🐲 Received: June 25th, 2020 🐲 Written: July 17th-22nd, 2022 🐲
Published by: Crystal Dynamics 🐉 Distributed by: Mindscape
Licensed by: Nelvana
Hello, gamers and readers, welcome to my blog and thank you for taking the time to tune in today, I really appreciate it. 😃 Today I'm covering a special kind of game from a genre I never really got to talk about, so I'm very excited at the chance to do so.
Image from MobyGames; remember them? Remember seeing their star-arched bear logo after the credits passed for animated series like Babar, The Magic School Bus, Little Bear, and Franklin (if you grew up in the '90s like I did)? Such a memorable image from childhood (among many) 🐻
In 1995 the late Welsh entertainer Terry Jones (who sadly passed away two years ago at the age of 77) of the Monty Python Troupe came up with a concept of "Dragons of the Square Table", which was essentially the legend of King Arthur but with dragons in the main role which got turned into an animated TV show produced by Nelvana and Ellipse Programme. Making its first television airwaves on September 9th, 1996, Blazing Dragons lasted two seasons at twenty-six episodes until February 16th, 1998 which was well-received and has since garnered a cult following (but when it aired in North America it was subject to heavy bowdlerization, i.e. censorship, on account of its distributors being overbearing prudes or some such nonsense).
Image of Mindscape logo from MobyGames
Around the same time that production was underway for the series, so too was a video game based on Terry Jones' concept by The Illusions Gaming Company which would be their third venue after Super Casino: Caesars Palace and Scooby-Doo Mystery, with Crystal Dynamics acting as publisher (produced by David Sze and Tim Roberts, assistant produced by Rosaura Sandoval, designed by E. Daniel Arey, with Dan Su, Samuel Dicker, and Raymond E. Tobey offering additional programming, with public relations and talent licensing done by Jennifer Bulka and Sandra Yee) while Mindscape (a distribution company known for releasing home conversions of Atari Games' Paperboy and its Tengen-developed sequel as well as Twilight's Alfred Chicken games) served as distributor, licensed by Nelvana (Kim Cleary, Lara Stein, Toper Taylor). Crystal Dynamics was founded in 1992 by three of Sega's former employees and was the first licensed developer for the billionaires' console* the 3DO, having worked on its launch title Crash 'n Burn and early hits such as Total Eclipse and Gex.
* I apologize if saying that gave off an air of classism, but I'd hardly call that which had an original price tag of $700 a commoners' console
Images from GameFAQs
On October 31st, 1996 Sega Saturn and PlayStation One owners alike got to play Blazing Dragons with European gamers following suit the next month. The Illusions Gaming Company founders Bartlett and Coliz worked on the creative and technical direction respectively, it was designed by producer Matthew Seymour, writer Frederick J. Schiller, and Russell Lingo, and was programmed by Matt Gilbert, Chuck Woo, and Maria Leveriza. Having only played the PlayStation One version, I'll exclusively be covering the Sony edition.
Left: You know you're playing a good game when it starts off with its main protagonist in bed! 😃 I realize it sounds like I'm being facetious, but I'm not | Right: Grabbing a candelabra down the hall
In the point-and-click graphic adventure Blazing Dragons you guide and indirectly control the young inventor dragon Flicker where you can move the cursor in every inch and corner of the screen, cycle between one of five cursor options with the L1 and R1 shoulder buttons (a hand to grab and pick up an item, an eyeball to look at an item or character, a mouth to speak to a certain character, a foot to move to a certain spot, or the item you've currently selected from your inventory which you can use for a specific situation),
Left: Starting off by finding a way to clean the dishes at a quick rate so he can truly begin to set foot outside of Camelhot | Right: Luckily an inventor never leaves without his invention book
press the 𝖷 button at a hotspot to perform an action or to use an item (where you see the cursor either being animated or highlighted if it's set to the item of your choice) or select your choice in a dialogue scenario entailing multiple choice, and with the △ button you can quickly access Flicker's inventory bag (and press it again to exit out of it) where you can press the 𝖷 button to select the item you're going to use (an alternate way of accessing the inventory bag is by moving the cursor until it hovers over it and you press 𝖷 there).
