Last week we went back to my childhood with Super Mario Bros 2, and now, with Christmas just around the corner, we’re going even further back into pure nostalgia with Saint Dragon.
Growing up I’d spend evenings glued to the single lonely arcade machine at the local bar (well I was too young to drink, what else would I do?). It went through a good few games over the years – football, golf, Splatterhouse – but the earliest I can remember is Saint Dragon, a side-scrolling shoot-em-up featuring dragons, lasers and cyborg bulls. It was a fun enough game, even though I never got anywhere with it, but my enduring memory is of the music to the first boss fight (said cybernetic bull). Over 20 years on, I still find myself humming it from time to time, and probably marks the first game where the music really imprinted on me.
Of course the soundtrack proves remarkably hard to find. So here’s the first level (imaginatively entitled Metal Planet):
And here’s a playthrough of the entire game, in all its shooty, musically-backed glory (said boss fight kicking in at 3:24):