Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 177: Double Dragon

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

Jeremy Parish teams up with HG101's Kurt Kalata and Rob Russo to take on the violent, deadly history of the Double Dragon franchise (and hopefully save Marion in the process).

This week in Retronauts, we sing the ballad of Bimmy Lee. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm the extremely loud Jeremy Parrish. goodness, I need to turn down the mic. Okay, there we go. And I am in Long Island, New York. I guess is Long Island is not a place you're in. It's you're on Long Island. Yeah. I mean, it is. Yeah. Okay. I'm in Garden City on Long Island in the state of New York. That's, that's what's happening here. And with me here in a hotel room, we have Kurt Kalata. And you are from Hardcore Gaming 101. And with you on the other side of the table.

We have Rob Russo. That's me. I'm a do the Hardcore Gaming 101 podcast. So these guys are here once again because I'm in their neighborhood and we presented at Long Island Retro Expo. If you weren't here, that's too darn bad because you missed a fun talk. But that's okay because we're going to have another fun talk right here. And this year, there aren't hot rodders outside making a lot of noise. So that's very exciting to me personally because it means there won't be problems with the sound quality. Anyway, this year I opened up the floor to Kurt and Rob and said, what should we talk about when I make you sit in in my hotel room and be on my podcast? And they said, double dragon. Double Dragon. Yeah, I thought it was interesting because it was such a ubiquitous, like, game, like license. It was everywhere for a while, and then nobody even thinks about it. It kind of crashed and burned. It was super popular, and, I mean, we don't know exactly what happened to it,

it feels like Technos kind of mismanaged the series. Yeah, I mean, I kind of chalk it up to a fatality of the Street Fighter era. It was kind of the series that defined the multiplayer scrolling beat him up. And, you know, Capcom jumped on that with Final Fight, which was going to be Street Fighter 87, I think, or 89. And, you know, so Capcom was borrowing heavily from Double Dragon. And then they revamped Street Fighter 2, and everyone who was, you know, paying money to walk around with a friend on the arcade cabinet and punch bad guys suddenly said, you know, I'd rather just punch my friend instead. So the belt scroller pretty much gave way to the fighting game. And it took a while to fade.

And you definitely saw things like the Cowboys of Mu Mesa or whatever, you know, well into the mid-90s. But you really get the sense that after, like, 1992, that genre's day had come and gone. And so Double Dragon just couldn't adapt. And they did try to do the fighting game thing, and it was very bad. And they just haven't been able to figure out how to make that format work and be relevant again. And their most recent attempt last year's Double Dragon for, I guess that was the year before. Was that 2016 or 2017? It was kind of like right at the boundary.

It was an anniversary game. So whatever, 30 years, yeah, 30 years for whenever the first double dragon came out. So 87, okay. So 2017, 2017. Yes, that was, by all accounts, a disaster. And I haven't had the stomach to check it out. So from Arcade Darling, NES Powerhouse to good God who cares. That's the double dragon story.

And today we're going to explore why, or at least make some guesses. Right. debuted in the arcades in 1987. It was a cooperative brawler, and it wasn't a completely new concept in games. I mean, you had games where you walked forward and punched things already. You know, you had stuff like Kung Fu. Kung Fu, yeah. But Double Dragon put a new spin on things. It made everything feel fresh and different. And I feel like there's a few ways in which that is the case. But before we dig into the Koynop game, why do we talk about the people who actually made these games? There's been a whole lot of them.

Yeah, so it's a technos, right? Which I always would confuse with techno. Right. But they're not the same thing. They aren't. One of them is still around and one of them is not. I confuse with Technosoft. Oh.

Wow. They're also not still around. Nope. Yes. We need a disambiguity page. Yeah, it turns out if you're going to have some kind of technology company, like having tech is the first word. It's like, it's hard to tell them apart. Yeah.

Maybe not the best idea. Right. So they were founded in 1981. Think about enemy, Kunu Otaki. They didn't really do a whole lot that was particularly notable. They did a couple of wrestling games, like Tag Team Wrestling and Matt Mania. Like, I think Matt Mania is pretty well regarded. Well, tag team wrestling is at least somewhat known.

Yeah. Even if it's not well regarded because, you know, it was made infamous by Homestar Runner, the Strong Bad. Yeah, the Strong Bad. It has, it was one of the very first third-party NES games to come to America, published by Data East. And it's, you know, a bad wrestling game that has a really terrible translation. And people are willing to overlook the bad wrestling game part of it because the translation is so bad that it comes around the other side and becomes extremely charming. It's, you know, the game that gave us a winner as you. So, yeah, so that's probably the most, the most notable thing.

thing that Technos did before Double Dragon. Yeah. And then they must have a close thing with Data East because apparently they had developed Karate Champ for them, even though they didn't really have the name on it, I don't think. Yeah, that was, I had trouble kind of figuring out the, like, the provenance of Karate Champ when I was doing a retrospective on it. But, like, the guy that sort of created Double Dragon, what's his name, Yoshihisa Kishimoto, he started at Data East. they must have some sort of, yeah, association with each other.

And then he hopped over to Technos, and the game he created was Niketsu Koha Kunio-Kun, which is, I think, the genesis of what we understand as the side-scrolling beat him up, named after the Technos president, Kunio-Taki. And that's, what does that translate to? Is that like hot-blooded, yeah, hot-blooded, like hot-bredded punk or? Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I'm probably totally wrong.

Yeah, it's a very Japanese, like 80-style, like, you know, Yankees and, uh... Yeah, I mean, it's, it's apparently based on the creator's youth where he, like, he's said in interviews, uh, fairly recently, maybe a few years ago that he had, you know, family problems. And on top of that, like, he got dumped when he was a teenager and it really took it badly. And he decided to just, like, kidnapped his girlfriend. Just punch his way across town somehow. Yeah, it's like, he was apparently like, yeah, got into a lot of fights. He claims to have gotten into a fight on a daily basis, although I imagine if you're getting hit in the head that often, you might not remember things too clearly.

But, yeah, so, like, and that has, like, so we know the game is Renegade. And Renegade very much looks like a predecessor to double dragon, whereas the Japanese version is clearly, like, very, very Japanese. They're all wearing old-timey school, like weird school uniforms that look more like almost like Chinese. Yeah, there are. Are they're more like the, like, 1930s era?

What was that? Showa era? Yeah, that's from the 20s. It was definitely based off his childhood. That would have been a little older. It's a, yeah, it's a difficult, yeah, I think it's Shoa, because that was a long one. Right. And it's hard, like, when you say like, oh, Shoa era, you're like, well, okay, sorry, I don't know my Japanese imperial era is that often.

Oh, yeah, no, Tai Shows are the 20s. Okay, well, anyway. It doesn't matter. Yeah. You don't need to know, but. You can look it up, and I don't know it either. But yeah, like, it's very much like, I mean, I would describe them. They look kind of like buttoned up smocks, kind of.

Sort of, yeah. They have an almost military look to them. But in any case, it's definitely not something, it's not an American look. It's a very Japanese look. Right. But the principles are there for, like, the beat them up, which is like, you know, street warfare. And, you know, like hitting people with clubs and bats and other things, knives, maybe brass knuckles.

