New Mega Drive game "Metal Dragon" by Kai Magazine

[Black_Tiger]

Kai Magazine, developer and publisher of some of the most impressive MSX and Intellivision games, is working on a Mega Drive port of their game "Metal Dragon".

[SEGA-Jorge]

I saw a YouTube video for this. The devs are going to do a physical release. There should be more news soon, from what they mentioned.

[Greengh0st]

I played the demo version of the game. I enjoyed it. Of the minuses, too many grenades are given, the boss is killed almost instantly. It would be cool if the shooting was hung on 4 buttons, for different directions. There are not enough smoother transitions between levels, such as where the character stops in some cool pose, points may be counted and then he will fall into the sunset)))

[highlandcattle]

I looked at this game. But to play on the MSX you need some super specific expansions. Looking forward to the Mega Drive Version

[Edek]

That doesn't look like Megadrive gameplay, the colour gradients on the intro pictures and explosions look too smooth.

[Black_Tiger]

That doesn't look like Megadrive gameplay, the colour gradients on the intro pictures and explosions look too smooth.

The intro uses shades of colors so sterorypically Megs Drive/9-bit that I could tell you thr RGB value proportions just by eyeballing bit. They did what Lost World did (based on my memory) and just gave each element even shades of one color.

9-bit color has yellow-thru-red shades so subtle that I have to skip some shades because they wouldn't be perceivable. It's wasteful for a Mega Drive game to dedicate so many shades to fire/explosions outside of a firey setting.

This is a port of an MSX game that had an enhancement wellbelow Mega Drive quality.

[Edek]

It seems to me like there isn't dithering where there would be on other Megadrive games using similar colour transitions. I don't know if it is being played on an emulater and there is a smoothing option on or not but it could be that.

[billybob884]

Preorders just went live with four cover artwork variants:
https://kai-magazine-software.fwscar...90_555342.aspx

[Black_Tiger]

It seems to me like there isn't dithering where there would be on other Megadrive games using similar colour transitions. I don't know if it is being played on an emulater and there is a smoothing option on or not but it could be that.

If you bump up the video quality to 720p you can see the dithering.

[SEGA-Jorge]

I saw the pre-orders go up, what kind of changes are we going to be seeing in the final release? There were some issues I noticed in the demo. It would be great to be able to talk to the devs and get some idea of what to expect from the final release.

[Hairlesswookiee]

I'll order this next payday if it isn't sold out. The video looks like a lot of fun and I don't mind collecting new games in physical format.

[CrossBow]

I put in and paid for my Pre-Order. I own most of their Intellivision game releases and those have never failed to impress so I can only imagine what is possible on stronger hardware and looking forward to finding out.

[Black_Tiger]

I saw the pre-orders go up, what kind of changes are we going to be seeing in the final release? There were some issues I noticed in the demo. It would be great to be able to talk to the devs and get some idea of what to expect from the final release.

The developer/publisher is waiting for their account here to get approved but they've seen this thread.

You should post any feedback or suggestions you have.

[Nano Babe]

I like the Game the only thing I would have to say about this is yes it's definitely a merc's re~skin obviously with some metal gear cosmetics but not the gameplay element's.

So 1991 Sega published CAPCOM'S Wolf of the Battlefield an excellent home port missing only the multiplayer mode 2/3 player. so it's a shame that 2021 METAL DRAGON STILL is only solo one player. Damn

[Kai Magazine Software]

Hello everyone,
I am Oscar Kenneth, from Kai Magazine software (The developers of this game).
Sorry I don't have a profile picture but the "Customize profile" function seems to be broken at this moment.
Thank you Black_Tiger for posting this here, I have been trying to register in this forum for weeks without luck until today.

About the game:
It is not a re-skin of Mercs, I coded it from scratch in C using the famous SGDK.
This game is a port of the MSX2 version which I also coded from scratch (Mercs doesn't exist on MSX). The MSX2 is almost identical to the Genesis/Mega-drive version, but we added more weapons and many improvements, more variety etc.

The game is for 1 player only. We went in this direction because most retro-gamers usually play alone, so we used all the resources for 1 player.
Right now, adding a second player would mean to remove existing elements:
A second player requires 2 sprites plus 6 more sprites for his personal bullets. In order to do this we would have to remove the maximum amount of enemies on screen and also the amount of bullets.
This would harm the 1 player experience and all the game should be re-balanced and re-designed.
Considering that most people would play it alone anyway, I belive we made the right choice.

Please feel free to ask us anything you want.