Capcom‘s somewhat obscure 1991 arcade game, The King of Dragons, is a scrolling three-player fighting game set in a colourful fantasy world.

The King of Dragons is kind of like Double Dragon meets Tolkien, or “Golden Axe” as we call it… 😉

You use weapons or spells to batter monsters and enemies as the playfield scrolls along slowly, and you will also engage in multiple boss fights.

What kind of attack you do is dictated by who you choose from the five available characters: the Elf uses a bow and arrows, the Wizard uses ranged magic spells, the Fighter uses a sword, The Cleric uses prayers and farts (both as useful as each other), and the Dwarf uses an axe. A combination of different classes will give you an edge against the monsters if you’re playing with friends.

Three-player: The King of Dragons is a great Party Game because you can keep chucking virtual coins in to keep everyone going.

Single-player: it’s also good because you have a bit more room to fight, but the challenge level does go up because you have to fight enemies on your own.

Keep chucking those virtual coins into MAME and use the quicksave function as well. If your mates want to play it with you – even better. You can zip through it in under an hour if you’ve got two dedicated friends battering enemies with you.

The King of Dragons is worth playing through because it has some truly great pixel art/2D graphics in it. You can see how nice it looks below. The gameplay is fun too.

While the game is obviously violent, it is not at all realistic or gory, so I’d say it’s pretty kid-friendly. I didn’t see anything in the game that indicated otherwise. And I think some kids would love the dragons. Dads take note… 🙂

A Super Nintendo port of this game also exists, and it’s coming up now on my ‘to-do’ list.

More: The King of Dragons on Moby Games