Magic Dragon

Magic Dragon is an unlicensed game for the Famicom/NES that was built using the framework of R-Type. R-Type, notably, was never released on either system.

The publisher (Magic) and developer (Magicseries Corp.), likely the same entity in reality, released this game in mainland China sometime during 1994. The graphical elements are clearly poor quality edits or copies of those used in R-Type. The game itself is prone to considerable glitching, especially in the HUD area at the top of the screen. It is consistently distorted, and rarely appears clearly during gameplay, likely due to the number of sprites on screen.

Besides these issues, the game is simply a watered down sidescrolling shooter, a clone of R-Type in almost all regards, but with less stages included. Some report that the physical cartridge contains the same artwork of Gradius III.