Demonic entities spew from every corner, assaulting your senses with grotesque displays of fancy! If you escape such an onslaught, the nightmare will not end as each "exit" is a secret passage to grander horrors!!
Technosoft, better known for creating the Thunder Force line of sci-fi shoot'em ups during their 16-bit run, diverged when porting Devil Crash to Sega's console. Renamed Dragon's Fury when released in regions outside of Japan, the game is essentially a dark fantasy-themed journey filled with a slew of morbid imagery; such encounters include a skinned-off head with muscles on full display, as well as a glob of horrified faces acting as... a tongue that protrudes from a naked demon's mouth. However, the game was not left untouched during the transition to English. Occult and religious visuals were removed or modified, with the biggest offenses being cross-laden coffins being transformed into EVIL vases and a rotating pentagram changed into a normal star.
So now that you are aware of this devilish opposition, are you ready to crash?
Are you ready to commence a beatdown in a battle of pinball?
With your silver ball launching into the menacing field, you'll first be pushed into the second of three levels. Greeting you in this second area is a giant sleeping face in the center and an army of skeleton warriors striding out from corner "star" holes. Using tried-and-true pinball mechanics, in which you must move the ball around by hitting it with a pair of flippers and attempted table nudging, you can knock the ball into the skeletal army and obliterate them. Fling the ball inside one of the holes and the face changes each time: from an angry woman with fangs to a ghastly green snake!
A miscalculated shot can drop you to the first level, and awaiting down below is the aforementioned skinless head that stalks you with its moving eye and green dragons watching over their eggs. Crash into those eggs! If you miss, you'll fall towards the cocoon bumpers, running over any four-legged creatures that happen to be in the way. Avoid dropping down the gutter if you don't want to elicit a belly laugh from the unholy head! Reaching the third level will take work, as there are no real easy entrances, but once you gain access, you'll be welcomed by a giant skeleton ruler overlooking a field where a rotating pentagram star resides. Mere seconds later, cloaked figures appear and march around said object. What could have possessed them to do such a thing?
As your ball bounces every which way, colliding with bumpers and otherworldly fiends, and being spat back out from ominous holes, an absolutely banger soundtrack can be heard. Whoever composed the main table theme did such a great job making the Genesis' Yamaha YM2612 sound chip seem like it's playing rockin' guitar riffs and piano keys that's like a cross between Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. The themes playing within the bonus table rooms are just as solid, going hard with bass-like and synth tunes colliding as you tackle visceral, often-times shockingly detailed, visuals in such environments.
So how would you access these smaller bonus rooms? It's typical pinball stuff, such as hitting specific object or multiple objects, which in this game's case is most of the previously said creatures and ghoulish beings. Once one of these conditions have been met, a glaring green arrow will point to a hole you must enter. Succeed, and you'll materialize into one of six rooms with differing, unique opponents that must be taken out. One has you battling a hydra, another has three giant skulls inside a fleshy arena, and then there's that naked demon with the tongue; the tongue isn't even the weirdest thing in that room, as your ball can fall inside a launcher hole... which is made of an eye socket from a woman's face.
As great as all of this is, it should be emphasized that Dragon's Fury is very much a traditional pinball game with traditional pinball rules. However, each pinball game and each dev approach these traditions in different ways, whether intentionally or through poor design choices. In the case of Dragon's Fury... the structure is all over the place. For example, the ball physics, while not bad, have a lot of questionable moments; oftentimes you're stuck in a loop of the ball bouncing out of one launcher into another for several seconds, or instances where it just awkwardly falls down a "slide" to a level below due to shoddy hit detection with a small ramp.
In other pinball games, these issues are typically overlooked because you're able to nudge the table, thus pushing the ball out of harms way. It's not a 100% guarantee safety measure, but it's something. Sadly, nudging is nonexistent here: nudge as much as you want, but the ball rarely moves when you mash the button. What's the point including a staple if it isn't going to work 99% of the time? Is it game ruining? No, beating all six-plus bonus rooms and reaching the credits under these restrictions is doable. But it is very frustrating and makes basic ball physics harder to deal with than it should. Don't think increasing your chances of victory with extra balls will help either, as the devs ensured you need a really huge score to gain just one. But if you need more lives, then the English manual openly gives you passwords for additional balls.
Graphically and musically impressive, the game is a feat for the Sega Genesis in those areas. Gameplay-wise, you'll get enough of a fix if played casually, absorbing all the sights and sounds while occasionally reaching a bonus room or two. However, when you get serious and try completing all bonus rooms in a single sitting, that's when you see its pinball shortcomings. Also, no multiball? Really? The game certainly has, for lack of a better word, oddball design choices that prevent it from being a greater pinball game than how it turned out. If you're aiming for those end credits, then enter TECHNOSOFT, gain those ten balls, and prepare for a bumpy ride.
