Developed/Published by: Technōs Japan (Published by Taito in North America.)
Released: 22/04/1987
Completed: 12/03/2026
Completion: Finished it (no need for saving until that ridiculous final level.)
This essay on Double Dragon follows last week’s on Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-Kun as a tribute to the recently departed Yoshihisa Kishimoto, even though, to be honest, I’m pretty hard on it.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and if I’ve got an Egret Mini II and I’ve paid to own Double Dragon again, then I might as well play it.
In my write up of the NES version, I mentioned that I’d played and completed the arcade original in the form of a now long-delisted Xbox 360 release (written up for Eurogamer.) I absolutely put the boot in, but re-reading that now, I notice how it’s definitely a review of the Xbox 360 release rather than an examination of the arcade original. But there’s something I mention in the review I had completely forgotten about: Double Dragon’s astonishingly poor performance.
I initially thought the Egret II Mini was at fault–I’d remembered someone saying that if the power supply is too low there are issues–but I’d plugged it in with a decent charger. It’s simply that the game’s original hardware wasn’t up to the game design, and the Egret II Mini stays authentic to that (it seems that people can, and do, overclock the game when emulating it through other means; it might have been nice if Taito had offered something like this, but I understand why they didn’t.)
Ultimately, the game suffers so much slowdown it is agonising to play. The game slows down as soon as there are as few as two enemies on screen, but speeds up if (for example) you’ve knocked one of them down. The speed of the game undulates in a way that’s completely discombobulating. It makes playing the game unpleasant in a way that’s unusually unique; like trying to build a card tower in front of a rotating fan. And you’ve got jam all over your hands.
Now… just because I feel that way doesn’t mean that the arcade audience of the late 80s felt that way, with Double Dragon “America’s highest-grossing dedicated arcade game in 1988 and 1989.” I find that baffling, because it’s nigh unplayable!
(The only assumption I can make–and it very much is an assumption–is that because the game was using older 8-bit chips, maybe the board was cheaper and so a lot of machines were sold, so it won by sheer numbers. But I certainly don’t have any sales numbers.)
The thing that makes this all a bit of a shame is that, well, even if it’s stupidly hard, I sort of like Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-Kun, and Double Dragon, as the next game from Yoshihisa Kishimoto–and the one that truly defined the side-scrolling beat-em-up by featuring proper levels that you have to progress through to complete–should be better than it is. Kishimoto is really trying to make another leap here, and you can feel the game straining within the limitations of the obvious technical problems.
For example: the game is clearly intended to improve on Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-Kun’s enemy AI, one of that game’s most interesting aspects. And while the enemies here do try and position themselves to take you on, the thing you’re most going to notice is that they’ll just refuse to get close to you if you’re holding a weapon (making holding weapons a complete waste of time) and then otherwise they’re really as dumb as rocks, happily walking into dynamite they’ve just thrown or off cliffs.
And the player’s abilities are supposed to be deeper, more interesting, more situational, with new moves like a headbutt and a spinning jump kick. But it’s ruined by the fact that–I’m sure inspired by Kunio-Kun’s powerful back kick–heroes Billy and Jimmy Lee have a “elbow smash” that attacks enemies behind them. Possibly aware that the back kick was frustrating–because you couldn’t use it unless you had an enemy behind you–you can now do the elbow smash whenever you like, and because it guarantees an immediate knockdown… the entire game becomes about turning your back on enemies, performing the elbow smash, and then performing it again as soon as they get up.
I want to be clear: I don’t think you can play this game “properly.” It’s simply too frustrating, with no sense that anything that happens is related to your own abilities because of the slowdown. So instead, the actual and I suspect only way to get through this game is to elbow smash every enemy you face–the ones you can’t make drop off edges, anyway.
The only reason this game isn’t an easy single credit win is because the final level is, frankly, nonsense. The first section features some blocks that spring out from the background and some spears that statues attack you with that knock off half of your health. They don’t have any tell (the blocks in particular are infuriating) and it means that you will almost certainly lose a life (and the default settings only start you with two.)
(There’s also a jump across a bridge in the previous level that will probably take a few lives from you, but at least you can see that.)
Once you get past all that nonsense, the main problem is just that every enemy has a ludicrous amount of health and (yet again calling back to Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-Kun) the final boss can kill you in one hit by shooting you. He goes down easily to the elbow smash like everyone else, however.
I really, really wish I liked Double Dragon. It’s a hugely important game, but when you play it, you almost can’t understand why. The design is coming from the right place. I can see that Kishimoto is trying to move the genre forward. But it’s still a bit half-baked, and the performance is too poor for you to appreciate it anyway.1 I wasn’t that hot on the NES version–with its awkward platforming, and still including those annoying stupid blocks–but it’s a much better way to spend your time than this.
Will I ever play it again? Right, that’s twice. That’s absolutely enough times.
Final Thought: You know what? There’s one thing they nailed straight off with Double Dragon. The theme music. Absolutely gets the blood pumping.
- I’d love to read Florent Gorges’ Enter The Double Dragon to see if it has anything on Kishimoto’s experience making this, but it’s 1) in French and 2) not easily accessible. ↩︎
