Dragon Drive: D-Masters Shot

Control Senkōkūra and soar through the skies!!!

JP release: 8th August 2003
NA release: N/A
EU release: N/A
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Bandai
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

I’ve never heard of the anime Dragon Drive, but from what I can tell, it’s about kids that take part in a new video game craze where you control dragons in a virtual world, powering them up via collectable cards. There’s some out-of-game stuff with evil corporations and that kind of stuff, but it seems like a concept that would work well for a game, and with Treasure’s name popping up in at the opening, it was a promising combination. Especially as it’s a shooter, Treasure’s specialty.

But this seems to be Treasure’s bad game, supposedly one they refused to acknowledge n their own website for a while. Most levels have you flying around (in all directions) really bland environments (shouldn’t a digital world be cooler) blasting enemies with no soul or rhythm to it. For most enemies, the lock-on (you hold down A and will lock on to everything on screen) will deal with them, while the first few bosses you just target them and blast with your main gun. There are some card you can find which let you heal or spawn a distraction, but that’s it.

There are also a few on-rails levels. These are just really long, repetitive corridors with no turns or anything exciting happening to them. Spamming the lock on attack without aiming will deal with everything until the boss. There’s none of the spectacle that Treasure are known for. I completed the first chapter just fine, then dealing with the masses of enemies in the first level of chapter 2 was really easy, then there was a crazy difficulty spike as the boss just stuck behind me and destroyed me with ease.

The game did come with a second disc which contained the first episode of the anime, playable on GameCube, which is always nice. You can only pause it, though, no fast-forwarding or rewinding. Plus, after the opening, there’s an advert for the Dragon Drive game on GBA.

Poor

Treasure was developing it, so I bought it with enthusiasm, but it wasn’t as exhilarating as Panzer Dragoon.
I wonder if the material called Dragon Drive was bad after all.
skyblue002, Amazon JP Customer (Translated)

Remake or remaster?

All of Treasure’s other games need a remaster first.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Dragon Drive: D-Masters Shot.