What's there to say about Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story? As a biopic of the famed martial artist, it was pretty enjoyable, though many of the cartoonish stretches of his history are very exaggerated. It was done for drama's sake, so like Jim Carrey's Man on the Moon, that can be forgiven. The aura of Bruce Lee bleeds well into the world of video games, clones and homages can be found everywhere throughout the medium, especially fighting games. Games exist now, but despite the Liu Kangs, Jann Lee's, and Fei Longs, it's a little impressive that it took a 1993 movie to finally see the creator and master of Jeet Kune Do's likeness (sort of) represented in his own game.

Developed by Virgin Interactive, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was initially released on the Mega Drive before being later ported to the Super Nintendo and Atari Jaguar. It takes its attempt at a one-on-one tournament style fighting game, which is good in theory. The problem is the execution is incredibly clumsy and the game is left feeling flat and boring. It doesn't even feel much like a fighting game in any sense. For that matter, the Game Gear and Master System versions of Dragon were side-scrolling action platformers. That would've been a significantly better format for the 16-bit counterparts.

Dragon follows some key events of Bruce Lee's life and career, as represented by the movie. The still shots taken from the film look alright, though they're super contrasted to Hell and back, it seems like the masters of the film were dipped in chocolate milk and marinated in worcestershire sauce. In fairness, it's not too bad, just very hokey. The game's animations are pretty slick, at the very least, but the character sprites look awkward. It's a blend that's very jarring. This is a Virgin Interactive game, who regularly did stellar work during this period. Yet fighters will resemble paper cutouts, then explode with fluid movements. But then when they start exchanging blows, it makes Clutch Cargo look like a Disney/Pixar film, and my eyes want to vomit again.

God, the controls. I never would have imagined a game where I get to chop-socky people as Bruce Lee would be best described as boring. He has a lot of moves and attacks, good luck getting any of them to work or figure out what their best properties are, so it's not even rock-paper-scissors.

Nothing feels like an anti-air, the countering barely works, and for certain moments, I'm confident the buttons barely register as offense. There's zero strategy, I'll just mash buttons and hope to win. Damage scaling, what's that? There's barely a clear indicator how much WHICH attack does, and the fights can just go on forever. There's also the "FORM" score, which is awarded based on how unique your technique is, such as not spamming moves, and varying your high, mid, and low attacks. A six-button controller makes it a little easier to manage your forms and stances, but damn, it feels like a total waste of potential. The jumping is floaty, and the fights are more drawn out by the opponent taking more than a few seconds to stand back up after a hard knockdown.

There's a nice attempt to capture the key moments from the movies and his life, but the story portions involving Lee's marriage are left out, leaving the game just feeling like a sequence of events. It's too bad nothing about it feels like a complete package, or even enjoyable. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story perhaps tried to emulate Lee's martial arts and signature attacks, but should have adopted a more Street Fighter-esque combat philosophy, or for that matter, it would've fared better as a brawling game. The end result is a game that ends up feeling incredibly monotonous.

It has co-op capabilities, and up to three people can play it simultaneously. WHY??