I'm not sure all the weapons that were involved in Renegade. Yeah. And that game, the levels were very small. Like the levels did scroll back and forth, but they wasn't like, you know, a linear tracto one part of the stage in the L.A. Yeah, it was basically like self-contained little boxes. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, they were brawls. I mean, I think he really did base it very much on like just getting into like kind of free-floating fights in the city. Yeah, you can sort of see the wrestling influence too, like if you think of it that way. Hmm. But yeah, you're like, you know, go through the city. streets and then the subway and so forth. And yeah, it got, it got changed up a lot to be more of a warriors kind of look in the U.S. It's extremely warriors looking with like guys and, you know,

no shirts and open jean vests and things like that. And things like the gigantic sukeban, the huge schoolgirl who fights you in the subway becomes like a large prostitute or something. Like, it's kind of weird. Like they change it and localize it. And I guess maybe they didn't want it to be like, oh, you're beating up kids. But it doesn't become better. I don't know. Yeah. It's a little strange.

Renegade has never been a favorite of mine, but... It must have done pretty well in the United States. I think so. It saw conversions to a lot of systems. Obviously, there was the NES version, but there were a lot of PC conversions like C64 and probably Spectrum. Yeah, those took on a life of their own because they made like a target renegade, which made it back on the NES.

And then like a third game where you fought. mummies and stuff, which sounds ridiculous, but then Double Dragon did the same thing later. I guess, yeah, you know, you punch things long enough, and eventually you're punching dead things. Yeah, sooner or later. I mean... But that localization, I think, is... It really seems to a point to what Double Dragon ended up like, which was, again, sort of like

the Warriors, although if you look at the story, it's really more inspired by Fiss the North Star and Mad Max. Like, everything is supposed to be post-apocalyptic, even though it just sort of looks like Urban decay. Yeah, there's a question. I mean, that's the second, the double dragon two is definitely takes place in the future. But I think the first one is very much, because it started out, like it was going to be the next Kunio Kun game. And so, like, that's what he intended. Like, I don't know, he says it. He started it out that way, but I guess it rapidly turned into something else. Yeah, I mean, it could be post-apocalyptic, but it could also be meant to be

sort of like a 1970s New York, which was pretty much the same thing as post-apocalyptic. Or just like Mad Max, which is basically just, you know, Australia at the time. Right. Well, I mean, it definitely doesn't look like Australia. There's no outback happening in Double Dragon. But, you know, you have like really beaten down buildings. There's what looks like kind of crumbled skyscrapers in the background. But again, is that because it's post-apocalyptic? Or is it just because Ed Koch hasn't come in and shaking up the city? I never know. We just played it the arcade, the coin. version, like, not that long ago, like today, earlier. Half an hour ago, maybe. I don't remember seeing the crumbled skyscrapers. Maybe that's just an NES thing.

That's my primary reference point for Double Dragon, because I only saw the arcade version. Once or twice, there was like a putt putt near me that very briefly had Double Dragon. And this was after the NES game, like, you know, so it was way, way after the fact, way after this game was new. And that's when I actually saw Double Dragon the Arcade. And it was very strange going from the NES version to the arcade version, because I was like, everyone looks weird and nothing works the way it should, and I'm just hitting everything with my elbow what's going on. It's an astonishingly clumsy game, but we should probably introduce the game itself, really.

Right, well, did we want to talk about some of the other devs, or do we go through them as they show up on the scene? It might be better, like, I mean, the... Oh, the other ones? Yeah, we just talk to Technos now. Okay. So, yeah, so we should talk about Double Dragon, the 1987 elbow smash hit. Hi, that was good.

Thank you. That was good. I do think a lot of people. A lot of people shared your experiences that they are more familiar with the home ports. Because I don't think I'd ever played it. I was too young, I think, when it came out. But I did have the Sega Master System version, which was, you know, even though I was probably the only kid in my school that had a master system, like, that was my system wars. So Master System was the arcade accurate or fairly arcade.

Yeah, relatively. Like the Nintendo port was, they changed a lot of stuff. It was single player only. It has this, like, experience system. They changed a lot of the levels. Yeah. So the NES version gets back to that whole thing that Nintendo did, which was to say, if you want to publish a multi-platform game, like if you have a property that you want to put on a lot of different systems, our version has to be unique. And I don't know if that was a hard and fast rule. Like, I've heard different stories. But in any case, it was definitely, you know, something that I feel Nintendo kind of pushed their clout at the time to make sure that you weren't just playing like the less impressive version. of the arcade game. It was a radically different experience. And this being a game developed in 1987-88, what was exploding at that point in Japan? Why? It was Dragon Quest. So yes, let's put

some RPG mechanics into this game. You mean, you had so many games at that era with RPG mechanics, and it was clearly everyone trying to jump on the RPG bandwagon. Yeah, I mean, the arcade itself is very, it is like the, it's very much not like that. right it's uh it's it's extremely straightforward yeah and uh and yeah what's what's kind of the the coolest thing about it to me um is the way that the levels are actually just like it just is constantly moving through a city and then like it goes to stage two and it's just another part like you just keep walking down the street like go down the ladder or something and you're in another part of the city and it really the stages are almost there's like a boss at the end of them but that's

really about it and you are literally just punching your way to the bad guys hide out yeah it's very much in the vein of Castlevania or maybe even Trojan, if you want to get kind of a like that, where it's like this is a linear journey through a space with a clear definition. And Castlevania, I think, kind of drove at home by giving you the map of the castle before every stage. So there's not the clean transition, but clearly, oh, you went through a door after the boss and now you're in this next area because you can see it right there on the map. Whereas this is more of this sort of seamless, like you start, you know, at the, the, the, the, the, the, Lee Brothers Garage, and you travel all the way to the bad guy's hideout.

It's, you know, there's no, no jump cuts or anything like that. Yeah, it's very like Albert Hitchcock rope. Yeah, I was just trying to say that, though. Sorry, sorry, I didn't steal that from you. Well, you didn't steal it. You just got there first. That wouldn't let you talk. Yeah, I mean, that's what's, that's what stands out to me now, I think, but that's probably

something that was really, I mean, that's kind of what the beat-em-up genre became about is just like cool environments and cool you know they were like uh special effects games in a way like not special effects in like the movie sense but like in the sense of let's see what kind of huge thing we can throw at you or what kind of crazy environment we can put you in and like the gameplay for a lot of beat-em-ups is not really that good especially the arcade version it's there's a lot of slowdown in the arcade version like technically it is not oh no this game is actually a disaster that seems like it's going to fall apart at any moment yeah yeah yeah I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.

I know that other versions, other arcade double dragon games were not actually developed by Technos, at least one of them. Three wasn't. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that eventually. But, yeah, so this one, I mean, it's very like kind of halting movements. Like, there's like you can, there's no issue with frame counting here because you can see all three frames. And it goes like very, even doing the famed elbow smash, it's like you can see like that. And it's timing becomes, well, what?

probably be critical if the other controls worked better. But as it is, it's like you are just basically getting pummeled constantly. And it is a very difficult game for, there are other beat-em-ups where I felt like I can get good at them, like Golden Axe and things where I could get pretty good. But this one, I just don't think it's possible. Yeah, it's just a game that demands you pump quarter after quarter into it. And fortunately, the home conversions tended to be a lot more solid because they would give you, you know, limited lives, limited continues. You didn't, couldn't just, like, keep pressing continue over and over. So you had to be able to finish them.

So for the most part, they tended to be, you know, functional. Double Dragon for the mass system, it was closer. Like, one of the big problems of the Nintendo game, which I do think is better put together as far as how the action works is that it's called Double Dragon, but it's only one player. Yeah, they change it up a little bit to make that work. Yeah, there's like a versus mode where you can play as different, a bad guys together. and it's not really the same thing. And the Master System one,

but that did have two players. But in that game, it actually did give you unlimited credits up until the last level, in which case they took it away, which was really annoying because the last boss has a machine gun, and if you shoot you, just you die.

Right, but it was the same way in the NES game, which had limited continues. Yeah, that's even worse. So, yeah, like getting to the super boss. What was his name, the Shadow Boss? Willie, I think he was a non-franial. His name is actually Willie Mackey. Yeah.

