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| [ About Alisia Dragoon ] | ||
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Info 
Alisia Dragoon is a little-known Genesis/Megadrive platformer, released by Game Arts in 1992. The game received good reviews at the time, but soon vanished into obscurity. The premise of the game is simple; Alisia must destroy an evil demon and avenge her fathers death by treking across 8 stages of platform and shoot'em up action. However, Alisia Dragoon is unique in that there is no game that it can be directly be compared to. The shoot'em up action and high difficulty level does bear some resemblance to the Contra series, but the similarity ends there. Alisia's autoaiming, the single weapon available, the level system and the use of companions makes it a quite different gaming experience. The fantasy setting, character design and platforming elements have also drawn comparison with the Valis series, but Alisia Dragoon's emphasis on action again makes it very different.
Gameplay The gameplay itself is very good; Alisia has the use of Thunder Magic to dispose of enemies. This magic, surprisingly for a game of this type is autoaiming and can track multiple targets. This means that instead of aiming you can pay attention to dodging attacks. Using the Thunder Magic reduces her magic gauge until Alisia can no longer fire, meaning you often have to wait for it to recharge. Once fully charged Alisia can unleash a massive rolling blast of great power across the screen.Another novel part of the gameplay is the use of companions; 4 monsters which accompany Alisia. Each has different abilities, deciding which, if any, to use in a given sitiation is part of the challenge. These monsters, like Alisia herself, are fully upgradable with powerups. They can also die if weakened too much, forcing you to hunt for a reviving powerup.
The aspect of the game that hits you after a few stages is the game's difficulty. After easing you into the game in the first stage, the number and difficulty of the enemies increases, meaning that exploration for upgrading powerups becomes essential. Alisia herself begins with only one life, and continues are extremely rare. Worse still, continuing after death means you mercilessly put back to the beginning of the level... This difficulty is what puts many people off the game - I didn't like it when I first played it - but with practice you learn to appreciate the game more. Still, the final levels are frustrating however skilled a game player you are. Graphics & Music The graphics are for the most part good; although the Genesis/Megadrive is capable of better they do a good job of creating a rich fantasy world. The music too deserves a mention; Game Arts drafted in Mecano Associates to do the background music and this move certainly paid off. Many of the tunes are quite memorable, and do a great job building up atmosphere. Another nice touch is the reworking of the main "Alisia theme" music of Stage 1 into several of the later tracks. GYM versions of the music tracks are available at Zophar's Domain, whilst selected MIDI versions can be found at VGMusic.com.Overall, Alisia Dragoon is great but highly underrated game. If you haven't played it, I'd encourage you either to find a second-hand copy or download a copy of the ROM to play on your emulator. |
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| [ Box Art ] | ||
Left: USA/European version box artwork.
Right: Japanese version box artwork. Click on the pictures to view a larger version in a new window. I think, along with most people, that the original Japanese artwork is far superior to the Western one. |
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| [ Japanese Advert ] | ||
Click to see larger version in a new window.
V-Alis has sent me this picture of what appears to be a Japanese magazine advert for the game. It has a good rendition of Alisia's pose from the game ranking screen (see top of page), but redrawn using the Japanese boxart colour scheme. |
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| [ Versions & Emulation ] | ||
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Different ROM Versions 
There are 3 different versions of Alisia Dragoon.
The first is the original Japanese release (see screenshot). This is identical to the US/EU version, except that the intro and cut scene text are in Japanese rather than English. Confusingly, this version is listed on some older emulation sites as Alisia Dragoon (beta); it is not a beta rom and really should be listed as Alisia Dragoon (J). The second is the US release. This has English text for the intro and cut scenes, which was apparently translated very well. This is listed as Alisia Dragoon (JU). The third is the European version Alisia Dragoon (E), which is identical to the US release but appears to have been optimised for PAL machines, as funny graphical effects appear at the top of the screen when playing it on a US NTSC Genesis in emulation. Emulator For emulating Alisia Dragoon I would recommend Gens, which is a superb, fast and accurate Genesis/Megadrive emulator. You can download Gens at its official homepage. I'm sure you can find yourself a ROM of the game quite easily; please do not ask me to give you the ROM as I will ignore you :-) Remember, to download the ROM of Alisia Dragoon without actually owning a copy yourself is illegal. I own a cartidge copy so I am legally able to do so. |
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| [ Unknown Screenshots ] | ||
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Game Arts Software History Page Thanks to Alf, I've recently found some strange screenshots from Alisia Dragoon on Game Arts's own website. You can view the page yourself at http://www.gamearts.co.jp/history/sc_md_02.html, though the text is in Japanese. Below are the pictures from the site and my thoughts on them. |
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Stage 1-1 Screenshot 
This shot is from Stage 1-1, yet it is very different to the final version. Most noticeably, Alisia is fighting the pitchfork-wielding enemies from Stage 1-3 and an unknown enemy with an all-white palette (far right). In addition, the graphics look strange; Alisia, the Dragon Frye and the enemies' sprites appear quite different to their final versions, looking more simplistic. The level itself also appears more simple looking in terms of graphical design.
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Stage 2-1 Screenshot 
This shot is from Stage 2-1. Again the Alisia and enemy sprites are simple-looking, and the palette appears different. As in the first shot, Alisia is fighting another unknown enemy, a yellow worm jumping from the water. This is likely to be an earlier version of the worm sub-boss.
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Stage 1-2 Screenshot 
This shot is from the Stage 1-2 cut scene area. However, the Stage 1 Bosses appear to be fighting Alisia while Ornah looks on. Again, the graphics look simplified and rough; look at Ornah's lack of detail and different pose.
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Pre-release version? Where did these shots come from? They are certainly not from any of the released versions of the game. In my opinion they are taken from an earlier version of the game whilst it was still in development; this would explain the simplified graphics and other differences. Another possibility is that they were mockup screenshots given to magazines to show how incomplete sections would appear when finished. However, this opens up another question; why would Game Arts use pre-release shots on their own website? |
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| [ Unused Graphics ] | ||
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Two Unknown Monsters! 
The icons on the right (shown at twice normal size) are loaded when you enter the Options screen, though they are unused. They show icons for the Dragon Frye, Ball O'Fire, the Thunder Raven and the Boomerang Lizard, but also icons for two unknown monsters and for different types of fairy powerups. As well as these icons, several other graphics are loaded such as arrows, which are not used in the game and look like they could be part of an Options screen.
These graphics are not used anywhere in the game, but they appear similar to the icons used when you are selecting a companion monster in game. The two fairy icons are very similar to the two types of fairy magic, particularly when the different styles of wings are examined. However, even the graphics for the standard monsters are slightly different to the ones used in game, and all the icons use an unique palette found only on the Options screen. Leftovers? These graphics are most likely leftovers from an earlier version of the game that had two additional monsters available to select. The presence of these graphics on an Options screen could mean that in earlier versions you were able to select which monsters to use in game, perhaps four out of the six available. The two different fairy powerups icons could have been a similar option that allowed you to pick between two different styles of powerups. Alternatively, these graphics could have been part of a debug mode used by the programmers during development. |
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| [ Links ] | ||
Alisia Dragoon has very few pages online, but here's a rundown of the interesting ones.
A little tip; if you want to search for Japanese Alisia Dragoon websites it helps to have the Japanese language text for the title to copy and paste into Google. If you're interested it's: アリシアドラグーン |
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