Double Dragon

• Release Date: 1995
• Genre: Action
• Style: Side-Scrolling Combat
• Similar Games: Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (Arcade), Street Fighter Alpha: Warriors' Dreams (Arcade), Fatal Fury (Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System)

Game Description

Double Dragon is one of the most well-known lineages in arcade scrolling beat-em-up action. Therefore, it was almost natural for someone to come up with the idea of making a fighter out of it. And Technos did just that. Double Dragon the fighting game features ten playable characters, ranging from the series' heroes Billy Lee and Jimmy Lee to staple bad guys like Abobo.

While the game is, at heart, a standard fighting game, it does deviate from the standard mold a bit in presentation and interface. The characters are rated in power, speed and defense, with one being the lowest rating and five being the highest. Virtually all fighting games have their characters ranked differently in these attributes to provide character diversity, but Double Dragon actually displays these attributes openly during the character select screen. Furthermore, while in fighting games it's implicitly understood that characters are not all equal, the different ratings totals are plainly visible in Double Dragon for each character.

The characters have a variety of special techniques that can be used during the game, as well as a charging system that allows for the use of charge techniques. Each character's yellow energy bar is overlaid with a blue charge bar. When the match begins, the energy bar is full and the charge bar is empty. As the character takes damage the charge bar is decreased, and whenever the character connects with an attack, his or her charge bar increases. When the charge bar meets the energy bar, the character goes into a charged state and can start using more deadly attacks, which return the charge bar to empty when used. This means that as the character gets closer to losing, he or she goes into a charged state more often. As a result, the character can throw charge attacks more frequently.

Roots & Influences

The original Double Dragon coin-op game was a side-scrolling fighter released by Taito. It was a massive hit and was ported to just about every console available at the time. Several side-scrolling fighter sequels were made after it. Double Dragon the fighting game was made using a combination of the movie's storyline and the side-scrolling fighter's lineage.

Review: Overall

Technos could have gone the easy way out by making a crappy fighting game and wrapping the Double Dragon name around it. Instead the game actually turns out to be a pretty decent fighter, which unfortunately has the storyline from the incredibly lame Double Dragon movie.

Double Dragon's high point is its stages. The stage backgrounds look decently enough for a fighting game, but what makes them stand out is their overall design. One of the most interesting stages is actually the wing of a biplane that's flying through some sort of canyon. The moving canyon sides really create a sense of speed for this stage, and when a character loses the match he or she actually falls off the wing of the biplane and rapidly disappears into the distance as the plane flies on. Another stage has black polished reflective tiles for floors, and shows vague mirror images of the characters as they fight. While the rest of the stages aren't as original as the biplane stage, they generally show a lot of interactivity. The subway stage, for instance, has a crumbling roof. When characters take hard falls pieces of roof break and fall off. The highlight is when a character is hit into the roof; the entire thing collapses and a subway train falls into the stage. The stages themselves are worth some exploration time, and really contribute to the game. The character animations aren't as well done, but they're adequate for the game.

The game's sound is generally pleasant and well done. The characters voices are decent enough, and plentiful to boot. Some of the game's music is actually pretty catchy. But the announcer's voice is just horrid. Imagine the most nasally annoying female secretary voice you can, then combine that with the sound a screeching harpy makes when it's in heat. Yeah I know, harpies don't exist, just imagine. If you can successfully imagine a combination of those two sound types you're beginning to approach just how bad the announcer's voice is. Thankfully you'll only hear it at the end of every match, so what you could do is just play until the match is nearly over, then pull the plug before the announcer comes on.

If you can stand the announcer intruding in with her hellishly spine tingling voice every match, Double Dragon actually has some pretty decent fighting gameplay. Character designs aren't terribly interesting, but that's because Technos was limited mostly to drawing on existing Double Dragon game and movie characters. The unique charging system really gives players an incentive to use charge attacks as soon as they can instead of holding back for the final strike. The sooner you blow your charge the sooner you can get started on another one. It also means that fights get more exciting as they go along, and near the end of a fight it's possible to throw one charge attack for every standard attack. The game's responsiveness to controls is decent enough to get by, although the button system takes some getting used to. Making the four buttons weakest attack to strongest attack and leaving the specific attack type up to the specific situation is pretty different though.

Overall Double Dragon is a surprisingly solid fighting game which has the dubious honor of being based on the Double Dragon movie. It didn't get enough tweaking to bring it up to classic fighter status, but it's good enough to appeal to the majority of fighter fans.

Review: Enjoyment

Solid effort for a fighting game that could have sold on license alone

Review: Graphics

The interactive backgrounds are really nice

Review: Sound

Catchy music, but horrible announcer voice

Review: Replay Value

Ten characters is a bit low, but its worth playing through a couple times just to see what can be done to the stages

Review: Documentation

Standard documentation

double dragon	super double dragon