Sea Dragon (computer game)

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Sea Dragon
Developer(s)	Adventure International
Publisher(s)	Adventure International
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Side-scroller
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Apple II, TRS-80, Atari, MS-DOS

Sea Dragon was a side-scrolling game on the TRS-80 computer, released in 1982 by Adventure International. It was ported to the Apple II, Atari 400/800, and the Color Computer.

The player controlled a submarine that could shoot torpedoes; the gameplay was dodging moving underwater mines and bad guys, and occasionally surfacing for air. The goal was to destroy a reactor that could be reached by navigating past several game levels. The game concept and gameplay were largely a knockoff of the Scramble arcade game.

Sea Dragon was mildly notable on the Apple II because the title page played the sound of a digitized voice saying "Sea Dragon!" When the user started the game they were told "Attention Captain. Your ship's computer is now ready. Please wait while I initialize the systems", and during the game would be informed "Air level critical!" and "Approaching maximum damage!" This speech was a novelty, as the Apple II speaker was usually only able to emit a click. Programmers would have to click the speaker rapidly in order to produce any sound — the typical Apple II game made beep and boop sounds, and of course plenty of clicking sounds. Programming Sea Dragon to play back an audio sample, using only a clicking speaker, was an interesting technical accomplishment, shared with several other 1982 Apple II games: Dung Beetles, Creepy Corridors and Plasmania. The Color Computer version is the only other version that featured speech; it said "Welcome aboard, Captain!" on the title screen.

The original version was developed by Wayne Westmoreland and Terry Gillam on the TRS-80.