I don't know if he's related to Bob. I wish Bob were here. We could learn more about his criminal past, but. One thing about the mass system version is that because of the little color palette, their hair is different colors. Like Billy has red hair and Jimmy has blue hair. And I asked my parents, like, why are their hair color like this? And they actually thought that they were like the Guardian Angels from New York City,

like wearing the color berets. Yeah. So for a long time, that's what I thought that they were. Huh. Yeah, in the NES version, one of them is blonde. Let's see, you play as Billy, and Jimmy is the second-player character who's not playable, which they do turn into a gameplay element. Yeah.

But you can play Billy versus Jimmy in the two-player mode, and that's the only, like, two characters you can face against each other because otherwise it's mirror matches due to, I guess, probably limitations in RAM. But because they're the same sprite with different palettes, then you get, you know, like red, clad, yellow-haired, Jimmy. Yeah, I mean, Jimmy, Jimmy Lee is kind of a mystery because, like, in the first one, you're saving Billy Lee's girlfriend. I know that they're brothers and all that, but, like, what's in it for him?

Like, why? I mean, it's like Guy from Final Fight. You know, there's, there's, like, he's just being a bro. Yeah. I mean, you feel like guy as a Nike wearing ninja has some kind of, like, goals or something. Like maybe he's just trying to clean up the town. Yeah, yeah.

He's like, I've got to show these off. My sweet kicks and my hammer pants and stuff. These Jordans cost me $120. Yeah. And there's also like, I mean, I don't want to get too off onto this in Final Fight, but isn't there kind of like a, well, maybe I'm thinking of some like ancillary materials. But there's some kind of thing where, like, the guy in one of the games seems like not like the way Cody's treating his girlfriend or something like that. I don't.

Yeah, I think he, like, punches Cody in one of the endings. or something. Yeah. So, like, but Cody probably deserves it. I mean, he ends up in jail, so.

Right. Yeah, he just loves the fight. And he, and Cody's brutally sticks people with that knife. He doesn't throw the knife. He just sticks them right in the belly over and over. Well,

one of his, uh, street fighter five costumes is EDE. So it's like the cop he murdered. He, he can wear his outfit. Oh, wow. If I'm not mistaken,

or Eddie E. Yeah. Yeah. The, man, that is. And that kind of got wild. Yeah.

There's some, there's some strange stuff happening in street fighter cannon. Yeah. So anyway, double dragon, like the cool thing, I mean, the other thing I think if players have never seen it and play probably any version, I think it's in all of them, but the arcade it's the most visceral is the way the game

begins, which is that you just see like the outside of a garage says like what, Matin or like Matin in English tier or tear or like the weird like nonsense billboards outside or signs. I think

M-A-T-I-N period or something weird like that in anyway and uh you see uh marian who's billy's girlfriend is standing there and like willie and she's just standing around yeah they show up and and somebody uh punches her right in the stomach somehow knocks her out that way which i don't think that's how consciousness works well i she probably just doubled over in pain because an extremely large muscle man punched her right right in the stomach yeah and then they card her away so this is they don't cart her away they toss her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and there's a little bit of potatoes and there's that whole sexualization thing where you can see your panties.

Oh, there's a panty shot. You can arcade one. Like that was something that really stuck out to me when I first played the arcade version because of course you don't get that in the Nintendo version. I was like, whoa, that seems kind of dirty. And when they've reissued the game, or not reissued, but remade the game, like the, I think the GBA one, you don't see the panty shot either. And it's like censorship.

No, I mean, it's just, it adds the sexualized element to something that's already way to, like, realistically violent. Yeah. Violence against women. And I don't want to, I'm not going to be honest. box here, but it's jarring. It's okay. Social justice is something worth being a warrior for. This is a game based on the Warriors. Let us be the social justice warriors in the most literal sense. Yeah. I mean, and it gets worse in the next game in a way. But yeah,

it's a brutal opening thing. And then they just kind of walk away. Yeah. I mean, I said the only women that you see in this game are either a victim or hookers that you beat to death. Yeah, presumably. So it's, of course, you're beating everyone to death. There's only one interface in this game and it's punching and kicking or elbow. so obviously you're not going to have like a peaceful dialogue with the ladies like oh maybe you rethink your life but still no I don't know yeah like all these games there is kind of this question of like is this good yeah I mean I feel like fighting the the women

bad guys the I think her name is Linda Lash Linda yeah because she has a whips yeah I mean that's the thing that's you know they're capable of killing Billy and Jimmy Lee so you don't feel too bad about there's not like a strength differential there But with Marion, yeah, she doesn't do anything, and she just gets like, it's, anyway. I mean, it's, it's something I don't think you'd see in a game now, and it's kind of, but it's, it, it's weird. And then, and so from there, they walk away with Marion over someone's shoulder. And then the garage opens up and, and Billy and Jimmy Lee are, I guess, waxing this, like, bitch and Tranzam. So one from Root Avenger.

Yeah, from, oh, from, from the FMV game, because, uh, You know, the guy who made it, he put that in as a little... Oh, really? Yeah. I didn't know that. That's cool. Yeah. So, I feel like they could have just taken the car and driven to the bad guys.

Yeah, you think so? I mean, you're only fighting in the streets. Yeah. No, don't you... Well, you do go through the park and the help up conveyor belts and stuff. Yeah, like, you can't drive across conveyor belts. That's crazy. That car's going to have about as easy a time jumping that bridge as I do.

I bet the people who made NARC, like, that was a whole thing. Like, what if we could actually drive that car and just smash into things? Yeah. I mean, NARC is the answer to so many questions. But yeah, I think, you know, the not taking the car really gets into that, what we were talking about earlier, about how it's a journey. And I feel like the idea of video games as a place, as a physical, contiguous space was really taking hold in the mid to late 80s. And the brawler gave developers a really great way to, you know, a great opportunity to develop that, to explore that idea. because they are a fundamentally slow-paced game.

They have forward progression, but they're linear, and you go at a pretty slow pace because every other screen you have to stop and punch three or five guys until they're dead, and then you get to advance. So, you know, in half an hour, you're not really covering that much space. Like the shadow boss's hideout

is maybe like six or seven blocks from Jimmy and Billy's apartment. It's a very, very compact sort of, New York that has caverns somewhere next to the street. Is it definitely supposed to be New York? It sure is what it looks like New York. Yeah. What else would it be? Gotham City.

Yeah, like it could be like... It's not Tokyo. Yeah, I mean, I don't, well, I mean, it just, it's, that's just not the way Americans, not that the developers would know this, but like the idea of like, you step one like foot outside of the, uh, the city limits and you're immediately in like a, you know, palatial, like forest type place or it's, um,

maybe it's central part. the shadow boss is based in shadow a central park it's good real estate right there i mean it but in japan that's not that uncommon because of the way the cities were built up between mountains in a lot of cases so you can walk to the end of a city pretty easily and then it's just mountains and like you know the the giant uh cedars of some kind and they're everywhere and that's and it also makes the game more interesting you know you can't yeah i think there's supposed to be a lot of compression happening like you're you know you kind of just assume that the that you're going through a long trek, but, yeah.

I mean, you know, Willie just likes the fresh air, I think. Just, it's, I mean, what else is interesting about the game? I mean, it was, I know it was really popular. And, you know, it's just the, it's depiction of like just imitatable violence is like, you know, kind of, I don't think it was controversial, but you'd think it, I kind of wonder why not, I always felt like, again, it just became more popular because of the home conversions, like more people play that.