Left: Back to the main hall | Right: Flame blowing Flicker a good luck kiss 😘
In the title screen or when you pause the game you can raise or lower the volume for the background music, the sound effects, and the voices plus you can decide to enable or disable subtitles for when a character speaks if you so choose (if it's a prolonged bit of dialogue divided in two halves and it doesn't fit it all, you can press the 𝖷 button once to see the remaining bit).
Left: Incredibly convenient, that map is | Right: Gathering all the termites inside one of King All-Fire's pipe cleaners
Much like Ludimedia's Rayman, Burst Studios' Spot Goes to Hollywood, Argonaut Software's Croc: Legend of the Gobbos/Croc! Pau-Pau Island, and Slippery Snake Studios' Rosco McQueen/Fire Panic, you could either choose to save your progress in any one of fifteen slots available on the memory card (should you have a free space on it) or you could resume where you left off after inputting a password (in this case, eighteen characters); unlike all those aforementioned games which are all action platformers, however, you can save or look up the password at any point as is wont in the point-and-click genre.
Left: Yay, Flicker! | Right: Wow, all those years of being subject to Mother Gothel's ruthless gaslighting has really done Disney's Rapunzel absolutely no favors for her psyche 😟
Blazing Dragons has got a lush and vibrant visual aesthetic, the color palette is sublimely chosen (the greens, the blues, and the reds really stand out and pop) and very pleasant for the eyes, and each location by Jim Eral, Yoriko Ito, and Michelle Chang* (with additional artwork courtesy of Crystal Dynamics' Steve M. Suhy) is imaginatively and creatively designed with an endearing sense of lighting and shading abound and good amount of detail.
* The Chinese/Native American fighter from Namco's Tekken??
Left: Take the offer, no one afflicted with severe mental health issues should be left alone with sharp objects of any kind | Right: Oh, you mean to tell me that this repurposed beanstalk turned mental institution is run by a blatant arsehole with a degree? Quelle surprise... 😒 (In all seriousness though, a lot of fairytale origins are royally fudged up)
Flicker's room has got a wooden floor with three oval windows, is a bit of a mess in spots, and has got a poster of his idol Albert Einstein attached to the ceiling above his bed; I like the main hall with its large and oval-shaped checker-patterned reflective floor, ornately framed portraits of King All-Fire and his estranged Queen Griddle, and the different flags flying above; there is a smooth amount of pasture around the cut down beanstalk (which has since been renovated as a home for troubled fairytale characters with the sunlight piercing through its barred window) with a sleeping giant looming in the distance slowly breathing in and out with his foot occasionally twitching up;
Left: Ladies and gentlemen, ableism at full display as the doctor, without any shred of empathy, tells the Pied Piper who's deathly afraid of rats that he's got them all in his head; mental health matters, you hack! 😠 | Right: Sir Blaze held up by his own reflection
the mountain range looks beautiful as it snows bright white all around you, the lake where Nimuë resides has got a breathtaking backdrop around it, and the village on the way to Sir George's castle is fittingly devoid of any color given the villain's unkempt nature. The designs of the titular dragons are... strange, to say the least, not like any dragon of the traditional variety (they don't even have any wings on their back). While they still have scaly bodies in varied hues of green and have long tails, the best way to describe them is that they are like centaurs (with an upper two-armed torso and four legs below, except they're not a hybrid of man and horse but one creature). This design choice raises a lot of questions about their mobility: how do these dragons lay down on a surface (let alone sit on a chair) with that many limbs without seriously injuring themselves? Do their torsos and legs have different brainwaves or do they share the same one?? How do they procreate??? 😲
Left: Sir Gasflame literally going up to King All-Fire by standing on the leaves of the magic beanstalk Flicker just planted in His Royal Garden | Right: Sir Loungealot is so overcome by hubris that he neglects to realize he's about to get flattened
But regardless, the dragons are likably designed in their own way: Flicker looks good with his turquoise-colored scales clad in a red shirt with puffy blue shoulder pads and feathered blue hat, the glum court jester Trivet wears a harlequin outfit, Princess Flame lives up to her name as she wears a regal flaming red gown, and the armored Knights of the Square Table each have their own physical attributes that make them discernible from one another (i.e. Sir Gasflame with a purple jawline, Sir Loungealot being the buff one).
