Panzer Dragoon | Code Like It's 198x

Panzer Dragoon was rumoured, Edge reported in 1995, “to be the most expensive console project Sega has ever undertaken”. Edge saw that Sega meant it to be “something distinct from the standard Japanese fare of racers, beat ’em ups and RPGs” on its new Saturn: a young hunter on a dragon flying low over a sea dotted with ruins, with a five-minute opening film and a world that borrowed from French comics. Underneath it was an idea from Sega’s arcade past, the into-the-screen shoot ’em up of Space Harrier. The mix made Panzer Dragoon one of the Saturn’s first showpieces and started a series whose third game, a role-playing game, became a collector’s item.

Fast facts

Developer: Team Andromeda, a Sega team of about 15.
Director: Yukio Futatsugi. Art director: Manabu Kusunoki. Music: Yoshitaka Azuma.
Released: March 1995 in Japan (¥6,800); May 1995 in America, in the Saturn’s launch line-up; summer 1995 in Britain.
PC version: 1996, sold with the Diamond Edge 3D graphics card.
Remake: Panzer Dragoon: Remake, by MegaPixel Studio for Forever Entertainment, Nintendo Switch, March 2020.
Sequels: Panzer Dragoon II Zwei (1996), Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998), Panzer Dragoon Orta (Xbox, 2002).

The dragon’s gunner

The pictures suggested free flight. The game was something more limited, and Edge’s preview explained it plainly: “instead of having complete control of the dragon, you fly through the level environments ‘on rails’. In effect, you play the dragon’s ‘gunner’, protecting it from harm by downing the enemies that attack from all sides.” It is the dragon that has an energy bar, not its rider.

What the player could do was look around. The Saturn pad’s shoulder buttons turned the view through the four points of the compass, and a radar in the corner showed where attacks were coming from. Edge found that the views were “not cosmetic touches but a fundamental part of the gameplay”: “Unless you use every viewpoint at your disposal — which takes some time to get the hang of — you’re likely to spiral earthwards with alarming frequency.”

There were two ways to shoot. Tapping the button fired a bolt of blue energy. Holding it down and sweeping the sight across a group of enemies locked on to them, and letting go released “a stream of powerful homing laser”. Edge thought the lock-on looked too easy at first, but found that, as with R-Type’s charged shot, the player needed both. The game had seven levels; on Easy only the first four could be played.

A ruined world

Edge’s preview set out the story. On a distant planet, a thousand years after its civilisation was at its height, the surviving humans live in small villages among the “relics of the ancients”, still guarded by war machines and strange creatures. An empire has learned to wake the dragons sleeping in ancient towers. A young hunter, caught in one of those towers when a dragon wakes, rides out against it. Its characters speak an invented language, which fans call Panzerese; Retro Gamer credits it to Futatsugi, whose hobby was foreign languages.

The look came from a team that loved comics. Retro Gamer’s history of the series explained that Team Andromeda’s staff were “huge fans” of the French artist Jean Giraud, known as Moebius. Sega commissioned illustrations from him, which became the covers of the Japanese release. When the sequel came out, Sega Saturn Magazine set Moebius’s strip Arzach, about a warrior riding a pterodactyl across a blasted landscape, beside Zwei’s dragon and rider, and found his landscapes in the game’s backgrounds. Retro Gamer added the animated films Nausicaä and the French series Les Mondes Engloutis to the influences, and Edge noticed that a pair of airships looked remarkably like those in Laputa.

Showpiece or ride

Edge gave the Japanese release eight out of ten. Its reviewer saw it as an heir to Space Harrier, taking “all the elements of Sega’s classy but limited into-the-screen blaster and exploring new directions in just about every respect”, and concluded that “old-fashioned (some might say outdated) game styles can still hold their own today”. The forest of level five, with polygon trees jutting out of a scaling landscape, was singled out as one of the most impressive parts.

Not everyone was won over. When the game was converted for PCs, bundled with Diamond’s Edge 3D graphics card in 1996, PC Gamer’s Stuart Campbell called it “less of a game and more of an interactive ride through what the Saturn can do”. The lock-on, he wrote, was so powerful that it removed “almost all challenge from the game until the very last of the seven levels”.