And it's, I mean, Contchor was popular because that was two-player and this one wasn't. But just, I mean, it's just a dude-run forward punching people. I'd rather play that than Kung Fu. Yeah, I mean, this does add a lot to the sort of brawler sandbox. You know, the enemies have weapons like they did in Kung Fu. But now you can pick them up. You can pick up, you know, a nightstick or a baseball bat or, a whip or a knife.

The barrels. Yeah. Like, you can use all of these things against your enemies. So it kind of puts you on equal footing with them if you can get the weapon away from them. And, yeah, you know, the arcade version does have the cooperative element. And it has a lot of sort of, you know, it has a lot of enemies for you to fight and it's never fair. But then there are a lot of environmental hazards to worry about, you know, there's the conveyor belts and there's the pits and there's the stalactites. And does the arcade version have the wall in the shadow bosses layer that comes out and kills you a random and it sucks?

We were playing the, we got stuck at the stupid bridge in the park where you need to, like, there's a plank missing and it's just like the most perilous thing in the world to get across that stupid. Yeah, it has this sort of weird forced perspective where everything, it kind of looks like it's, you know, like Zelda style almost, where it's a backward projection. But then you get to gaps, like platforms and stuff. And all of a sudden, they're isometric. And it's like this weird. sort of inconsistency in the visual perspective, and it makes things really tough. And the jumping is not easy to begin. It's not. You have to, like, punch and kick at the same time to jump, right? In the NES versions, yeah.

Does the arcade have a separate jump button? Yeah, it does. It's been a long time since I played it. You'd think that'd make it easier, but it doesn't. No. Well, it's kind of the Donkey Kong Jr. phenomenon where you have a lot of ambiguity in the sprite, and then a lot of, you know, there's a question of, like, what counts as the edge this platform. And it's, it's really hard to judge that, especially because of the isometric

angle on the platform. Yeah, there's some like, Castlevania physics going on where you just, like, you're right on the, like, I always fall off on, like, the bottom of the screen areas, more than, even more so than the gaps, like, where you're on top of, like, some kind of raised platform over water. And it just feels like you fall, even though you can still see the, the character's feet are both still on, like, the boardwalk or whatever it is. It always happens. And you fall very fast. But, I mean, you know, it works with that. I think it really does try to make it so that it feels like the enemies are kind of on the same playing field as you.

Yeah, like you fall into water really easily, but so do they. You can easily knock them off into a pit or into water or, you know, into some sort of death trap. The conveyor belt is a lot of fun because if you time it right, then you can get them. But if you time it wrong, then you end up plummeting with them. Right. You can fly over the side. Yeah. Yeah, it's always good to. like, you know, like one of the, can't you beat Abobo that way pretty easily? Yeah, he's a level boss, isn't he, in that area?

So you can... Yeah, Abobos kind of like the breakout character even more so than Billy and Jimmy for some. Because he just, he just smashes through a wall. Yeah, he's memorable. He's like the Incredible Hulk. He's huge. There's even some green ones. And in the arcade version, you know, they, he shows up in a few different variants,

like different colors and I think slightly different sprites. Maybe I'm misremembering. That could be double dragon advance only. But, you know, he's huge. and he's super unfair. Like, there's equal footing for everyone except Abo and for the Shadow Boss, because they are way more powerful than you

and they can really easily mess you up. Like, Abobo is huge, so he has really great reach. Even his little stumpy kicks, he just kind of like flips his leg forward. Like, those have really good reach, but he has the ability to sort of cancel your actions. So tactics that work against other enemies don't work against him,

and you have to really figure out a way to sort of cheese the system in order to beat a Bobo. Yeah, so, like, yeah, kicking him onto a conveyor belt or something so that he's still trying to get up when it puts him off the edge is a good way of killing him, usually. He looks mysteriously like Charles Barkley. I don't know for sure. You think so? If he stretch his face.

Yeah, I mean, nobody's head is that bit. Yeah, he's got a very weird head, and I guess he's supposed to have, like, a mustache. It looked like a pretzel in the master system version. It was weird. Yeah. It's like, it's like a, it kind of looks like. like an evil Onpon man in the NES version. That's it.

He's like, you know, melon pan. Yeah, his face definitely looks more like pastry than man. Yeah. Maybe that's why he's evil. Take a bite out of crime. Take a bite out of a bobo. And like Onpon man, he's like incredibly strong.

But I do think the part of what makes this game so fun is that it does have this cast of characters. And, you know, I mentioned the Warriors. But in localizing the game, Technos or I guess Trade West, Did you publish it here I think Technos actually developed Unless it was like one of those shadow developed titles I think they actually didn't make it themselves

Okay The NES version Yeah when they localized it to the US They gave the characters names that were references To Enter the Dragon And I guess maybe they're riffing on the Chin Thai The Chinese martial arts guys And with like the purple hair

Because they kind of do have the movements of Bruce Lee Like they had that sort of quick erratic hard-to-predict motion. So they were just like, well, this guy is Williams and this guy is Roper and so on and so forth. I remember reading somewhere that might have been the game creators really was inspired by Enter the Dragon as well.

So maybe they were just picking up on that or maybe it was like this weird, like, coincidence. That's just the one that the people, usually the, I mean, the series is famous for having like no real defined look in a lot of ways. like there were different developers involved and like there's nobody managing the brand to make sure like all the artwork look the same

and the drawings on the covers of the game for the boxes of the home versions were all over the place especially the Japanese one since I guess the guy that made it really like Fiss in the North Star it has that really like very similar art style but of course you know America didn't remotely

remotely get anything like that right but I mean the character design is weird looking in a way but it is effective. It is good. It looks. And the bad guys, even though they're really samey, the same ones pop up a lot. They do a good job of making them seem like unique people. And there's other cool stuff in the environment, at least for the arcade where they have wanted posters for some of the bad guys that are hung up. You can spot those. and yeah there aren't that many enemies but they all have kind of their own personalities their own fighting styles and they prefer specific weapons um so it does kind of give you this sense of personality even if you know you are fighting through you know two dozen lenders by the end of the game right yeah i mean and it's uh the gang itself is um it's the only

double dragon game where the gang resembles somewhat like not a real gang but like the Hollywood, like, multicultural street gangs of, like, Hollywood, like, what's that? What's, which is the, the death wish for or something like that, where they, is that kind of gang, right? It's like, that way it doesn't look, I mean, it would look terrible if it were, like, entirely like, this game, you beat up a Puerto Rican street gang. It's like, you don't want that. So that's, I mean, I understand why, but it's, it's, it's interesting. It looks very Hollywood in that sense. But, you know, that's maybe appropriate, given, given how much it does reference film.

And really, so many games from this era were, we're, we're. riffing on Hollywood hits and anime and that sort of thing. So it just made it feel like it was part of the sort of zeitgeist of gaming, I think. So maybe that's, you know, maybe that's another part of its popularity is just that there were so many games that riffed on Star Wars and Alien and Rambo and Commando. So here's one that riffs on the Warriors and, you know, enter the, into the dragon and face with the North Star, kind of all these different influences of masculine violence mashed into one. So it gives it

its own personality. And I don't think there was really another brawler that had quite that same vibe to it. Everyone kind of went for their own thing. Yeah. And it's very like martial arts focused in a way that other brawlers weren't. It doesn't like, it's not using like real martial

arts. And to my knowledge that there's no specific school of fighting that Billy, Jimmy and all the rest are adhering to. But it's- I mean, it's interesting. We'll get to the movie later, but there's a weird joke in that movie that's kind of,

they do some kind of karate in that movie. But it does feel very much like there's like a karate kid. Like, you know, this is just like the, this is a slightly more evil cobra kai you're fighting. I mean, it's they, and in other games, they'll have like specific, like you see like Kung guys show up, I think, and like where you go around the world and double dragon three. Yeah. So, like, what's, I think of the arcade game is that the one, that's the version where if you finish it, you beat the boss, you beat Willie. Then you have to fight, the brothers have to fight each other.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, in the arcade version, you're fighting the other player. So in the NES version and probably some of the other home versions, because it's a single player game, you think you have to take down the shadow boss at the end. And you do. But then your brother comes out of hiding, and I guess he was the man behind the scene the entire time. which puts a whole new spin on the storyline and their dynamic. And it's a little tricky.

