Steel Dragon EX

Steel Dragon EX consists of two shoot ’em up games

Shienryu (Steel Dragon) – A port of the arcade and Sega Saturn game
Shienryu Explosion (Steel Dragon Evolution) – a sequel to Steel Dragon previously only released for arcade

Steel Dragon Evolution gives the player a choice between three different space crafts and six different pilots. The pilots only determine the shot colour, while the crafts vary in speed and fire power. Up to two players can play simultaneously. The goal of the game is to progress far enough in each stage to beat the end boss, ultimately winning all levels.

Players have only a limited amount of lives, however, extra lives can be obtained during the game. The main feature of Steel Dragon Evolution is that the main fire button is analogue. The more pressure is applied to the button, the heavier the fire power of the player’s craft becomes. As a trade-off at the same time the craft’s speed is reduced. Alternatively, three separate buttons for low, medium and heavy fire can be pressed.

If a player destroys an enemy, a multiplier is applied from 1x to 256x depending on how heavy the fire power applied was. However, some enemies drop stars which also have a multiplier of 1x to 256x attached to them. Here the scale is reversed, not firing at all while collecting the stars gives the highest multiplier.