Left: Helping Princess Flame run away | Right: Welp, prepare for diminishing returns then, and *faux gasp* the Chancellor is the bad guy--working for the humans no less? Who saw this coming? 😐
The humans are also designed amusingly, all with bubblegum pink skin: Sir George is exaggeratedly large in size and not very well-kept, his wizard Mervin is your stereotypical blue-robed wizard with his pointy cap and elongated goatee beard, there's a satirical parody on the founder of psychoanalysis Dr. Sigmund Freud (Dr. Zigmond Fraud, get it?) with a white lab coat and head mirror on his head (because... it's not an animated doctor unless you see them wear one?), a hyper-excited bald bartender with a white apron on, a deliberately anachronistic baseball player in 20th century sports attire, and a musclebound brute who wears a tutu when dancing off against Flicker, et al.
Blazing Dragons' soundtrack was composed by John Lawrence under his Power of Two Music label, having previously composed the music for
Left: The Chancellor snagging Flicker's bag from behind | Right: Flicker gleefully volunteering to be future hypnotist Trivet's guinea pig
The theme used for the title and the inside of the castle in Camelhot sounds enjoyably quirky and subdued all at once if that makes sense, the Lady of the Lake Nimuë's theme is soothingly relaxing and captures the majestic beauty of both her and the lake she lives in, the theme for the town on the way to Sir George's abode sounds down on its luck but in a comical and irreverent manner, and Sir George's theme brings out the pungent quality about this antagonist. There's this nice engaging melody that plays in King All-Fire's garden and room which is my favorite theme in the game (it even plays during the end credits), Ancient Al's theme when you visit his Cave of Dilemma has got a mysterious flair to it, and there's a smooth and catchy disco tune for when you dance off against the musclebound brute, the theme for the beanstalk where the fairytale characters are institutionalized sounds delirious, and the final theme for when you deal with Mervin and Sir George is intensely fast-paced thereby elevating the urgency of the situation.
Left: Dodo abuse | Right: Well next time you have your small, malicious aside you should probably consider doing it in an isolated position where someone isn't likely to hear it from standing just a few feet away!
The sound effects by Tom Corwin and John March are decently well-made and selected and appropriately cartoony by nature, particularly the bubble pop sound whenever Flicker picks up and grabs an item, the scorching flame sound when it comes to fire, the unhinging wood sound for whenever a door gets open, the window wipe sound for when a worker dragon is wiping the banner for the tournament, the audible snipping sounds for when something's getting cut, and the clicking sounds for when you make Flicker play with his clicker, et al.
Left: Exiting the castle once more | Right: Tickling the depressed chef silly with a feather duster, right in the tummy area
During the Summer of 2020 I was starting to get interested in the point-and-click graphic adventure genre as they were starting to intrigue me to the point that I wanted to play them, games like the Gregg Barnett and Angela Sutherland produced Discworld video games from the '90s based on the late Terry Pratchett's book franchise and Revolution Software's Broken Sword series among others. I did play point-and-click games as a child growing up on the Windows PC but my experience with those were limited then, mostly because I was more into action games and platformers, and for most of them I didn't get far--what games I did play of that ilk as a kid were Amazing Media's Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of the Monster which had Tim Curry as the titular scientist, CyberFlix's Dust: A Tale of the Wired West and Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, Disney Interactive's 101 Dalmatians: Escape From DeVil Manor (which I managed to play through several times), and MotionWorks' Anastasia: Adventures with Pooka and Bartok based on the classic 1997 Don Bluth animated film.
The fact that this game was by produced by Shigeru Miyamoto of all people is something I find absolutely mind-blowing, it's just not something I expected
There was also this other point-and-click title I played less than twenty years ago, mere months after my family and I moved from Italy to Texas in 2002 I got my second Nintendo GameCube game after getting the console alongside HAL Laboratory's Super Smash Bros. Melee, Disney's Magical Mirror starring Mickey Mouse which was co-developed by Capcom and Nintendo which I did eat up and really enjoyed, even thinking it was great. Granted, I was eleven when I first played it, I didn't know any better; having played it again after God knows how long, I'd be lying if I said it's aged all that well, but by the same token I didn't walk away disliking it either.