They had to kind of like brush that aside in the manual for Double Dragon 2 on NES. But yeah, he's you, basically. And he has the exact same moves, including the all-powerful spin jump. So, yeah, and the arcade is just like, well, you guys made it this far. You might as well, you know, get the rest of your quarter out. So get your money's worth. Yeah, I mean, fight each other. Yeah, you're fighting over the girl too, which.

just, like, kind of, it's funny to think that they, yeah, like, we, we hate each other, but we're going to fight our way all the way to this weirdly sophisticated gang all the way up to the top, and then we'll decide. It could be a good-natured brotherly brawl unless you push them in the pit of spikes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean. A good-natured brotherly brawl to the death.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've actually Yeah, I mean, we've actually spoken quite a bit about Double Dragon. I think it is worth touching on some of the home ports because Kurt, you mentioned the master system version, which apparently is great. I wouldn't say it was great because it's one of those games that it was more fully featured. And it looked pretty good.

It sounded pretty good. But just the fighting doesn't feel right. Like you punch a guy and it has like no weight. So the only thing you can really do is just like jump kick over and over and over again, which I guess is that game's version of the elbow smash. Right. And again, there's only four levels, which are just like the arcade game. And at the end, it sort of takes out it's a,

that safety net of the Unlimited continues. But if you like do the spinning jump kick like 40 times at the beginning level, you reactivate the unlimited continues. So you could just go, that's the only way I was able to beat that game because it's balanced for you know, that sort of quarter-munchy feel

which is to say it's not balanced at all. Yeah. Kurt, I think you started to mention something where you said like you were the kid with the master system and this was like one of the games where you could show like the Nintendo kids and be like, look at my double drag. Yeah, because it was two player It was two-player, and, like, it's got very bright color palette, like, much more so even than the arcade.

And it does look pretty good for what it is. It does, in a way, it looks more, it looks kind of fresh in a way that the kind of the grimy look of the, like the NES kind of muted color palette, but also like the arcade itself is a very, like, you know, more down-to-earth, grimy street tough. It was also developed by Arc System Works. I think it's one of the first titles they ever actually did. And we'll probably double back to them later because they are now in charge of the series. Yeah. Right. So the other really great port of Double Dragon to Home Consuls was for Atari 2,600.

Activision did that, right? Yeah. That was very brave of them. It's 1989, and you're bringing a home conversion of Double Dragon to Atari 2600, a system with one button. God bless them. I don't think you can do anything. I think all you can do is sit there and rue the fact that you spend $30 on that. I just, I feel so bad for the kid who got the, like imagine, like, here you go.

They made a 7,800 version of that game, too. Yeah, but I think that one turned out better. Marginly better, yeah. I think considerably better. Yeah. 7,800 was, you know, in terms of power, pretty much close to parity with the NES. So I think that one turned out okay, whereas the $2,600 is an abomination, like, it should not have happened. Right.

You get the sense they could have turned it into something that wasn't really double-dragon, like, gameplay style-wise, but it was still fun. It's not like you can't make a game where you, like, run around on like that kind of sort of vaguely 3D space, not 3D space, but, you know, like on a multi-planar space and punch people and make it fun. I think it would just have to be more like Kung Fu style or, like, you punch them once and they go, flying off the screen. But, yeah, it's just, it's one of those things where you got to, you got to, you know the person who was assigned to do this is like, well, there's no way this is going to be good. Like, they just hate me and want me to quit, like this. Didn't they learn their lesson from a Pac-Man?

No lessons were learned in the Atari era. No lessons were learned. So, okay, yeah, the actual, I think, like powerhouse version of Double Dragon was the NES version, which was a very, as we mentioned before, liberal interpretation of the arcade game. But it did try to recreate the scenarios, like the scenes, the environments. It recreated the enemies. It was pretty faithful in terms of converting the controls and mechanics, even though you had to press jump or punch and kick together in order to jump. But, you know, aside for those limitations, I think it was mechanically very faithful.

It's just that they made it single player and they stripped out, you know, some of the details. and then they gave you that weird RPG system where you only start out with like punches and kicks and every so many points that you earn from enemies you gain a new level, a little heart, and it unlocks a new move. So you don't even have a jump kick until level three. And you have to get the max,

you have to max out at level seven to get the all-powerful spin kick, which is kind of this game's like crazy super overpowered move. Yeah. Unlike arcade beat-em-ups where your crowd-clearing thing will take off life or use up a thing, I think it's just you just get to use it as much as you want. Pretty much. And it's really the only way to beat Willie and to beat Jimmy at the end. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, probably the most damning indictment of the beat-em-up genre I can think of would be that, like, it's a genre of games where the best way to play it is the slowest, most boring, methodical way possible where you're just like inching along the screen. screen to make sure you don't get too many people overwhelming you and and like you know cheesing certain moves over and over and over um but that's that's the only way to have any chance of beating it with under you know ten dollars right and and double dragon for nes you know because of the hardware limitations it doesn't really overwhelm you that often you face like two to three enemies and that's it feels much more fair yeah and i think that's you know an example of technological limitations actually working in the game's favor uh i think it also

helps that they kind of redesigned the way some of the levels work. So there are now parts that are effectively side-scrollers. It takes out the multi-planar elements and gives you places, like there's some platforming sequences where you don't have to worry about the depth. You just like look at the, those sequences kind of from the more traditional NES viewpoint. Yeah, they're still really difficult, but it makes, I think, them a little bit more fair in a sense. And I wonder, they probably just did it because of technical limitations, but it does work out well. And in later games, they would do it that way intentionally sometimes. So do we want to go straight to Double Dragon 2?

Well, we didn't talk about the Game Boy version, which is a pretty decent conversion of the NES game, although really unfair. Like, it's much harder than the NES version. I've beaten the NES version, but not the Game Boy version. But the definitive version, in my opinion, of Double Dragon, the original. is Double Dragon Advance, which re-does the arcade game. Like, it's the original graphics and everything, original style. And it adds a lot. Like, it's all very faithful, but then it adds new stages.

It adds new enemies. A lot of different versions of abobo. Like, there's just so many abobos, but they're all different. And it feels like a labor of love. And that was developed by Million, right? Million, it was actually elsewhere. Like, at that point, Technos did not really exist anymore. Right. This was 2004?

2001, too. Yeah, maybe four. So, Millian was just... I was in the games press at that point, so that was 2003 at the very earliest, because I reviewed it professionally. But Millian at that point, they owned all of Technos' licenses, but it was developed in some part by old Technos staff. Like, it was directed by... I wrote his name down, but he had joined Technos because he loved Double Dragon, and he had started working on it, I think on the Super Nintendo game. Muneki Ebeneuma. And he kind of, it's like a remake. It's not in way more than a port because it's twice as long. I think there's something like eight levels in the game.

Just the way the game feels is just so much smoother than the arcade game ever was. It sort of took in some elements from the later games. Like one of the bosses from Double Dragon 2 they stuck in. I think even something from Double Dragon 3. But it's definitely like the apex of Double Dragon. It looks really good too. Yeah. Even for a Game Boy Advance game, it looks good.

