Normally, when I review a game, I try to be somewhat Paula Abdul-ish in my evaluation, and find something positive to say. Whatever a game's ultimate playability or quality, a team of developers worked very hard to put it together, oftentimes under time or budget constraints, and they're owed a certain amount of respect for that. But Dragon Booster for the Nintendo DS pushed my kindness envelope by forcing me to endure remarkably unresponsive controls and Playstation-era graphics, all while charging $10 more than other DS games for the privilege. So forget the niceties, Konami, 'cause it's on.

Here comes the pain.

Dragon Tales
Dragon Booster is based on the cartoon of the same name, not that you'd know it from playing the game at all. Some brief introductory text that explains that once upon a time, man and dragon lived together in harmony, and then one day they didn't, and then there was a war until there was just one dragon left, and now it's 3000 years later, and there's lots of dragons again, and there's gonna be another war. Got that? No? Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to ponder the deeper implications of dragon/human relations, because you won't be burdened with any more plot points. Ever. Dragon Booster has absolutely no story to speak of. Granted, threading storyline around a racing game is tricky at the best of times, but usually there's some sort of basic narrative to explain why the participants are racing, or at the very least give the player someone to root for. Fans of the cartoon (I'm sure they must exist) will be very disappointed that their favorite characters get such shoddy treatment in their very own game.

Players choose their rider from a smallish selection of humans, each matched with a dragon of particular hue. Each color dragon has a different set of specs for Power, Speed, and Jump in addition to having gear that works for them and them alone. The gear is unimaginative and generic, the typical sort of mildly-upgrading crap that every racing game since the dawn of time has had. Of course, you could strap rocket engines to your dragon's ass and it still wouldn't matter, because the control is so broken that you're still probably going to lose.

Oh, look, I just crashed again
Controlling your dragon on each boring, bland, and dismal Dragon Booster track is achieved through a hand-cramping combination of D-pad and stylus. The D-pad sends the lethargic lizard staggering left or right, while the stylus is used to collect on-screen items, set speed, and jump. At least that's what the stylus is supposed to do. What it does in practice is spectacularly fail to work with any kind of consistency, so gameplay actually consists of moving with the D-pad and stabbing frantically at the touch screen. Even when the screen realizes it's been touched, it seems reluctant to do anything about it, making jumps and attempts to snare items extremely sluggish. I eventually gave up trying to jump, opting instead to crash into obstacles and fall to my death through holes in the track. Yes, imagining my dragon's crushed and lifeless body at the end of some mind-reeling drop was more fun than actually playing this game.

It came from 1996
What can I say about the graphics in Dragon Booster to effectively convey just how eye-scrapingly bad they are? Well, there's the fact that the only reason I know I was riding a dragon was because it's the name of the game. Otherwise, I could've been sitting astride a rabbit, or a particularly agile frog, or even a mech of some sort. Or I could say that the graphics in Virtua Fighter put those in Dragon Booster to shame. (And yes, I do mean the original.) I could also say that the game is uglier than Iggy Pop and Sandra Bernhard's love child might ever hope to be. Instead, though, I think I'll just say that there is more impressive artwork hanging on the refrigerator of the average Dragon Booster viewer's grandma than there is in the actual game.

It's bad enough that Dragon Booster is more frustrating than calculus and less fun than a kick in the shins, but it's also absurdly expensive for a DS game. At $40, it costs more than Animal Crossing, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and even Super Princess Peach. If you flip to the Rs in your dictionary and look up the definition of "rip off," I'm pretty sure you'll find a picture of Dragon Booster's box art.

If you'll permit me a moment of artistic indulgence, I would like to sum up my Dragon Booster experience with a Haiku:

Dragon Booster pain
My eyes bleed when I play it
Make the nightmare stop

-Maj1013