Seiko Kobuchi's soundtrack is pleasant (I've always had a soft spot for the old mirror mansion music), it's not devoid of charm, it's got its share of creepy moments here and there, the load times were snappy, and in retrospect I found it very amusing to see Mickey channel his inner Ryu and Ken Masters from Capcom's Street Fighter during the barrel mini-game and the credits. 😆 It is a very easy game to play through in the span of a few hours, but at the end of the day it is simply fine, nothing groundbreaking or spectacular; definitely the weakest out of Capcom's Magical series of Disney games, but not the worst Disney video game license as its contemporary reception suggested by any means--past, present, or future.
The superior Nintendo GameCube snowboarding experience, of course, would be Nintendo Software Technology's 1080° Avalanche
And, having grown up playing Idol Minds' Cool Boarders sequels on the PlayStation One (and being obsessed with snowboarding games as a result), I was pleased to see a snowboarding mini-game in the brief period of time it lasted. 🏂 This was the last main point-and-click I played for the longest time.
Left: Makeshift scarecrow scaring the crows away | Right: That small, helpless dodo bird is being preyed upon by that human hunter
Blazing Dragons is an enjoyable take on the King Arthur legend, albeit with dragons in the central role, and the point-and-click gameplay is easy to pick up from the get-go. What makes this point-and-click graphic adventure different from its contemporaries is that it's a TV console exclusive rather than a conversion of a game previously available on a PC, so there's no usual sign of visual compression to fit the size of the disc, and it's got reasonably quick load times thereby never having any adverse effect on the overall flow (which was the case in Visual Sciences' port of Cyan's Myst and the Teeny Weeny Games/Perfect 10 Productions co-developed Discworld on the PlayStation One).
Left: A "trapezium", huh? Riiight 🙄 | Right: You could replace that Sir George dummy with a dummy of literally any apathy-ridden person neither qualified nor deserving of power, and the reaction would not be any different
There is an appealing nature to the point-and-click genre as you move your cursor around until you make it hover over a hotspot, look at an item or situation, pick it up and use it for where it's warranted, and the dialogue is very amusing when it comes to the British humor (with the occasional pun and wordplay delivered in sincere earnest and without any hint of irony to the point that it's endearing) with an overt Monty Python influence (with Terry Jones involved, that's a no-brainer). There's also a likable hassle-free sense of trial and error, I like seeing the alternate dialogue spoken by Flicker for when you correctly applied an item you found for a situation or not, as well as his descriptions for said items when you decide to look at them with the eye option.
Left: If there were shiitake mushrooms in this area, Flicker would've gotten away with swearing; why not? It worked for Jim Carrey in Jeff Fowler's Sonic the Hedgehog 2 🍄 | Right: Challenged to a dance-off by a Schwarzenegger wannabe
The characters are very likable: Flicker is an endearing protagonist with his inventiveness and occasional snark and wit but outside of those qualities he is of noble character and would do anything to ensure Princess Flame doesn't end up with one of the Knights of the Square Table, Princess Flame is smart and has got a strong sense of self-agency about her and much like Flicker is quick with her wit, meanwhile Sir George is so over-the-top in how massively try hard he is as a villain it's hilarious while the real mastermind Mervin the evil wizard does all the conniving and plotting for him. Trivet the Jester delivers one of the best jokes in the game while the credits are rolling as he goes into a long diatribe questioning the internal logic of the point-and-click genre as a whole, which is so funny because he's saying the quiet part out loud*.