And their story scenes and stuff, what I think was sort of required as the sort of games at the time. So what can you tell me about million? Like, they, I thought they were a splinter of Technos or something, but is that not the case? Technos went out of business in 1995, 1996. Right, because they bought a really expensive headquarter building. They were, they spent a lot of money to build their own headquarters, I think, in Nakano. And one of the issues was also they had relied pretty much on the Kunio licenses this

point, and it was not paying the bills anymore. And also the fact that Double Dragon at this point had really faltered with some of the stuff that we were talking about before. One of the last games I think they probably did was that fighting game, which I'm sure did not do super well. I don't, they must not have gotten much money from the Hollywood movie at that point either, because I read it didn't get a theatrical release in Japan. Yeah, it was kind of not.

D-O-A. Yeah. It is, it's, it's one of those movies that you can see in its entirety on YouTube because nobody cares. Nobody cares about double-dragging the movie. So go watch it, as long as you can. It's a challenge. We've tried. I tried last night, didn't make it too far.

We'll get there. But a million, like a lot of those Japanese companies, when they actually go bankrupt, somebody sets them a new company, and that's who, you know, the rights go to. So, Millian got all the rights for all the technosis stuff. So they were pretty much just a licensing company for a while. And they didn't really return to Double Dragon for a little bit. They did mostly like the Dodgeball and did Kunu Kunow couldn't spin-offs. And then simultaneously there was Majesco and Way Forward who put out Double Dragon Neon. And then that Crean company who put out the Double Dragon Two Wander of the Dragons.

I forgot about that. Yeah. And simultaneously with that was a Dojin company called Miracle Kids, who was a was again from former technos yeah i was going to say technosoft again technos people who uh they put out i think one on the we wear like a dodge bowl game one on uh the xbox life indie games but they i think just had like a gentleman's agreement with million or something like that they were able to use the properties and then relatively recently recently i mean are you going to say no to the miracle kids it's like turning down the power pack for the miracle kids i've seen it's spelled with both

the Z and an S. Well, the Z I would not trust them. No handshake agreement with the Miracle Kids with a Z. Kids. And I think in 2015, everything from Millian transferred over to Arc System Works. So they now own Cuneo and Double Dragon, whatever else Technos might have done. I feel like they've been really working to build up Cunio, not so much Double Dragon. Coonio's all over the place all of a sudden.

Yeah, it was like a medieval spinoff. There was even a medieval spinoff. Knights of Justice. Wow. Yeah. They did a lot of stuff. But, you know, I was watching The Wizard a little while ago, and there's a game in there in one of the Adjust Arcade shots that I had never heard of before called China, Chinagate.

And it was actually developed by Technos that put out not too long after Double Dragon. And it's actually like a beat-em-up. Like, you look at it and it's sort of more like bubble-bobble. And then you have just like, you know, the characters are small and squat and you can jump between the different platform. But it plays like a beat-em-up. But it's based off of, you know, like the monkey legend. So there's Sun Goku and whatever, the pig guy.

Cashing on that Dragon Ball. Yeah. And that obviously never went anywhere, but I found that interesting evolution of the formula. Yeah. I mean, I think the wizard that movie also shows an arcade version of Double Dragon that didn't actually exist. Wasn't that play choice 10? It's a play choice 10. Oh, is that one?

I think there's something where he describes, oh, no, I know what I'm thinking of. I just got like, you know, 60,000 points or something that doesn't, it's not possible to get that. And in the shot of the game is... That's why he needs to go to the World Power Championship or whatever. Video Power. You did something that's... Yeah, they have a shot of the game and doesn't even look like that. They didn't care.

No, no. There's, yeah. You sent the trend here with video game movies of this era. Yeah. It's a rhetorical question. The answer is that the trend is that they didn't care. If you're excited for Halloween, you're going to love all the thrilling shows, podcast one has to offer. Get ready for chills with some of the best

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All right. So after the success of Double Dragon, it was inevitable that there would be bum, bum, bum, bum sequels. I've only ever played the sequels on NES, though. I've never seen them in the arcades, but I know Double Dragon 2 and 3 were arcade games. Double Dragon 4 was not But yeah So why don't you guys tell me about Double Dragon 2 the arcade experience If indeed you have anything to say about it

That was the revenge Double Dragon 2 revenge Because it starts off with Marion not only Instead of getting slugs She's just straight up murdered with a gun with slugs Yeah Yeah she gets gunned down with a machine gun And this time the garage opens up

And Billy and Jimmy hop out And they've got a helicopter instead of a transam I don't know, man. It may have been the Cooper Command helicopter. Oh, yeah. I think that was... That was the same guy, I think, yeah. Okay.

But the main thing about this is that they brought back the control scheme from Renegade, and that you had one button for attacking to the right, one button for attacking to the left. And I hated that control scheme. It's hard to get used to, but I actually kind of like it. I like it in the Nintendo version because the characters are proportioned differently, So they have very long kicks. So you can sort of like turn around and kick them and it always seem to be the most efficient way.

Yeah, perhaps we should describe this better for the listeners at home. Please do. Yeah. So like the way it works on the NES at least is that if you, no matter what direction you're facing, if you press A, you're going to be kicking or punching to the right. So if you're facing left, pressing A will mean that you kick backwards to the right. And B will always be attacking to the left. So if you're facing left and you press B, you're going to punch. If you're facing right and press B, you're going to kick backwards.

And just describing it is confusing. But that is the most straightforward way I can do it. Yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense. You know, if you think of it in terms of like Section Z, the shooter, where B shoots back behind you and A shoots forward, it allows you to kind of move freely without, you know, having to reposition your body, your character. character's body with the controller in order to attack. So that was a limitation in the original double dragon, as if someone was in front of you, you couldn't hit them very well. You could only hit enemies behind you because of your elbow smash.

Right. And that's a big problem, I think. It's a problem that most beat-em-ups have. You just get swarmed. And because the game is very coin-op-centric or not the game, but the genre, it's like a lot of times the crowd-clearing moves would be the ones that waste your life and they can have to pump in more quarters. Yeah, so I kind of feel like the left-right attack style is sort of putting a band-aid

on a problem instead of actually, you know, healing the wound, it's just like sort of covering it over. The problem is you're, you're swarmed and, you know, the game's unfair. So instead of making it more fair, it's just like, well, let's just give them a different way to deal with the unfairness. Right. It also kind of, I don't know whether it's a problem, but kind of deals with the issue of, like, do I punch or do I kick?

Like, if you can do both, you know, usually it's like kick is slower. it has more range and punching is faster and has less range, but it so rarely ends up mattering. At least in the arcade one. Yeah, it does. So, like, if you do, why not just have the kick always be backwards? Yeah, the NES version of the original Double Dragon actually did, I think, sort of differentiate between punching and kicking because punching was weaker

and because you wanted, at least in the early going of the game, to farm experience points from enemies, you wanted to be able to punch them. You like to attack them or land more blows. and earn experience. So the way you kind of play double dragon most effectively on NES is to punch enemies and every, like they don't die until you knock them down. So you knock them down a couple of times.

And then the final time that you need the knockout knockdown, you punch them like twice and then move away. But if you just punch them twice, they don't fall down. So you can keep hitting them as you move away and they come in close again and they won't fall down. so you keep getting the experience from punching them. So that's not ideal. That's not optimal game design, but that's kind of how it worked.

This game definitely takes place in a sci-fi setting, though. It has more, say, say, some place I read it described it as a cult elements, because you beat the first guy, and he just, like, disintegrates and leaves his mask behind. And then he just reforms. And it's like, what's going on? Yeah, there is some weird stuff going on in this double-drafts. Technologically advanced street gang. This is one of those street gangs that, like, you wonder why they're a street gang.

