Draconus - C64 Longplay / Walkthrough

[@ep1phany62]

I have been looking for this game for over 30 years!!!

[@AchtungBaby77]

Oh yeah, how I loved exploring the vast rooms and underwater sections as a kid! I did manage to finish this game back in the day but its great to see another run-through, unreal that it can be finished in only 15 mins, certainly took me longer than that!

[@impaler_7425]

Great game but hard as hell. I never got far back in the day but i'll have to play it again soon.

[@whynottalklikeapirat]

Really nice. But one thing that made it feel a but empty or void of life were the mostly rather unimaginative enemies. A few good ones but also a fair amount of cliches. The morph to draconewt was a cool feature and a great animation also.

[@MrBobbyjum]

I remember playing this on the C64 as a kid. Such a cool game lol.

[@Terweiful]

Glitch I discovered as a kid: In the first room, get to the ledge on the right under the ball ledge (the small ledge at the bottom of the screen). Face away from the wall. Spam jump. Your head would hit the platform above and cause you do slide backwards through the wall behind you. Once you'd gone totally through the wall, you'd be effectively behind the main map rooms, and were able to explore unused and strange parts of the game, eg. outside the water sections

[@lukaf2393]

I was never able to finish it: really too hard and with a suggestive and sinister atmosphere....

[@kzbxvz]

Impressive graphics and sound on the C64 when it stood on it's heigth 1988 just an inch before the Sega Megadrive launch.

[@YensR]

Great stuff, I played this a lot as a kid :) I remember I had some cheat, this was really difficult, you can tell that Rattopaz knows exactly where to fall and time it correctly.

[@martaabc561]

I played the game so many times. It was so dark and psychodelic.

[@machachaist]

Thans for this, I was a kid when I played this I didnt understand a thing! ah... memories

[@ubiased23]

I wish they would remake this game for the 128k or just release a newer updated version of this gem.

[@MatsOljare]

This looks awesome, why wasn't it more well known?

[@whynottalklikeapirat]

I think it sort of fell between other games and quite possible the Amiga was on the horizon which kind of had a negative impact on everything c64

[@leeroberts6441]

Loved this game👌 Zybex was cool too 😎

[@alpyre]

Weirdest collision detection I've ever seen.

[@Jarbloko]

i love this game :D. and the music is awesome :D

[@ubiased23]

I have played this game on Atari 130 XE. I have to say the C64 version looks better in regards of the animation, graphics, and sound effects. The ending shocked me when you see draconus sitting on his throne. The throne animation at the end was missing from the Atari version, because all you can see is a text that talks about the throne. However, in my personal opinion the music sounds better on the Atari 130 XE version, from the introduction music, and when you collect the items.

[@ubiased23]

***** Thanks for sharing that info. I was under the impression that Atari 130XE had more memory since it is 128K vs Commodore which is 64K.

[@Rattopaz]

+Steve Nicklin I'm surprised the Atari version look and play better than expected.

[@tommyeastwood4393]

+Steve Nicklin i thought majority games written for ataris had to be programmed for 48kb machines...

[@zxretrosoft]

Amazing, thanks!

[@Tenraiden]

Is that the same jump sound effect from the stupid Thundercats game??

[@chrispedder3093]

Had this as a kid and couldn’t get far. No wonder. Now I see that at 2:30 the only way down was a suicide jump. I had always figured there was a legitimate way down that I was missing.

[@bjarki1839]

As far as I remember there is a legit way. After you get the Eye of Sereros, the wall between the screen where the shield is and the screen to its left disappears. So you have to get the Helix to morph, then the Eye to see though the illusional wall and after that you can go back to get the Shield.

[@church.chants]

@@bjarki1839 Yes!

[@whynottalklikeapirat]

Funny how in all the years of C-64 gaming noone, to my knowledge, ever really managed to do a truly convincing bat. Wasn't for the want of trying either ... rectangular pixels. What can you do :D

[@giddue]

Didn't Draco also morph into a flying dragon, didn't he?

