The Game: You’re another treasure-hunting glory seeker who’s about to meet more than his match. If you can survive crossing the drawbridge into the castle – a task made incredibly difficult by the glowing fireballs of dragon breath being hurled toward you – you’ve got an even more hazardous obstacle ahead: the dragon himself is guarding a huge stash of treasure. Even if he can’t stop you from pocketing every shiny thing in the castle, chances are you won’t make it out alive. (Imagic, 1982)
Memories: This is a game that worked well with the Intellivision’s disc controller. Especially on the second screen. It’s a rare case where I don’t mind that devilishly difficult controller at all. Vastly expanded from the same game as we knew it on the Atari 2600, Dragonfire is yet another example of Imagic concocting pure genius for the Intellivision.
Imagic’s designers had a habit of taking the same basic premise as their games of the same name for the 2600, and putting stuff into it that just simply didn’t exist in the Atari versions. Not just better graphics and sound, but whole game play elements that didn’t exist on the other machine. In any case, this version of Dragonfire is good enough that you won’t want to go back to the 2600 version. Very well done.