The Mean Streets of Double Dragon

This was one of the greatest games ever developed and it ate countless hours and days of my time. Double Dragon was a side scrolling beat ‘em up with plenty of violent action. You could team up with a friend in the co-operative mode and punch, slash and batter your way through an army of evil thugs to rescue your girlfriend. Originally released by Taito in 1987 Double Dragon was hugely popular and spawned two arcade sequels and loads of home console ports.

Looking at it now, yes it is very cheesy but at the time this was super cool. The vaguely martial arts styling, two muscle bound brothers with headbands and denim jackets taking on the criminal underworld to rescue a damsel in distress and terrific combat game-play. The game kicked off with the Black Warriors kidnapping Billy’s girlfriend, Marian and running off with her. You played as Billy or Jimmy Lee (also called Hammer and Spike) and you had to bring the gang to their knees and fight your way into their hideout to free the girl.

The combat game-play was awesome with basic punch and kick attacks as well as combos allowing you fly kick, throw enemies over your shoulder or just knee them in the face. You could also get grabbed by thugs and double teamed but elbow smashes and head butts would allow you to escape. As if that wasn’t violent enough the game included a vast array of weaponry and you could slash with or throw knives, use a baseball bat, a whip, a club and throw boxes, boulders, barrels and even dynamite. If you hit an enemy with a weapon they’d drop it and you could pick it up but that worked the other way too.

Double Dragon was developed by Technos Japan Corporation and it followed on from Renegade which was a similar street punk violence orgy. The developer sadly no longer exists, they went bankrupt in 1996. As is usually the case when a developer goes bust their back catalogue was snapped up and so you haven’t seen the last of their games yet.

There were four stages in Double Dragon starting on the streets and taking you through a factory, a forest and eventually a castle. It was seriously challenging and as if the tidal wave of vicious malcontents wasn’t enough you also had to beat a time limit for each level. There were boss characters at the end of each level and the big boss at the end, named Willy, was armed with a machine gun. If you miraculously managed to beat him then Marian would be released from her position mounted on the wall and would slink over to you and reward you with a kiss.

It was released as a stand up cabinet with an eight way joystick and three buttons for each player. The two player co-op mode was great and playing through with a mate made the challenge much more achievable. Double Dragon was massively popular for a while and it popped up on all the home consoles and systems, it even spawned a woeful 1994 film. More recently it was released on the Xbox 360 and the Wii.