See that bat-silhouette on the upper right corner? That's actually relevant in the game. Really.
- AD 19XX, the city lay in ruins.
Dr. Bio is planning to produce the mutant monsters using his controlling DNA substance and rule the entire city.
Now four warriors have risen to oppose Dr. Bio.
Silent Dragon is a 1992 Beat 'em Up made by Taito (of Double Dragon fame), with a gameplay format seemingly lifted from Double Dragon III.
In the near-future (allegedly set in 19XX; the game itself is released in 1992), the evil Dr. Bio, a scientist dabbling with illegal experimentations on animal life, has plans of taking over the city. And as leverage, he kidnaps your girlfriend / sister / ally, Catherine, for good measure, triggering a rescue mission where you beat up Dr. Bio's minions in order to find Catherine.
You can play as the following characters:
- Joe the Fighter, and the game's hero and Catherine's Love Interest;
- Lee the Kung Fu master, Joe's close friend and a No Celebrities Were Harmed lookalike of Jackie Chan;
- Sonny, a muscleman ex-soldier and The Ahnold who's out to save his sister Catherine, and
- Kato, a Ninja ally to the protagonists because Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja.
Stop the Evil Schemes of Dr. Bio!:
- Arm Cannon: Dr. Bio, the Final Boss, has one in place of his right arm. He somehow loses it in the second stage of the battle after his Robotic Reveal (see below), but he wastes no time in proceeding to constantly rush you with the arm CHAINSAWS he has instead.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Joe and Lee, two of the playable characters, do. And they're both fighters who constantly pummel the snot out of enemy mooks across the entire game.
- Bat People: One of the bosses halfway through, a humanoid man-bat hybrid monster that comes somewhat out of nowhere. It's briefly foreshadowed at the end of the first stage, when a defeated human boss has a miniature bat-person bursting out from his back before it flies off while growing to a larger size, but nothing seems to come of that for a while. However, it catches up with you at the end of the fourth stage as a partner to the boss, and the final stage has you fighting two more bat-people just before the final confrontation with Dr. Bio.
- Body Horror: Already mentioned is the first boss, whose back boils up and has a man-bat hybrid burst out and escape upon his defeat, but upon the third boss's defeat, while still standing, his entire back half seems to completely explode outward, leaving him to basically fall apart in a mercifully brief animation that makes it difficult to tell exactly what the hell just happened to him.
- Boss Rush: The first two bosses of the game return in the final stage, along with a fight of two of the fourth boss's man-bat partner, before you confront Dr. Bio.
- Captain Ersatz: Has it been mentioned that the third boss is obviously Jagi? Seriously, it's so blatant that the picture of him at the intro to Stage 3 may as well have been directly ripped from a very specific scene in the anime.
- Continuous Decompression: In the final stage, during the section where you re-fight the second boss, there's a lever that opens a nearby door, which will suck out anyone unfortunate enough to get near, including you (in a game with one life per credit, mind you). Frustratingly, that copy of the second boss? If HE gets anywhere near the door, he just jumps straight to the lever and hits it to close the door, bowling you right over if you're between him and the lever. This said,
how this happens despite there being no obvious signs that you're in something that's currently flying is anyone's guess. - Cool Shades: Worn by Sonny. No Schwarzenegger-clone in the late 80s could be complete without one.
- Crate Expectations: By smashing large crates you can get weapons, food, extra points, and all kinds of goodies.
- Damsel in Distress: Catherine, who gets kidnapped - your rescue mission kicks off the plot of the game. In the final cutscene after defeating Dr. Bio, you're then treated to a cutscene where all four playable heroes reunite with her.
- Die, Chair, Die!:
- You can destroy structures like benches, dustbins, and assorted objects for points. One stage set in a clothing shop even allows you to tear apart everything in it besides fighting mooks.
- The final battle where you fight Dr. Bio has gigantic griffin statues in the background, which you can smash apart for points.
- Dressed Like a Dominatrix: The female mooks wear a Stripperiffic purple leather outfit and wield whips in combat.