In America the Saturn went on sale early, on 11 May 1995, and Sega’s announcement listed Panzer Dragoon in the launch line-up and offered a playable sample to buyers who returned their registration cards. In Britain the Saturn launched on 8 July, and Edge reported that Panzer Dragoon would follow two weeks later.

The series

Panzer Dragoon II Zwei (1996) was a prequel, made by a team of about 20 in another year. The dragon began as a flightless youngster that grew between stages, taking different forms depending on how the player did. Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998), or Azel: Panzer Dragoon RPG in Japan, turned the series into a role-playing game on four discs, with the player free to fly where they liked and battles fought by moving the dragon around its enemies. It reached the West as the Saturn was ending. Retro Gamer reported that the English print run was small, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 30,000 copies, and that English copies went on to fetch high prices; in 2013 it added that the original source code had been lost.

Former Team Andromeda members, by then at Sega’s studio Smilebit, made Panzer Dragoon Orta for the Xbox in 2002, which included the original game as an unlockable extra. In March 2020 Forever Entertainment and MegaPixel Studio released Panzer Dragoon: Remake for the Nintendo Switch, with new graphics and controls.

Sources

Edge issue 19, April 1995, pp. 28–31: Panzer Dragoon prescreen (“something distinct”; developer Andromeda, March release in Japan; the story; the five-minute intro; “on rails” and the dragon’s gunner; the shoulder-button views; the Space Harrier comparison).
Edge issue 20, May 1995, pp. 72–74: Panzer Dragoon review, eight out of ten (¥6,800; “the most expensive console project Sega has ever undertaken”; the intro; the lock-on and homing laser; seven levels and Easy mode; the forest level; the Laputa airships).
Edge issue 23, August 1995, p. 16: the British Saturn launch on 8 July, with Panzer Dragoon due two weeks later.
Edge issue 29, February 1996, p. 27: Panzer Dragoon Zwei preview (the baby dragon that grows).
Sega of America, “Consumer demand drives early release of Sega Saturn”, press release, Business Wire, 11 May 1995, reproduced by Sega Retro (web): the launch line-up and the Panzer Dragoon sample.
PC Gamer (UK) issue 28, March 1996, pp. 92–93: Stuart Campbell, Panzer Dragoon PC review (the Diamond Edge 3D bundle; “an interactive ride”; the seven levels).
Retro: The Ultimate Retro Companion, volume 2 (Imagine Publishing, 2008), pp. 22–25: John Szczepaniak, history of the Panzer Dragoon series (a 15-strong team and 12 months; Moebius and the Japanese covers; Zwei’s team of 20 and its growing dragon; Saga’s team of 40 and English print run; Kusunoki; Nausicaä and Les Mondes Engloutis; Panzerese; Smilebit and Orta).
Retro Gamer issue 34, 2007, pp. 70–73: Panzer Dragoon Saga (Yukio Futatsugi and Panzerese; print-run estimates of 5,000 to 30,000; prices).
Retro Gamer issue 111, February 2013, p. 67: Panzer Dragoon Saga’s “extremely limited print run” and lost source code.
Sega Saturn Magazine issue 7, May 1996, pp. 62–63: Sam Hickman on Moebius, Arzach and Team Andromeda’s Panzer Dragoon 2.
Panzer Dragoon (Saturn, 1995), Japanese in-game credits, transcribed by Sega Retro (web, secondary): 監督 (director) 二木幸生 (Yukio Futatsugi); art director Manabu Kusunoki; music Yoshitaka Azuma; image illustrations by Moebius. https://segaretro.org/Panzer_Dragoon/Production_credits
Sal Romano, “Panzer Dragoon: Remake for Switch now available”, Gematsu, 26 March 2020 (web, secondary). https://www.gematsu.com/2020/03/panzer-dragoon-remake-for-switch-now-available
“Panzer Dragoon (video game)”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): North American release on 11 May 1995 and British release on 18 August 1995; Futatsugi as director. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_Dragoon_(video_game)