Dragon Spirit is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1987. It runs on Namco System 1 hardware, and was later ported to the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Sharp X68000, ZX Spectrum and TurboGrafx-16 platforms.
After a millennium of captivity, an ugly serpent demon named Zawell escapes imprisonment and kidnaps Alicia, princess to the kingdom of Mitgult. A young, crafty soldier Amul is selected to rescue the princess and destroy Zawell. In praying to the gods for strength and courage, he points his sword high toward the heavens. Suddenly he is transformed into an all-powerful blue dragon, bestowed with special powers. Though gifted with a lethal air and ground attack, this is not enough. He must locate and obtain extra powers along the way. The demon has instructed nine of the mightiest beasts to stop Amul before reaching his goal.
Despite the game's storyline saying that Amul was transformed into an "all-powerful" blue dragon, he is also transformed into the biggest sprite on the screen (except for the bosses) and dies after three hits. The powerups that give the player extra heads may give double or triple the firepower, but they also give double or triple the exposure to enemy fire which, at times, becomes intensely difficult to avoid.