- Evilutionary Biologist: The main villain, Dr. Bio, is performing DNA-altering experiments, with a few of his higher-ranked minions injected with animal DNA allowing them to turn into beast-people.
- Game Over: Obviously, it's possible to run out of health and lose the game, but the game technically, and very bizarrely, has two "game over" states once you're down.
- First, a timer counts down from 20. Insert a coin at this point and you can continue from your exact position. The game says you're in the Game Over state if you fail to insert a coin and you were the last player standing, but...
- ...then, for reasons that surely made sense to the developers, a SECOND continue prompt comes up, this one with its own screen where Catherine begs you to continue, that counts down from 10. If you continue on this screen, instead of respawning on the spot, you have to start your current section of the game over, and your score gets wiped out. This time, the game is well and truly over if you let the timer expire.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Where to start? For the most part, this is a brawler that have you beating up generic-looking biker thugs and human mooks. Sure, the death animations of the first and third bosses hint at something weird going on, but things mostly stay normal-ish for a while... then the fourth level abruptly throws an unannounced red insectoid millipede-human mutant (capable of breathing fireballs and performing a Rolling Attack) at you as the midboss. And then not long after in the same stage, after you've seemingly gone back to fighting a handful of generic punks again, you suddenly face a human-bat hybrid monster flanked by a fire-breathing mummy. There's two more of those human-bat enemies after you defeat a bunch of human mooks in the final stage. It is unexpected if you went into the game knowing nothing, but the game's promotional materials, guide and opening text states that the main villain, Dr. Bio, is an Evilutionary Biologist, so at least that makes sense.
- This said, nothing in the game hints that Dr. Bio is actually a robot, and this goes completely unexplained both during and after the final battle.
- Hover Bike: Dr. Bio, the Final Boss, rides one in the first stage of his battle.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: You regain health by eating chicken, burgers, pizza, and drinking what's either soda or some kind of energy drink.
- Improbable Age: Depending on whether you're playing the game or reading the flyer, Joe is either 18 - fair enough - or 14, in which case there are a LOT of questions that need answers.
- Improbable Weapon User: There are what look like jumper packs that you can occasionally pick up and bludgeon the enemies with.
- Molotov Cocktail: Occasionally mooks will try attacking you by hurling petrol bombs, which explodes into an open fire that lasts for several seconds onscreen which damages you on contact.
- Palette Swap: The second and third bosses share the same body, including their armour, but with different heads. Somehow, in doing so, the game's creators got away with making the third boss an extremely blatant clone of Jagi. On your own side, Kato and Sonny do the same thing.
- Plunger Detonator: In a few areas, you can find dynamite sticks strewn about, and a single plunger detonator in a corner. Pressing the attack button on the detonator will trigger the dynamites taking out multiple enemies all at once.
- Robotic Reveal: Dr. Bio, in the second half of his fight. After you exhaust his first life meter and knock him off his vehicle, he immediately sheds his human skin, revealing his interior to be a robot that looks somewhat like Ultron. Cue the second stage of battle.
- Rolling Attack: The, erm, human pillbug boss you fight in the volcano section of Stage 4 can curl himself into a ball and roll at you. This attack knocks you off your feet instantly and deals quite some damage, but you can interrupt it with some well-timed kicks making him unroll back to normal.
- Shoulders of Doom: A recurring attire in mooks and assorted enemies, having massive metal shoulder pads. Two of the bosses even have spiked pads to compensate!
- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: For some reason, Sonny (The Ahnold playable character of the four) isn't as widely promoted as the other three, with the intro cutscene actually leaving him out - after the text states "four heroes have risen", Joe, Lee and Kato then pops up onscreen, but then it quickly cuts to the opening titles while omitting Sonny. He's not even on the poster on top of this page!
- Whip of Dominance: Henchwomen mooks are armed with whips for roughing your players up and are all Dressed Like a Dominatrix, as is tradition for female Beat 'em Up mooks.
