Dragon Spirit is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1987 and licensed to Atari Games for its American manufacture and distribution.
In the kingdom of Mitgult, a serpent demon named Zawell escapes imprisonment after a thousand years, and kidnaps Princess Alicia. A soldier named Amul is chosen to rescue her and destroy Zawell. He points his sword skyward and transforms into a powerful blue dragon. He can breathe fire and drop bombs, as well as collect up to thirteen additional powers during his journey. Amul must fight nine of Zawell's mightiest beasts, one at the end of each stage, before facing Zawell himself.
The gameplay in Galaga '88 is built on the same premise as that of the original Galaga game, but is in many ways more complex and more difficult. The game is divided into a series of 29 Stages distributed through eight Worlds. The starship Galaga accelerates between Stages and Worlds and even to higher dimensions (go to the section on Dimensional Travel below to find out more).
With the exception of the third and eighth, each World culminates in a Challenging Stage. There are six such stages to engage in any full game, and each begins with the on-screen announcement "That's Galactic Dancin'!" and has its own YM2151-generated song to which the enemy formations dance. In any given Challenging Stage, both the design of the enemies and their dancing formations shall vary according to the player's current Dimension. As in Galaga, the objective is to destroy all forty enemies before they fly away off the screen. However, refraining completely from touching any controls for the duration of a Challenging Stage awards a "secret bonus" ranging in value from 10000 to 25000 points, and equal to the "special bonus" which would have been awarded for destroying all forty enemy aliens instead.
Galaga '88 introduces a variety of new enemies and behaviors. Most of these special enemies are worth varying amounts of bonus points when destroyed. Some enemies can combine into larger enemies which take multiple hits to destroy, while others arrive in eggs, explode in a shower of fireworks, grow with multiple hits, or sport armor which makes them invincible while in formation. Certain enemies drop small formations of tiny creatures that wiggle their way down the screen, and still others can act as escorts to incoming groups of enemies and then quickly dive at the player before leaving the game. Most stages also include various obstacles which appear once the enemy formation has been assembled. These can be destroyed with either one or several shots, and the first one on each stage will leave a "Warp Capsule".
At the start of the game, the player can select how many Galaga starships to start with (one or two), affecting their number of remaining lives. The game ends after the final boss is defeated (or when the player's last ship is destroyed or captured) - in the latter case, the player can continue the game for an additional credit. The Game Over screen shows the player's hit-miss ratio and a visual representation of their progress. If the player reaches Stage 27, the game also shows a picture of the final boss (damaged if defeated, but silhouetted if not). If the arcade operator has set the "continue" option to "on", the player also cannot continue if he is defeated on Stages 27-29.
In the game, the player pilots a starship called the Final Star, while shooting various enemies and destroying enemy structures for points.
Unlike later vertical scrolling shooters, like Toaplan's Twin Cobra, the Final Star had only two levels of weapon power, and no secondary weapons like missiles and/or bombs. Each stage in the game was named after a letter of the Greek alphabet. In certain versions of the game, there is an additional level called "Infinity" (represented by the infinity symbol) which occurs after Omega, after which the game repeats indefinitely.