Dragon Spirit is an action & adventure game where Princess Alicia of the kingdom of Mitgult is kidnapped by the monster Zawell. It's now up to the heroic warrior Amul to transform himself into a blue dragon and go and rescue the princess.
Players control the blue dragon as it flies around and destroys everything in its path in vertically scrolling shoot-em-up gameplay. The game consists of nine stages, with action taking place on two planes: the sky where the dragon is flying and the ground below. The dragon has two different kind of attacks: fire that shoots up the screen, and fire that drops to hit a place on the ground in front of the dragon. Enemies exist both in the air and on the ground, and some can fly up from the ground to the sky.
Players can pick up power-ups or upgrades that will help them in their fight. Upgrades can include extra heads on the dragon, health, faster shots, and more. At the end of each stage is a boss that needs to be defeated. Having good upgrades that are not lost from being hit before reaching the bosses will help.
The Dragon Spirit NES version presents an altered story and an additional gameplay mode. In this version, King Amul and his wife Queen Alicia have two children named Iris and Lace. A new evil named Galda has decided to attack the Earth, taking Iris captive. Lace must go rescue her.
The Dragon Spirit NES version also adds a new initial stage. If the player survives it, the game continues in a "Blue Dragon" game much like the original arcade game. If the player fails to clear this initial stage in one life, an easy mode called "Gold Dragon" begins, skipping about half the game's stages and features a different ending.
The Dragon Spirit TurboGrafx-16 version has different seventh and eighth stages compared to other versions. The underwater and dark themed stages were changed to castle interior themed stages.