Panzer Dragoon: The Remake

Needle drop some Blue Oyster Cult, and you could pretend this post-apocalyptic arcade shooter is the iconic Taarna segment from the Heavy Metal movie. It’s all the otherworldly rails shooter action you could want in a game.

A long, long time ago, there was a little game called Starfox, for the Super Nintendo. It was a rails-based shooter that took Star Fox, Fox McCloud and his three friends, Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare, and Falco Lombardi, on an adventure that stretched from the land into space.

Star Fox’s wild popularity led to an explosion of rails-based shooters, where players took a defined path through a bunch of obstacles and the occasional boss fight, which they would do their best to avoid or blow up.

Developers Team Andromeda consciously took inspiration from Star Fox, and other similar games, when creating Panzer Dragoon and its follow-ups, Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Panzer Dragoon Saga.

I rented Panzer Dragoon Zwei from Blockbuster, back in the day, and I bought Panzer Dragoon Saga (still have it), but I’d never played the original until Forever Entertainment remade it last year.

And even then, I didn’t play it, because I’d been waiting for the Limited Run physical release.

Limited Run makes a great case for returning to the pre-digital release days, when we all had real games we could play, trade, collect, display — whatever we wanted, all things you cannot do with the streaming “you don’t own the game you bought” world. I treasure the games I still have from the golden age of video games — the aforementioned Panzer Dragoon Saga can go for over $1,500 on eBay. This is a measure of how much physical releases meant to us. And why my boyfriend and I typically buy physical releases, when we can.

The Limited Run release of Forever’s Panzer Dragoon remake comes with both a replica of the Sega Saturn game box, as well as the more traditional PS4 box that contains the disk. Both cases contain a pamphlet discussing the origins of the original game and the work done to remake it — rebuilding it from scratch with all new assets. Neither of these pamphlets have any information about the actual game, which makes playing it more of a mystery than the developers perhaps intended.

The game opens with your nameless protagonist chasing a sand crab into an ancient ruin, where its big momma appears. A dragon appears and fires on the ceiling, crushing the giant crab. Soon after, the dragon’s rider catches up to you and, dying, passes on their mission — to get the dragon safely to its destination — and control of the dragon and the weapon with which to defend it.

And then you’re off, through seven levels of increasingly deadly threats. Most levels end with a boss fight. I’ve included a video of the penultimate level above (it doesn’t have a boss fight).

You have limited mobility on the dragon. You can dodge many threats, but your path is predetermined. Perils will come from all sides, and you have to constantly turn to face them as you fire. I only found out, several levels in, that you can use an “auto aim” mode to choose targets and fire automatically with missiles your dragon shoots out. Combined with the normal action of the gun, most threats are easy to dispose of. The problem is that there are so many, and with bosses especially, no clue on exactly what to shoot.

Panzer Dragoon reminds me a lot of Shadow of the Colossus or Journey, in a sense — a huge world with an unknown history that you discover as you play, not by narration, but from the environment itself.

The game is fairly short. On easy mode, it takes about an hour for a full run. There are challenges to shoot more accurately (and earn more credits), higher difficulty modes, hidden levels and other secrets to find. You’ll get one secret for free upon finishing the game for the first time, but others will only be revealed upon mastering other challenges (like finishing the game on hard mode).

My fingers get a little exhausted playing this game; it’s the kind of game where an arcade stick would be a huge improvement. But the PS5 controller I used got the job done.

Worth the money? If you like impeccably remade, but somewhat obscure, arcade games the 90s, then sure — this is a lot of fun. The digital version costs US $25, and that’s about right. The physical release cost somewhat more than that, but I still feel I got my money’s worth.

I’m waiting eagerly for Forever Entertainment’s follow up, the remake of Panzer Dragoon Zwei. I haven’t played that for decades.