Like, they've got all this money and resources, and, like, they've got magic and, like, military hardware. It's like, why are you guys a street gang? Like, what are you doing with this stuff? Like, you should have bigger goals. They changed a lot of stuff in the Nintendo one, right? Like, it was a sort of, like, added a lot of things. Because I never played the arcade one that much either, but the one, the levels that struck out most to me were, you have to fight, like, a train, don't you? Um, you don't fight a...

Oh, you're like on top of the game. Yeah, it's, it kind of reminds me of, uh, the albatross battle in Bionic Commando for NES. Yeah. Where there's like this machine kind of moving on to and off the screen and you sort of have to platform up to the top of it. I think you're fighting the conductor. It's been a while since I played, but you're not, you're not, you're not fighting the machine itself. It's not like suplexing the phantom train in Final Fantasy 6. Because I know they, they parodied that in, uh, double dragon neon.

Um, and then there's also that scene where you're in the helicopter. You see a couple of different games that had this sort of truce. where like the door was opening and it would suck things out that was next one and it was just opening and closing. Yeah. I don't know if that was in the arcade version or not. I believe it was.

And it was a weird case. I'm saying not having played it in the arcades. Because there was a PC engine CD and a Mega Drive port. And I think those are actually made and based off the Nintendo version instead of the arcade version or one of them might be. The Mega Drive games are all supposed to be like,

they're all called like Double Dragon the Arcade. Double Dragon 2, The Arcade. Yeah. And they even did that with Double Dragon 3, where the arcade is exponentially worse. So I think they had to do it. Well, I think Double Dragon, the Genesis version, was a made, is a Western version. Like, that was published by Accolade. I don't know who developed it.

And then the second one only came out in Japan, so it must have been a Japanese release. And then the third one was, again, American one. Yeah, they're not, there's no real reason to play him nowadays. Oh, no, no. But Double Dragon 2 is generally regarded as the best of the, classic games, at least on NES. I don't know about the arcade versions. But, yeah,

for home versions, I think people usually look to the NES version of Double Dragon 2 and say, if you're going to play a home version of Double Dragon from an 8-bit console, this is it. It has the most variety, I'd say. Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's the one that Double Dragon 4 base itself off of, so they must have been like, well, this is the most

popular. Kind of like, yeah, Mega Man 9, too. Yeah, which means the slow dissolving bad guy, he liked that he appears like 20 times. in Double Dragon 4, and you have to wait for him to go each time. But yeah, like, it's, it's kind of just double dragon, but with, like, cooler stuff, added cooler ideas.

Like, the helicopter is a great idea. You get, like, attacked by a helicopter, I think. Yeah, in the second stage. And, like, they deal with some of, like, they add more platforming. Well, that's the same helicopter that you're fighting in. There's a, there's a cutscene with the word grasp as Anamonopoea. Like, you reach out and grab onto the, the skids of the helicopter and the sound effect is g dot r dot a dot s dot p that's probably a direct

like translation of the japanese probably if they or even it might even be in the japanese version but they have like words for everything that aren't real words they're just like it's a sound effect oh the yannamata p has this bazillion of those yeah it's a huge thing so like there's probably I guarantee you there's a sound effect for grabbing on to something probably it's that grabbing specifically onto a helicopter that word yeah they're like you know like how German supposedly has like a word for everything and they're all really long. I think Japanese is like that, but with sounds, like sounds that can be used as verbs. In any case, yeah, there's a lot of really great stuff, a lot of variety in Double Dragon 2,

but it also feels a lot more refined and balanced. The NES version had two-player simultaneous play, which accounted for a lot. But I think the super move in Double Dragon 2 was the super knee. Like you kind of did this like half hump, a hop. and swung your knee forward and you would like launch dudes in the opposite directions. Yeah, it's like a moitai kind of flying knee type of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you hang in the air for like a half a second at the apex of the knee.

Right, but the platforming was a lot more reasonable. Like there was still a lot of it, but it didn't feel quite so punitive. The graphics were really nice. The music was cool. Yeah, it was a really nicely developed game, nicely made. The music is rad. The cover art is incredible. I think this was actually slightly controversial

to cover art. I can't remember exactly where I read that. Why was it controversial? It's got like... The guy, Mary is in it, but she's already... Like, Marion's clinging on to Billy, and he's like kind of a heroic view up at him,

and he's swinging, I think, a chain and hitting a guy with it. Is that right? Yeah, that's one of those few cases where, like, the Famicom version used something different, and then they had the American Nintendo version. version. And those other ports use the American version of the artwork, which was kind of unusual. I love the PC engine version, just because that's such a rad soundtrack. Like, some of it's arranged and some of it's brand new, but it's like peak PC engine music. Okay, so

looking at the, uh, maybe that's the Japanese version. No, this is, okay, so, yeah, looking at it, I think it has to do with, like, Marion's torn clothes. And, uh, and, oh, this is it. Right there. He's choking Linda Lash with her own whip. Oh, that's the problem. That's the thing. You know, I didn't remember seeing that. I feel like the American box, that's actually cropped off, isn't it? I don't, I know I found, when I was searching, like a Google. Yeah, if you look, you can barely see it. It's like around on the side. I think I only ever borrowed this from a friend, so I just had the cartridge where you get that cropped. I didn't realize he was choking out a Linda. Geez.

Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is a weird thing. I think I found it was like one of the first like literary criticism articles I've ever found for video games. And it was like very like critical of the artwork used to sell these games. And it singled out double dragon two is having the most like kind of offensive artwork. I can't remember how I found this. But it's definitely out there somewhere. But it lists that.

It names that specifically. And it just when you think about it. That's kind of egregious. It's something, yeah, I never even noticed until just no. I thought it was just like a dude that he was hitting, but it's kind of worse. Okay. But, you know, cover art missteps aside. And aside from that, like, the cover art does have a very sort of fist of the North Star look to it.

They actually made it more modest in the U.S. version, like the Japanese version, if you compare, you can pretty much see Marion's butt cheeks and through her torn skirt, but they made her skirt longer in the American version, so it covers up the cleavage of her ass. So, uh, an improvement. All even weirder that like, because she dies and like before the game even starts. Right. But then the end, she comes back to life. So again, it's that whole mystical thing happening.

So it's kind of a weird game, but as a brawler, it's very, very good. It is. And it is an NES brawler in particular, which, I would say it's the high point of brawlers on NES. I know some people really like mighty final fight, but that was single player again. Come on, guys. Yeah. Yeah.

I have some friends. Yeah, Mighty Final Fight is, I think it's because it's expensive to buy now. People I feel like it must be better than it was. No, I mean, it's always had a good reputation. It has a good, it has a good feel to it. It mimics the feeling of the arcade game. Yeah, it does a good job of working within the limitations of the hardware to give you the feel of the arcade game without giving you the look of the arcade game. So I think that's admirable.

