expect the forgotten Guilty Gear, though. It's got Konami's usual level of art polish and the gameplay is solid enough, but otherwise it's just not particularly good. It suffers from lackluster fighter designs, a "special feature" of stuff you can swing off of in the background that never seems particularly useful (and is confusing), and unbalanced super moves that can literally hack off a foe's full life bar at once. Konami also seemingly decided to copy SNK's approach to difficulty for single players, i.e. The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei right out of the gate, so it's a real challenge to learn the nuances of.
Like all of Konami's attempts at fighters (save Bloody Roar, which was Hudson and they just published it) this one is kind of inexplicable. Not just for the inferior and odd knockoff of SNK's style but the fact that it came out in 1995, just as the "meta" for the genre was shifting to polygonal fighters. Which Konami would also take a few iffy cracks at as well, but that's a story for another day ...
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