A Cute 'em Up cuter than no other!
Coryoon: Child of Dragon is a 1991 Horizontal Scrolling Shooter Cute 'em Up developed and published by Naxat Soft for the TurboGrafx-16. Instead of a jet fighter or a spaceship, you're controlling an adorable little dragon as you fly around blasting enemies.
Playing as Coryoon, a baby dragon and the pet of an unnamed princess, when a curse turns your master into a child, you immediately set off on a journey across forests, underwater regions, and interiors of volcanoes to seek a cure, battling through a colourful assortment of enemies all the way.
Coryoon contain examples of:
- Asteroid Thicket: In the second-to-last stage, which is set in outer space. Coryoon will need to be wary of ice asteroids all over the place.
- Boss Rush: The final stage, where there are no mooks an instead pits Coryoon against the unicorn, giant lobster, gryphon, serpent, phoenix and crystal turtle before the Final Boss.
- Boss Warning Siren: A rather generic, simple one, where each boss is heralded by a huge red "WARNING!"
- Breath Weapon: Since you're a dragon instead of a spaceship... besides Coryoon's dragon breath, most of the bosses like the giant lobster and gryphon can breathe ranged projectiles as well.
- Charged Attack: By holding down the firing button, Coryoon can let out a concentrated blast from his cheeks. Combining this with any available power-ups will yield different effects - for instance, "Fire" allows Coryoon to let out a fiery tornado lasting for several seconds.
- Color Failure: Bosses turns grayscale upon defeat, but otherwise doesn't "die" graphically onscreen due to the game's cutesy nature.
- Crystal Landscape: One of the last stages is a massive cavern where the landscape is made of gigantic purple crystals.
- Crystalline Creature: Coryoon fights turtle-like enemies with shells made of crystals while exploring the crystal caves. The stage's boss is notably a King Mook version of these turtles, one several times larger than Coryoon and constantly lay eggs which hatches into more of these enemy types.
- Elemental Powers: Coryoon can collect orbs which turns his default projectiles into different elemental-based attacks, including "Thunder", "Fire" and "Water".
- Fairy Companion: One of the collectible items grants Coryoon a pair of fairy sidekicks orbiting around him, who can help Coryoon attack onscreen enemies.
- Flying Face: In a game where bosses are mostly based on generic mythological creatures, the boss in the desert stage sticks out - because it's a disembodied, floating serpentine head who breathes ranged attacks on Coryoon non-stop. It has an Orbiting Particle Shield made of fire for good measure. Defeat it an it turns into a Segmented Serpent instead.
- Fountain of Youth: A curse turns Coryoon's owner, a princess, into a child. And it's up to Coryoon to find a cure to break the curse.
- Giant Enemy Crab: The mid-boss of the underwater world, who stays on the ground for the entire battle but can extend its pincers to snap at Coryoon. Defeat it and Coryoon faces the stage's end boss, a giant lobster.
- Harmless Enemy: Huge birds that carries pouches in their beaks, and lacks any form of attacks. Shoot at them and they'll flee while leaving behind a random elemental power-up for Coryoon.
- Helping Hands: A cute example (well, everything in this game's pretty darn adorable) in the valley stage: gigantic floating gloved hands who constantly tries clapping on Coryoon. Somehow they can't be hurt by any attacks.
- Mirror Match: The Final Boss - after Coryoon has defeated a colourful gauntlet of enemies, besides a Boss Rush against most previous bosses, the game then concludes with... Coryoon fighting three silver clones of himself. Defeat the trio and they then pull a Fusion Dance into a gigantic silver Coryoon.
- Oculothorax: The Crystal caves has a mid-boss being a gigantic, spiked, eyeball monster. Surrounded by dozens of smaller ones orbiting around it.
- Our Gryphons Are Different: A gryphon serves as the boss of the valley stage. That one appears to have some traits lifted from the Classical Chimera as well, with a snake's head for a tail and both its heads firing away at Coryoon.
- The Phoenix: A hostile, two-tailed Phoenix serves as the boss of the volcano stage. It has Feather Flechettes abilities as a backup ranged attack.
- Polar Penguins: Penguins are minor enemies in the Arctic sea level, and attacks Coryoon on sight.
- Snowlems: Sentient snowmen who can chuck snowballs as attacks appears near the end of the game.
- Spread Shot: Coryoon's "Thunder" power-up turns his projectiles into lightning bolts that spreads into an arc. Collecting several identical versions of the power-up even allows him to spread the blasts behind.
- Unicorn: A pair of unicorns appears at the end of the first stage as a Dual Boss. They have a Shared Life-Meter though, which makes the battle slightly easier.
- Written Sound Effect: To complete the game's kid-friendly, cartoonish look, defeated enemies will frequently let out an onscreen "BOM!". Bosses will leave behind a dozen.
