One thousand years into the future, you live in constant fear of the Dark Dragon and his giant cyborg insect armies. Armed with a deadly weapon from the ancient past and the guidance of your armored blue dragon, you must save your people from endless swarms of deadly foes. Fulfill your destiny and keep the Dark Dragon from reaching the Tower, or die trying.

Discussion
Quick, name a system launch where you got to ride a dragon on day one! If you said Sega Saturn’s, you’re good to go.

Panzer Dragon is essentially the heir apparent to Sega’s Space Harrier but with a literal twist - you can rotate your perspective 360 degrees to attack enemies all around you. This brings boss fights into a sort of interesting realm (for the time) since you would need to keep an eye on opposite angles at all times. Thankfully your dragon has a radar (and what dragons don’t, really?) with a viewer to let you know what direction you’re facing and where the enemies are coming from. You have a rapid fire gun, and then homing missiles from your dragon for an arsenal.

There are about 7 stages to plow through including a hidden Stage 0 via a code. Each of the regular stages take you across various levels of the planet, including oceans, caves, forests, canyons, and a city that gets attacked relentlessly. While the locales are interesting in palette choices, they can be pretty barren in terms of actual structures and foliage. All are straight-forward, on rails guidance, though you do have a bit of leeway with moving up and down to avoid obstacles. Control is good enough, though you may find locking on is a bit harder than it should be.

Panzer’s world is filled with about 4 tiers of enemies - bosses, ships, flying creatures, and random ground units. While the human ships and dragons blend in with the universe Sega was trying to create, a lot of the smaller enemies don’t feel like they fit quite right. This could be simply because there’s no real backstory or information for them; they are simply just targets to shoot at. Many times they don’t stay on screen long enough, or are too small to truly make out in the path of your bullets and missiles. Boss fights are at the end of each Episode, and the majority of them are well done, with one slightly annoying one.

Overall the game is done in an hour or two, and it’s more or less a decent, fun ride still. However, with such amazing later games like Saga and Orta, it is a crime that Sega hasn’t taken the time to properly reboot the series into something truly amazing. Can you imagine A Panzer Dragoon Saga in the realm of Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, but more time was actually spent ON the dragons, rather then looking at them?
 

• Team Andromeda was eventually dissolved after Panzer Dragoon Saga, and then members were eventually moved to other internal studios. Many of them now work on the Mario & Sonic Olympic games for the Wii and DS.
   
• Dragoon's legacy got a bit of a boost with the original Xbox release of Orta.
   
• There is an abundance of programmer cheats for the game, including a nod to an earlier Sega rail shooter classic, Space Harrier.
   
• Launched the day the system was released, along side Virtua Fighter, Daytona USA, and Clockwork Knight.
   
• As a graphic designer, I must tip the hat to PD for it's Chapter font. They're beautiful and custom made for the game.
   
• In the opening cinematic of the game, our hero is separated from his two friends. After what seems like a long, long time apart from each other, when he passes over them with the dragon, they are in the exact same spot (and assumedly pose) that he left them.
   
• There was a demo available for the game.

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