* Trivet does also mention how he threatens not to show up in the sequel unless they give him more to do, but with The Illusions Gaming Company having lost their business over two years later I don't think that would've been a possibility, so I'm thinking they were not serious with the sequel bait
Left: A part of me thinks that anachronistic baseball player is a reference to Mark Twain's A Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but then there's another part of me that doubts it because of the uniform's colors 🤔 | Right: Serving prune juice to a couple of monks
Blazing Dragons the video game has got an impressive top-tier voice cast, mostly comprising of veteran TV actors with a few big name ones as well: Terry Jones (as Sir Burnevere and Trivet), Cheech Marin (as Sir George and Guido the Pizza Chef, complete with an Italian accent), the GOAT Jim Cummings* (as King All-Fire and the Chancellor), Rob Paulsen (as Mervin and as an Indian-sounding Inventor of Baseball), Jeff Bennett (as Sir Loungealot and the Angry Dancer channeling his inner Arnold), Kath Soucie (whom I forever associate as the voice of Petratishkovna "Tish" Katsufrakis in the 2000 Disney animated series The Weekenders, as the voice of Princess Flame with a very good English accent),
* I hate that there is a filmmaker who shares the same first and last name as this iconic voice acting legend, it's frustrating that there now has to be a distinction between the two when bringing up Jim Cummings! 😣
Left: "Special delivery for Sir George!" | Right: Aw, he's going to take advantage of a blind man? Oh well, as long as he's not physically, emotionally, or mentally hurting him, I guess it's fine
B.J. Ward (as a sultry-sounding Nimuë and fractured Rapunzel Yablanowitz, she would go on to voice Princess Alexia in the English dub of Matrix Software's Alundra 2: A New Legend Begins), Gregg Berger (as Sir Blaze and Ancient Al, the latter of whom gives me Mel Brooks vibes with his Jewish delivery), Charlie Adler (as the Pied Piper), Brian George (as Simple Underachieving Peasant), Harry Shearer (as Dr. Zigmond Fraud, whose exaggeratedly thick foreign accent makes me think of Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz from Phineas and Ferb),
Left: "I'm going to give you a real name for a change so that you're no longer 'Dog' the dog" | Right: It's a good thing none of Sir George's men are bright enough to notice him suddenly having a scaly tail, Flicker's disguise is that foolproof
and Joseph Rye (as Flicker, he's even hilarious when speaking in a falsetto voice or when he deepens his voice to keep the illusion of his disguise, the obscure British Italian actor's got a good range), et al. That is the most amazing voice cast for an obscure video game ever! How did The Illusions Gaming Company get some of the bigger names to lend their talents? It's got to be the quality of the script and character treatment, and they all do such a great job with all their respective roles, and the British accents from the dragon characters are spot on; I'd like to imagine they all had a lot of fun voicing these characters, especially Cheech Marin and Jeff Bennett.
Left: Huh! Clifford is not as big as I remember | Right: Yeah, a little smooch action between Flicker and Flame, the OTP! 😙
Now Blazing Dragons the series, on the other hand, that's a different animal altogether. While both it and the game explore Terry Jones' concept and have got the core fundamentals of most of the dragon characters and feature most of the dragon cast, that's where the similarities end; their personalities are different (Flicker in particular is very sweet, and Sir Loungealot actually lives up to his name), the visual aesthetic and tone (especially once you reach season two) are different, the voice cast is not as stellar, Count Geoffrey is the human villain as opposed to Sir George, the dragons actually appear dragon-like, Queen Griddle is a recurring character whereas in the game she appeared in a couple portraits, and in place of Trivet there's a two-headed dragon jester named Cinder and Clinker, et al.
Left: It was nice of Sir George's men to repurpose Stonehenge as a perpetually spinning carousel with absolutely no end in sight... 😬 | Right: This image makes me want to cry! 🐜 Maybe it's the combination of the snowy environment, the "Eye of the Beholder" theme in the background, and the gratefulness of that ant to Flicker for freeing him, but this image is so pure! 😭
I feel if you blindly went from playing the game to watching the Nelvana animated series, or vice versa, without knowing what you were getting into you'd probably be very confused as to why both editions of Blazing Dragons neither share the same look nor feel. Both started production around the same time, and I'd have to imagine the people in charge of the show shared their notes and concepts with The Illusions Gaming Company while making the game, up to a point, or maybe it was vice versa, I'm not sure. It is awkward at how they went about it if you start making comparisons, but as long as both got the late Terry Jones' seal of approval, I'm not complaining, both the series and the game are entertaining and endearing in their own right.