[@sirpancho]

Graphics are slightly better in C64...but music is way better in Atari

[@televiciousgoober138]

Hmm metroid like. I see where soulless got it's game engine from too.

[@srichard7291]

Definitely not the same engine though.

[@hgjf3]

at site CLASSICRELOADS.COM the C64 remake of DRACONUS has a bug: character can fly at vertical rooms transition if jumping continuus forward, that allow to explored deeper this dungeon, and at room 0 exists a portal to other maze.

[@MrBobbyjum]

same here lol.

[@ubiased23]

The creatures in the C64 look better than the Atari version. Also, the ending is slightly better than the Atari version. Can someone explain to me why the Commodore 64 version is better than the Atari version? They both have the same RAM size.

[@ped7g]

you can't eat or see RAM. What you see on screen is video-signal generated by the computer, based on data in the RAM. So huge part of what-and-how is possible to display is in the HW feature building the video signal, if it gives you only 4 colours per line in certain video mode, you can't add fifth colour pixel no matter how much of spare RAM you throw at it, even if you add another 640kiB of it, the output will be still only four colour per line (although maybe you will figure some insane SW trick how modify the palette at middle of the line, proving me wrong by displaying 8 colours per line - I hope you get the idea what I mean). Atari and C64 (and ZX Spectrum) features did differ considerably (available video modes, number/size/colours of sprites, different techniques to modify display features mid-screen), while all of them were 8 bit computers, quite on par in terms of RAM. So the final output on screen is different considerably too, as it is heavily limited/determined by the "graphics chip capabilities" of particular machine.

[@ubiased23]

@@ped7g so does the c64 has a better graphics chip capability? You gave a technical view in regards of the specs. My question remains, why does draconus c64 version looks better than the Atari? Was it programming or c64 simply has a graphics edge over the Atari?

[@ped7g]

@@ubiased23 I'm not an expert on Atari and C64 graphics (I'm was all into ZX), but seems they were mostly similar, except C64 having some edge in sprites (finer resolution, more colours) and Atari having more vibrant colours. It's still possible the programming side was not on par between the two, making the matter worse for Atari version, but if you would assume same coding skill on both sides, game like Draconus would probably look somewhat better on C64 thanks to the better sprite system, and sprites were major part of what Draconus is doing on screen. (also these commercial games were done often in ridiculous crunch and short development times, so theoretically some coding wizard doing remake for Atari and making it as labour of love could maybe do even nicer game than the C64 has, but that's hypothetical) EDIT: re-reading your original post.. yeah, now it makes more sense, after I was looking for the actual differences. The creatures in Draconus are very likely done as HW sprites on both platforms, so C64 has better resolution for them thanks to the HW.

[@GuitarMan85]

Wkurza mnie, że wszystkie dzieci z UK i USA mogły sobie przeczytać, o co chodzi. U nas nikt nie znał angielskiego. :P

[@gacokiller]

No jak to .. wystarczylo zminimalizować gierke na c64 odpalić google tłumacza i heja xdd

[@Fractal_CZ]

I loved this game. But fairly - the music is hideous compared to atari version.

[@PrzeszczepiX]

music on C64 version is 100 times better than Atari version

[@60b1in]

Wow. The sound is so... UGLY in comparison with ATARI. I just can't bear it anymore... :D

[@magirktheone]

Yeah yeah you nasty troll, everyone knows atari sucks balls.

[@Jelly_goober]

I still like the atari version better.

[@magirktheone]

***** no way

[@X-OUT]

You are wrong, C64 graphics are better, intro and items music is faaar better than atari. Atari sounds like a music post card very flat and monophonic, C64 have fantastic filters, deep modulating, Atari sound is flat, listen both version. One thing i great on Atari version bleeping sounds ingame background (C64 missing this).

[@mmm43kir]

какой ужас...