Beat-em up games. We’ve all played them. In recent years they’ve fallen by the wayside. Remember ‘The Bouncer’? The highly anticipated PS2 launch title released by Squaresoft? Yea, crap. Complete and total worthlessness. Beat-em up games lost their charm with the release of the Playstation and Nintendo 64. It seemed that no one knew how to translate the visceral arcade action sequences into the third dimension. Until God of War. Brutal, violent, bloody, story-driven, and intense. God of War embodies the spirit of the old school beat-em up genre. Today, we’re going to treat you with not the first, but one of the most highly acclaimed beat-em up game series of all time. Double Dragon.
Double Dragon was an instant arcade classic. It was eventually ported to many consoles, including the NES. What double dragon lacked in graphics, it more than made up for in gameplay. The plot is fairly simple, your girlfriend is captured, you have to fight through hoards of rival martial artists to rescue her. Billy and Jimmy Lee are action heroes in the most classic Hollywood sense. The controls are simple, yet complex enough to keep gameplay interesting, while giving you many different options to fend off your attackers. Double Dragon 2 changed up control schemes quite a bit, designating attacks to the left, to the B button, and attacks to the right, to the A button. To the uninitiated, it takes some getting used to. The soundtrack is downright catchy, drawing you into the 8-bit action. The weapon system, while simplistic, was the very best at its time, and is still a lot of fun today.
Double Dragon 2 kept up on the trend where the first one left off, adding more enemies, more levels, more weapons, and more moves. The theme of Double Dragon 2 is more. In this case, more is better, much better.
Double Dragon 3 kept with the ‘more’ theme, but this time, ramped up the difficulty to insane levels. Here’s what it comes down to, if this is your first Double Dragon game, you lose. If you are a seasoned veteran, you have a slight chance of beating this game. Regardless of difficulty, the game is still a lot of fun to play. Sadly though, the amount of frustration ruins any amount of fun in this game.
Double Dragon is a classic series, and I highly recommend picking up Double Dragon Advance (GBA) if you have the proper hardware, as it is one of the better GBA titles out there.
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=l8x0OsPQOrw]
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And now, Double Dragon 1, 2, and 3!
Enjoy!!
