Dragonstomper Review — A Lord With No Heirs

Dragonstomper sounds a little brutish, doesn’t it? A heroic knight might slay a dragon, but stomping a dragon has no romance about it. Stomping is what you do to a cockroach.

Created in 1982 by Stephen H. Landrum, Dragonstomper is in fact the very first console RPG, beating Dragon Quest by four years. Dragon Quest and Dragonstomper both pushed the boundaries of what their consoles could do, while ultimately being simplified and accessible versions of computer RPGs. Dragon Quest adopts a cute adventure manga aesthetic, and rewards you for progressing through a large world filled with numerous fields, towns, and dungeons. Dragonstomper is bleak and mean, and challenges you to survive one field, one town, and one dungeon.

While Dragon Quest inspired countless successors, Dragonstomper remains a one-of-a-kind artifact of history, an alternate approach to consolizing computer RPGs that never got a chance for iteration. Why was Dragonstomper forgotten by all but dedicated Atari enthusiasts? Well, on top of releasing shortly before the 1983 console crash, the game also required you to own some additional equipment to play it.

Dragonstomper was originally released exclusively for the Starpath Supercharger accessory on the Atari 2600. The Supercharger fits into the 2600 cartridge slot, and can connect to any standard cassette player. Supercharger games were sold on cassettes that were cheaper than cartridges while also holding more data. Most 2600 cartridges contain 4096 bytes of data, but Dragonstomper’s cassette contains a whopping 25344 bytes.

How do you load that much data into a humble 2600 with 128 bytes of RAM? You divide the game into three 8448 byte loads into the Supercharger’s 6 KB RAM and 2 KB ROM. That’s all a little technical, but the outcome is a little bit like switching discs in a PS1 RPG. When you reach the end of Load One of Dragonstomper, you need to start your cassette player to download Load Two into the Supercharger’s memory. The physical ritual and sense of anticipation of this Multi Load feature is lost when playing in a modern emulator, but you can still appreciate how enormous Dragonstomper feels by contemporary console standards.

With three sequential loads, Dragonstomper focuses the typical loop of an RPG into a linear three-act structure: exploring The Enchanted Countryside, preparing in The Oppressed Village, and assaulting The Dragon’s Cave. The whole game is an hour long, making it well-suited for replays. And you’ll need those replays to build the knowledge necessary to truly Stomp that Dragon, because your ignorance is your greatest weakness.

Load One: The Enchanted Countryside

This bleak wilderness matches your unromantic title. Three castles are guarded by enormous cursed skulls that will trap you, and damage you on both failed and successful escapes. Approach a hut, and you’re likely to be attacked by its resident. You’ll need a key to open the locked doors of the churches. If you manage to get inside and pray, the game will tell you it has no effect, but of course you can pay them money to heal you.

Enormous enemies will fly across the screen to attack the tiny white dot that represents your Dragonstomper. There is no separate battle screen, and standing still does not protect you from random attacks. Combat is turn-based, and you need to make every turn with calculated risk, because you can’t afford to lose health carelessly. Escaping from unnecessary fights is crucial to survival.

You do not gain experience from battle, only money and items. Some items will lower your stats, and others will raise them. These properties are randomized per run, so the only way to distinguish helpful and harmful items is to check your stats before and after using them. Eventually, you may notice the difference between STR and DEX. You can loot a Handaxe, which is an item you must manually select every turn to take advantage of its increased attack power. It seems your basic attack is, in fact, unarmed. You can also loot a shield, which offers no defensive properties. These wilderness battles are about fight or flight.

Wander enough, and you’ll come across a powerful warrior guarding a bridge to town. He demands to see your ID, which, as a humble Dragonstomper, you of course do not have. You can bribe him for 600 gold, which is worth three full heals from the church. You can try to fight him, which is almost certain to end in failure, or you can go kill the residents of a nearby castle and loot an ID off their corpse.

Load Two: The Oppressed Village

Somehow, this place feels even bleaker than the wilderness. The Atari 2600 is infamous for its harsh sound, and it’s put to good use for the howling wind that haunts this village. When you enter a building, the wind will grow softer, but it continues to build audible dread as you prepare to enter The Dragon’s Cave.

