Drake of the 99 Dragons is a third-person shooter for Xbox and PC, developed by the Swedish studio Idol FX and published by Majesco Entertainment in 2003. It stars an undead assassin named Drake, the last surviving member of the Dragon clan, on his quest to restore the Dragons' honor by eliminating the rival clan that killed them all and stole an ancient treasure of theirs.
In 2018, the game managed to see a re-release on Steam.
Drake of the 99 Dragons contains examples of the following tropes:
- '90s Anti-Hero: Drake is an undead assassin with a black leather coat, a pale corpse-like skin color, uses an infinite number of guns, always beats up and kills his enemies, has a soul absorbing power, and he speaks primarily in corny Badass Boasts with a raspy, low-pitched voice.
- A God Am I: On realizing he's undead, Drake yells, "Am I... INVINCIBLE?!?" and jumps out a window to test it. He promptly dies.
- All There in the Manual: The prequel comic says the name of the setting is "Neo Macau", confirming it does take place in a futuristic China.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The final level allows you to respawn with the press of a button instead of being sent to the Guardians.
- Badass Boast: Drake attempts this as part of his introduction.Drake: (flipping two handguns around) Those who know my name whisper it in fear. Most people I meet, I only meet once. I am Drake, the Assassin. To me, life is all about death.
- Big Bad: Tang, CEO of Tang Industries, is the one behind the massacre of Drake's clan who aims to free the Spirit King Supreme and Take Over the World.
- Blank White Eyes: Drake has these to make his undead-ness more apparent, though his character model still has them even before he dies.
- Bullet Time: One of Drake's powers is the ability slow down time. Unfortunately, it slows him down too, making it completely useless in combat.
- Cel Shading: Only really visible on Drake's trenchcoat.
- The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The game claims that you can only damage the final boss while time is frozen, which is completely untrue.
- Cutscene Incompetence: Not counting the death that starts the plot, Drake is killed in cutscenes five times over the course of the game. He actually dies so much that he drains the guardians's power due to having to bring him back, forcing them to shunt him into one of his previous corpses.
- Double Jump: One of Drake's standard abilities.
- Down the Drain: Drake sneaks into Tang's headquarters through the sewers.
- Fake Difficulty: The game is very hard, but most of it is due to poor design decisions and the game being barely functional than anything intentional.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The soul manipulation abilities don't work. You can die jumping off a building the game forces you to jump off. Drake can get stuck up to his waist in the ground at random. And so on, and so forth.
- Game-Over Man: The guardians, who mock you every time you die.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: Tang's goal with the Soul Portal Artifact is to use the souls of the dead to power an army of cyborgs to Take Over the World, which is the most characterization he gets in the game.
- Guns Akimbo: Drake can wield two different guns in each hand. But then again he can't just reload his guns because of this, so he instead throws them away and pulls out a pair of new ones out of nowhere whenever he runs out of bullets in his old pair.
- Gun Twirling: Done obsessively by Drake in cutscenes, often while spouting off hefty amounts of exposition.
- Heroic Bloodshed: The use of Guns Akimbo and emphasis on mobility in combat was clearly meant to invoke this.
- Idiot Hero: Drake. Almost every death in-story is a result of Drake's stupidity and recklessness.
- Informed Ability: According to the game, Drake is the world's greatest assassin—yet his assassination methods seem to consist of charging in with Guns Akimbo before spraying bullets all over the room and dropping pistols instead of reloading them, meaning he's leaving behind a pretty hefty trail of evidence. He also canonically dies enough times to fully drain the power of the Guardians, five of which happen in cutscenes and are almost all creditable to him personally.
- Justified Extra Lives: The Guardians revive Drake every time he dies.
- Lantern Jaw of Justice: Drake's got a pretty hefty jawbone.
- Large Ham: Drake hams up every cutscene he’s in.
- Last of His Kind: Drake is the last "living" member of the Dragon clan.
- Left Hanging: The comic tie in depicted a large subplot about a crime lord named Tim Chung that never made it into the game.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Dying results in 2 loading screens, one taking you to a respawn timer where the guardians insult Drake, and another to take you back.
- MacGuffin: The Soul Portal Artifact, which Drake spends the entire game trying to get back from Tang and his minions.
- Power Tattoos: Drake's chest tattoo of the Undying Dragon, given to him by his master, is why he can come back to life. It must be fed souls on a regular basis to hold Drake to this world.
- Resurrective Immortality: Drake gains the ability to come back from death after receiving the Undying Dragon tattoo. He assumes it means he’s completely invincible at first and finds out that he’s wrong the hard way.
- Shout-Out: Drake's tattoo of the Undying Dragon is a Shout-Out to Iron Fist, who has a Power Tattoo of a dragon named Shou Lou the Undying on his chest.
- Take Over the World: What Tang seems to be trying to accomplish.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Drake dies in-story a grand total of seven times.
- Throw-Away Guns: Drake doesn't carry magazines but an infinite number of loaded guns. Instead of reloading, he drops his empty gun and pulls out another one.
The potential consequences of throwing away fingerprinted guns are never addressed. - Totally Radical: In one cutscene, Drake uses the phrase "out of this world" unironically.
- Too Dumb to Live: At one point, Drake dives out of a window at the top floor of a skyscraper for no real reason, apparently to test his powers and see if he truly has become invincible. He promptly falls to his death.
- Time Stands Still: One of Drake’s powers.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Drake is shirtless in the tutorial.
- Wall Run: Drake gains the ability to do this toward the beginning of the game.
- Would Hit a Girl: Drake has no problem with killing female enemies, and against one of the bosses (One of the Big Bad's henchwomen), even goes as far as to continue beating her up even after he's already taken her down.
