What’s this? Not a plastic soldier guy? I know! Weird, right?

This is Dragon Master (1987) one of Milton Bradley’s series of Flipsiders travel games. There’s a lot of novelty here — the game is housed within the plastic case of an audio cassette. The board flips out of the bottom and the plastic shell has some sheet metal inside so the magnetized game pieces stick to the panels. Where the tape spools would normally be, we have a mechanical spinner that generates two random numbers for each use. I have to tell you, making the spinner go is extremely satisfying. It goes so fast. It also gets jammed a lot, but I don’t know if that is a flaw in the design or just the fact that the thing is almost forty years old. Along the top edge is a little compartment for the game pieces. As a piece of compact design, it’s pretty impressive and functional.

The game leaves a lot to desire. You basically wander around a section fighting monsters until you level up enough to get to the next section. First player to kill the dragon wins. The letters on the map correspond to the monsters — giant spider, dwarf (?), goblin, vampire, an ogre holding…something (for reasons I cannot explain, he reminds me of Dio) and a demon (which seems a bit more impressive than a dragon, honestly).

And then, of course, there’s the dragon, which is the reason I own this thing. It looks somehow…familiar…doesn’t it? Now, I can’t find any public legal records, but there are later versions of Dragon Master with a slightly different dragon. Interesting, don’t you think?