Interview: ‘Drake of the 99 Dragons’ QA Tester, Andrew Bado

Posted on March 11, 2018 by Cassidy

“Behold, the Master of the 99 Dragons.”

“Nothing can stop me now!”
Soulful art by Nina Matsumoto.

Today, I am happy to bring to you an interview with Last Dimension‘s Andrew Bado! With over fifteen years of games industry experience, he’s had a hand in all manners of the business — between his duties as a QA tester, pixel artist, programmer, and now running his own independent development studio. But this interview will take us back to the beginnings of his career in games software, to help shed some light on one specific title.

Between 2003 and 2005, Andrew was employed as a member of Majesco’s “Quality Assurance” team, and tasked with testing a variety of titles in their prototype forms. One release in particular serves as the primary focus of today’s interview: Drake of the 99 Dragons. Even after publishing our article attempting to examine the history and legacy of the title, I still had a number of questions about the much-maligned release. And luckily for me, Andrew had the answers.

This interview should hopefully serve to dispel a couple of long-standing rumors surrounding the game, provide some interesting insights into the game’s development, and to help illuminate the role that QA is meant to play in the production cycle of a video game. So, please to enjoy our first “Industry Interview” here on the Bad Game Hall of Fame!

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Drake of the 99 Dragons

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Cassidy

“I Doubt I’ll Ever Be Done Feeding the Undying Dragon.”

“Let’s just say I’m done believing in ghosts.”
Undying art by Nina Matsumoto.

Dreams really do come true. Yes, as the President [and still sole member] of the “Drake of the 99 Dragons Fan Club,” I just about fell out of my chair when I heard the news that my favorite guilty pleasure game would be making its way onto Steam in 2018 — a surprise announcement which came just a day after the surprise release of Chrono Trigger on the platform. But while the version of Chrono Trigger currently on Steam would seem to serve as a hugely disappointing conversion of a beloved game, Drake of the 99 Dragons has no such high expectations to meet: It was a game critically reviled on its release, and whose legacy has remained one of infamy for the better part of fifteen years.

It’s been an uphill battle trying to convince people that Drake of the 99 Dragons has gotten a bum rap. Without it being readily accessible anymore on Xbox or PC, it was all that more difficult to convince folk to actually give the game a shot for themselves. But now seeing it land on the largest games digital distribution platform in existence, I know the time has finally come. The story of Drake’s revenge and redemption begins now, and I stand beside him as a devoted member of the 99 Dragons Clan. I may not have the firepower to back him up, but I like to think that the pen can sometimes be mightier than the sword.

Today on the Bad Game Hall of Fame, I will legitimately attempt to defend what some have referred to as one of the worst games of all time — a title which has earned itself a permanent home on Wikipedia’s “List of video games notable for negative reception.” And before we get started, I feel compelled to state that my love for this game is in no way ironic: I genuinely love this flawed little game for what it is, and my hope here in writing this article is to convince you, dear reader, to consider giving Drake of the 99 Dragons a chance for yourself… with a major caveat. But more on that later. For now, it’s time to rock the dragon.

UPDATE (3-11-18): We also have an interview with a QA tester for the game available here on the site! It corrects a handful of details / guesses I made in this article, as well as providing fascinating insight into the development.

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Bad Game Music #11

Posted on February 26, 2018 by Cassidy

This month’s batch of bad video game music is a selection of pieces from licensed releases! Featuring one of the most botched adaptations of a piece of classical music this side of DJ Mollynuts’ “Symphony No. 69.” Let it be known that of this lot, the Shrek kart racer was actually the most fun to play / the closest to being a functional video game.

  1. Fantasia (GEN) – “Night on Bald Mountain”
  2. Shrek: Swamp Kart Speedway (GBA) – “[Main Theme]”
  3. The Wizard of Oz (SNES) – “Poppy Fields”
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Bad Rats: the Rats’ Revenge

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Cassidy

“Smash the Cat.”

“This game is a piece of pure fiction, actually we think all animals are great!”
International box art.

You know, it didn’t always used to be this way: There was a point in time where Steam had something resembling some measure of quality control — where 90% of the contents of their digital games store wasn’t low-effort asset flips and interchangeable RPG Maker anime boob simulators. There was a wonderful era where seeing half-baked releases on the service felt something like a novelty, rather than them comprising the vast majority. And for as much as I love so-called bad games, there’s no denying that browsing Steam in this day and age can be a bit disheartening, even for me. As I said: It didn’t always used to be this way.

Before all the three-cent trading cards and gambling for gun skins, Valve had to make their money mostly on the back of actual game sales. And before users had their choice of thousands of one-dollar games to gift to their friends as a “joke,” they may have had to spend a little more and pick from a much smaller selection. For many consumers, the bad game du jour ended up being 2009’s Bad Rats: the Rats’ Revenge — more commonly shortened as Bad Rats. According to Steam’s own achievement tracking, only 12% of the game’s owners have played the game long enough to unlock what should seem to be its most easily-attainable achievement (beating 10 of the game’s 44 levels). If we’re being generous here, it’s still very likely that less than 20% of players who own the game on Steam have ever even bothered launching it. Because Bad Rats isn’t a game you’re meant to actually play: It is simply gifted and traded as a gag — an entry in your library that you can’t get rid of, and are meant to pass on to others like a plague.

… But what if you do play it? Could it really be all that bad? Is it fair for folk to judge this book by its cover? There’s a chance that Bad Rats may simply be a victim of circumstance — unfairly maligned based on its premise alone. There’s a very real possibility here that Bad Rats isn’t quite as bad as it’s made out to be. So, let’s try our best to clear our heads of preconceived notions, and give this game the benefit of the doubt it so rarely seems to receive.

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Hong Kong 97

Posted on February 16, 2018 by Cassidy

“I Love Beijing Tiananmen.”

“Wipe out all 1.2 billion of the red communists!”
Japanese box art.

There’s not really a sense of mystery as to “how games get made” any more. On the AAA level, it’s all pretty straightforward: A developer is tasked with producing a game, said developer develops said game, and a publisher makes sure it lands on store shelves. On the independent level nowadays, you probably picture smaller teams pouring their hearts into their passion projects, before selling and marketing their own wares online via itch.io or Steam or wherever else have you. Of course, it isn’t always quite that simple. And back in the days before modern distribution methods? It was never that simple.

For years, the origins of the infamous Super Famicom title Hong Kong 97 seemed to be a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. There are some who believe that it never actually existed in any sort of purchasable form — that it only ever existed as a download on ROM repositories and whatnot. Others might actually believe that it was somehow stocked alongside the likes of Super Mario World on store shelves, left wondering how the hell it could have wound up there? Naturally, neither of these theories are quite right, as we’ll discover together over the course of this article.

This is the story of one of the crudest, most amateur video games ever sold. But it’s more than just that: It’s also a story about the spirit of the indie developer, a history lesson on video game bootleggery, and a parable on how there are some bells that can’t be unrung. It’s a story I’m actually almost hesitant to write, given that the man most closely associated with the game has recently been quoting as saying that he would prefer that it fade into obscurity once again (and for good reason). But it’s also a game that mined shock value and racism for comedy, so I’m plenty content to say “heck it, let’s rake it over the coals.” This is the story of Hong Kong 97.

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