Left: "🥱😴" | Right: 😐 ...... 😲 *sudden realization* Oh my God, not the parody edition of the Wheel of Pain scene from John Milius' Conan the Barbarian, I didn't realize that until now! 👀
The writing is cleverly funny with a sharp wit, and it revels in the British humor it brings to the proceedings. And the solutions to the puzzles are as inventive as they are funny (even if in any other game they would be completely nonsensical): using some of the items (such as a candelabra and a tail warmer) you found at the beginning to create a steam engine to get out of doing the dishes the old-fashioned way, picking up a makeshift rope that was Rapunzel's hair after applying hair growth tonic negatively affecting her psyche even further to the point of shearing it all off with her clippers, dumping the head of Sir George's dummy on a cartload of excrement so Flicker can pass off as the unkempt baddie to the blind valet later so he can put the oversized armor on him, the list goes on.
No cats were harmed in the making of this game... presumedly, and that dance-off is brilliant
While Blazing Dragons is a point-and-click graphic adventure at heart, there are a few instances that have got a more action-based flavor,
That's cool how you view the hand eye coordination through the reflection of Flicker's eyes, but the solution to the thumb wrestling mini-game is so random: repeatedly tap the shoulder buttons after gaining the upper hand, like how would you even arrive at that conclusion without doing it accidentally or looking it up first?
which is a nice break from the normal gameplay whenever you get to these points, especially the dance-off against the Angry Dancer.
Left: "Life is definitely the dream now that I no longer have to stand awkwardly still with my eyes closed while that loser of a young wizard Merlin beckons me to recite the password for his harp" | Right: Stilt walking
The difficulty is very manageable, most of the puzzle solutions don't require too much lateral thinking, and at roughly two and a half hours it is a very short point-and-click experience once you've got everything figured out; I never feel the need to save my progress or to look up the password, but it's nice that the option is there should I not have enough time to play through it all.
Left: Oooooh... 😗 | Right: "Tee hee hee, head concussions are hilarious, tee hee!" 🤭
But brief though it may be each and every time, it is a pleasurably feel-good game to come back to every once in a while. 😃 It's one of those games that never fails to raise my spirits, even if it goes to unusual depths, and it is one of my favorite games on the PlayStation One that has Crystal Dynamics' name attached. And as the game that eased me into the point-and-click genre I was curious to explore more of, it's a perfectly ideal and great choice to start with.
Is it bad that I got Artificial Mind & Movement's Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for the Nintendo Wii just so I could play LucasArts' Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis via code? I haven't even tried the game it's featured in yet 😓
Left: I love the advantage Flicker has in the log rolling challenge wearing roller skates | Right: Welp, that's certainly a horrifying last image to see before getting eaten up 😨
It's a shame that this game fell under the radar back then, getting lost in the shuffle of popular point-and-click graphic adventures Discworld and Broken Sword, but I'm glad I got to play it two Summers ago. It might not have had the globetrotting and mysterious intrigue of the latter or the insanely challenging amount of lateral thinking used to solve the puzzles like the former, but Blazing Dragons is a very strong contender on its own merits and is a worthy game in the genre in my opinion.
Left: "You should eat politicians instead! You'd get awful indigestion, but they'd bloody get what is coming to them!" | Right: The final stretch, try to outsmart Mervin so you can save King All-Fire
Blazing Dragons is a charming game with lots of clever writing and British humor to spare, and I recommend it whether you're a fan of the point-and-click genre or are a casual gamer who doesn't frequent these kinds of games regardless of skill level. It's a feel-good comfort game, and one that'll leave you in a pleasant and lighthearted mood by the time you finish.
My Personal Score: 8.5/10
d(^-^)bTO EACH THEIR OWNd(^-^)b
● I wanted to have this reviewed by December to celebrate Blazing Dragons' 25th anniversary but unfortunately did not get a chance to as I only manage to write roughly the first half before getting stuck; I'm glad I managed to get this game properly reviewed eventually. Better late than never!
● Interestingly, in Crystal Dynamics' "Walk It Off" preview video,
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