The Panzer Dragoon games are rail shooters, except Panzer Dragoon Saga (1998), a role-playing game. All games follow the story of a hero or heroine fighting an evil empire in a post-apocalyptic world while riding a dragon. The series' name originates from its original concept designers referring to it as "armoured dragon", then feeling that this was too bland and deciding to transliterate it to German. The cutscenes feature its own language, Panzerese, which is a mixed language based on a combination of Ancient Greek, English, German, Japanese, Latin, and Russian. The words in these languages were a hobby of Yukio Futatsugi, one of the core designers of the first game.