The only people in this town are mercenaries and merchants. None of them have a friendly word to spare for the Dragonstomper, only transactions to conduct. To buy items in a shop, you have to physically approach the item sprites and buy them one-by-one. The sprites will disappear as you purchase them, giving the impression that you are buying up the last of their stock. There’s no reason not to spend every last gold piece you looted from the wilderness, but you probably can’t afford all of the items you want. You have to choose carefully, but you also have no idea what items will actually be useful in the final assault, or how many you’ll really need.

The three mercenaries patrolling the village will not fight the Dragon for glory or justice. They want something of real value, like gold or gemstones. In the manual, you are told that the King’s loyal knights have all fallen to the Dragon’s forces, so clearly noble dragonslayers are insufficient. The Kingdom needs selfishly-motivated Dragonstompers.

Load Three: The Dragon’s Lair

You are immediately greeted with the bones of all the King’s loyal knights who fell before you. The tiny dot you control is yellow now, representing the Dragonstomper’s golden armor in the cover art, but you receive no defensive bonus from this. This dungeon is a long, long corridor filled with invisible trap tiles that you can only see if you use the appropriate spell. There are poison darts bouncing between the walls, which will poison you permanently without the right potion to cure your condition. Or maybe you’re just agile enough to weave through the darts without getting hit.

Even if you survive this gauntlet, you’re likely to be worn down before you even begin the fight against the Dragon. Load One is about gathering resources and power while also trying to survive. Load Two is about trading in any excess resources for more power. In Load Three, there is no more power to be gained. You can only spend the resources you have left.

You will instantly take damage as you enter the final boss room, unless you’ve brought the item that prevents it. Behind the towering Dragon is the giant Druid’s Amulet that the manual tells you corrupted the Dragon in the first place. At this point, you have a choice, even if you don’t know it. You can Stomp this Dragon, or you can try to maneuver around it to grab the Amulet and neutralize the beast.

Either path will be equally challenging. Although combat is turn-based, there is also real-time movement between turns. The Dragon will chase you down, so you have to move proactively, or find some way to stop the Dragon’s movement or weaken its attacks. Of course, you can use hired mercenaries like items to summon them to the field, where they appear as their own little dots taking turns to attack and be attacked by the Dragon.

Whether you choose to go for the Amulet or the Stomp, this will be a long, grueling fight that feels truly epic by the standards of the Atari 2600. The Amulet keeps pulsating in the background as you use every technique you have just to survive. You’ll need to act as a melee fighter, a ranger, an offensive wizard, and a supportive wizard for your mercenaries. The rhythms of the fight are actually quite similar to fighting a Dark Souls boss with allies: strafe around and take potshots while your allies keep it occupied. You’ll be lucky if just one of your mercenaries survive, or if you get through this fight with more than a sliver of health and an exhausted inventory.

One warning for your victory: the screen will start flashing rapidly as soon as you obtain the Amulet, so I recommend just closing the game after defeating the Dragon or opening the way to the Amulet. This type of flashing is unfortunately a common problem in Atari 2600 games.

The Dragonstomper’s Victory

Whenever I load up some old game I’ve never heard of, I hope to discover something as special as Dragonstomper. It’s easy to look at its ancient blocky graphics and dismiss it as a historical curiosity that could never hold up today. The only reason it stood out to me in the first place is that I had played enough other 2600 games to know how unusual it is to see a text-based menu on the bottom of the screen. Because I gave Dragonstomper a chance that a slightly younger version of me would never give, I was rewarded with an experience that still lights up my spirit whenever I think about it. 

When I’m playing Pokémon Violet or Final Fantasy IX, I’m still playing Dragon Quest. I cross the world in search of the next field, the next town, the next dungeon. There’s always more power to be gained, and there’s always a friend to cheer me on. But I have yet to play an RPG that iterates on the efficient, focused bleakness of Dragonstomper. If you know of one, please tell me.

In the meantime, hit the random button on MobyGames and play something you’ve never heard of. Not all of it will be good, but sooner or later you’ll find something that lights up your spirit too.