What parents need to know
Rage of the Dragons Neo is a remaster of the fighting game called Rage of the Dragons released in 2002 for the Neo Geo and arcades. It contains characters named Billy, Jimmy and Abubo… Hey, does that sound familiar?
At the time, the developers asked their owners for the Double Dragon license to make it a new fighting game. They didn’t get it but continued to work on their fighting game anyway, and we ended up releasing their “Rage of the Dragons”.
The game takes place in 2 vs 2 combat, in 2D, with 4 attack buttons, like a King of Fighters (KOF). There are 16 characters available.
The fights are very similar to KOF as well, you can accumulate 3 energy bars. You can roll forward or backward, or dodge on the spot. You can launch a predefined combo, or an attack with your partner that is prolonged when you take 2 characters from the same team, normal moves, special moves and super moves. You can change your character when your partner is ready.
Special moves and super moves are performed with quarter circles, semicircles and some variations.
It’s very classic.
Even in terms of the soundtrack, some tracks are very similar to the soundtrack of the KOF.
The game was provided by the publisher for free for review purposes. This does not influence our opinion.
Details
Level of experience required
| Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginners |  |
|
|
|
|
| Intermediate | |
|
 |
|
|
| Experienced | |
|
|
|
|
Local game modes
Arcade
Versus
Training
Dragon’s Challenge: the arcade mode with intense challenges with special conditions.
Online Game Modes
Create for Lobby
Search for Lobby
The online mode is already deserted, and you will have to synchronize with a friend or with strangers on a Discord server to play it.
Our opinion
In 2002, Rage of the Dragons was a niche game released at the end of the Neo Geo console and arcades. It was very beautiful and very well animated, but the computer-controlled opponents are very difficult to beat. The opponents’ AI was completely unbalanced. From the first level, they attacked the player with all the advanced techniques as he discovered the game.
If there was one mistake that Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat didn’t make, it was this one. They set a difficulty spike around the third or fourth level.
Rage of the Dragons Neo launches the Neo Geo game with a slight improvement overlay: the ability to see the characters’ moves on the side of the screen, and some settings.
So the rest is identical to the original game. You get demolished by the characters led by the CPU, whatever the difficulty level, and the boss represents yet another peak of difficulty.
The aids present during a Game Over in a KOF are not present here. We have some additions of some Neo versions allowed you to recover life if you eliminate one of the two characters of the opposing team, or to charge your energy bars faster… But it’s not much use.
Rage of the Dragons deserves to be better known, more played, it has potential, but it’s not pleasant to play against a computer, and there’s no one online to play with so I don’t know who to recommend this title to. The additions of the “Neo” version are too minimal to justify its purchase.
The fighting game genre is so saturated, that I can only recommend you to get a more mainstream title, to be sure you have enough content, and opponents like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat or Tekken.
To be reserved for the most passionate people of the Neo Geo, and those who want to dissect a historical game that will unfortunately remain very niche.