It's always had a good reputation. Yeah, it's on virtual console and all that, right? So, yeah, I would say either Double Dragon 2 or River City Ransom would be like the beat-em-ups of choice for the NES. Yeah, but this as a pure beat-em-up, this would be on top. And actually, River City Ransom as a brawler, it kind of sucks. It's actually kind of bad. It's more like the charm of the game. Yeah, it's like the experience of it, the, you know, the sense of, you know, River City Ransom does the thing where you're, you're, you're,

and punch is taking you on a journey through a real place, but this really literalizes it by giving you a space that you can travel back and forth through. So it's remarkable in that sense. But as a brawler, it's kind of crappy. I mean, what feels, I think it feels better, though, in a way because it's so much faster. Oh, yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of, like, running, you know, jumps and, like, kicking in the way things bounce on the ground when you drop it and all that. I mean, that's what feels good about it. I think if it didn't feel that good, if it were, like, renegade style, right yeah they had the same like RPG elements I don't think anyone would care and there there is this kind of physicality to it like even though you've got these little chubby sprites like when you take a hit or something there's kind of like a delay in the animation or something it's hard to describe but it does give it a sense of gravity and momentum and you know I think that does balance out for the fact that if you run straight to the end you start you know fighting enemies that can kill you in a single hit and you need to go back and grind for experience and everything yeah I mean you don't have that problem in double dragon you did you know but by the time you you get to the the boss stages are all, not the boss stage, the gang's hideout stages are always brutal.

It just, they poured so much money into these death traps. And they're always running. It's not like they only run when somebody like trips them. It's just constantly going. It's a constant death trap that must always be avoided. And it has a lot of things where it like

shoves you. I think even the original double dragon had the things that, we talk about it's, right? The wall piece that just goes, yeah. Totally unpredictable. totally unfair it's crazy how does this how does double dragon two end i feel like it had an interesting ending you fight the boss again and marion comes back to life i don't remember the specifics of the final boss battle but it was kind of like this techno palace sort of not like super high tech like technodrome but it definitely had this sort of like metallic sort of otherworldly

feel to it not not you know not on the level of was it akari Two, Cari Warriors 2 You're going to space Yeah, it's not that crazy But it definitely feels like, whoa, this is This is not, you know, grimy 1970s New York anymore This is a different place. No, it's very like

The post-apocalyptic thing is very present in there But I mean, other than that It's just, yeah, I mean, the NES version is a classic And it's one of the NES games to get It hasn't, it's not on the NES mini, right? the whatever i thought it was i think double dragon one is maybe maybe they have both of them no it'd be just one i can't remember it's been a while since i've cracked up with my own But in any case, we can definitely say that Double Dragon 2 was, in the classic era,

the high point of the Double Dragon series. And then we go immediately to, can we agree, the low point of the Double Dragon series? It's had a lot of low point. It's had a lot of low point. The Double Dragon 3 was, okay, this was where you're like, wait a minute, guys, what happened? You were doing so well? Yeah, I think the difference. Double Dragon 3, what?

Yeah, I think the difference. between this and other possible low points for Double Dragon is this was squandering the good name of Double Dragon. Right. We hadn't, the idea of something very bad being called Double Dragon was still new to us. There wasn't the expectation that, oh, yes, this might be a profound disappointment. So which came out first? Was it the arcade or the NES? I'm pretty sure it's the arcade one.

But what happened is this was outsourced to a company called East Technology, who had previously made a shoot-em-up called Gigandis, which is not really. I've never heard of it. Interesting. I don't know why, but I think because at the time the arcade division was working on Combat Tribes, which was another sort of similar game, they came out maybe like the same year or so. But I don't think the Combat Tribes doesn't have as bad a reputation as Double Dragon Three does, but it's not like well-in-it-it-be-partly good. But the premise of the Double-Dagon Three is like a globe-trotting sort of thing. It's bonkers. off in, uh, it's got two, like, subtitle, not subtitles, but two, like...

It's called the Rosetta Stone, the arcade version, I think. Yeah. And then in the, the, the NES one is called... The Sacred Stone. The Sacred Stones. Which kind of makes sense because there's nothing special about the Rosetta Stone. Yeah. It's like a dictionary, basically. Billy and Jimmy knockover, like a museum.

Yes. Finally, we can read hieroglyphus. Ha, ha, ha. The Museum of Natural History, I'll never recover now. High five, dude. And, uh, even when you first play this game, the animation is, really, really, really terrible. It's ugly. It's an ugly game. It's such a step backwards from me in the first

two games, even though it's much... The levels are very much back in the renegade style, except it's not like there's no justification for it anymore. They're very much just like, it's like you could be fighting in like a drained Olympic-sized swimming pool. That's about how much of interest there is. And they just, I mean, I did not play beyond the third stage when I was preparing for this because it was just unbearable. It's like its main claim to fame, the arcade one, is that you can, at the beginning of the stage, you can go into a store and use actual quarters from your pocket to buy power-ups and stuff,

without which the game would be very, very difficult. And that was only in the... So it had micro-transactions? Oh, yes. What the hell? I never knew about this. Yeah, and it was only in the American or the world release. The Japanese one didn't have it.

I read somewhere that it was in the location test version, but they must understandably really hated it, so it didn't end up like that. in Japan. I mean, I guess that's not too different from buying more health and gauntlet, but it feels sleazy. It doesn't like, presuming that you put one quarter in to start the game, and then you put another

quarter in just to get like a weapon that doesn't seem proportionally correct. Like if you were putting in like a nickel or something, like, okay, whatever, but you can't do that physically. Yeah, that's the problem. You get the impression. You can have a bullet for your gun with a penny. Yeah. I mean, they could have still done this and made it more fair. They just would have had to make like the power

ups be like a lot more like you get more for your maybe each stage only has one possible power up and but they didn't they made it so that you could just like milk the kids for as much change as possible you get extra characters this way right each stage you're in you get a unique bonus character I think yeah that's I I barely played the arcade version but I knew that there is like bonus characters I don't think you can play as no you can oh you can die which will happen fast, then the bonus character replaces you. And those count kind of as your extra lives at a

point. And you'll see them kind of stacked up like cards up in the HUD. And I think like in the first stage, you get like a pro wrestler looking guy who's like way taller than Billy and Jimmy. And and

the next stage is you go to China and you fight like a Bruce Lee guy and you get, I think your bonus character looks like Samo Hong or what is that guy's name? The kind of the portly kung fu master. Sammo. I don't know.

I know the character because they used him from the Nintendo version, but I don't know what his original one was like. I mean, the story of this is like what? Like you're sent on, there's like some old grandma who's like sending you on a quest. I only know the Nintendo one way. It's like you're talking an old woman and they're like, you need to travel the world for some,

for the sacred stones for some reason. Why'd they entrusted, like, this is, this is even more crazy than the idea of, like, you know, your average, like, send in one dude or one plane to, like, in the war. It's like, there's, like, a magical artifact. I'm going to go find these hoodlums. But they defeated the shadow warriors twice. And now they can fight a mummy. Yeah. That's the end of the game, right?

You get to Egypt and you fight a mummy. Fight a mummy. And they, again, go back to Nintendo one. Nintendo one, because I, this was the first Nintendo version I'd actually owned. Double Dragon 3. And it changed a lot from the arcade game, even though it had sort of the same premise. It still wasn't good, though. It wasn't bad.

It's frustrating because it's very, very, very difficult. Yeah, it's like crazy hard. I remember renting it with a friend, and we both liked Double Dragon and Double Dragon 2, and I played a lot of them, and we played that, and we're just like, what the hell? Instead of getting lives, like you had four different characters throughout the entire game, but each character was a life. And I don't think your life meter was even that particularly long. So you would just get killed very, very, very quickly.

But I liked it because, you know, I like the idea of having multiple player characters, which at that point was pretty unique for a beat-em-up. So you had Billy and Jimmy Lee, which, I mean, their moves that's kind of similar to Double Dragon 2, but they changed some things. I don't think that floating knee is in it. They have a really cool sprite. It's hard to explain what they're, I don't know what they're actually doing. But they're like kind of, they got this weird, like, kind of, not cross-legged,

but like, spayed leg, leg, shuffle step type. Thing, it doesn't, I don't know whether it is something a human being can do, and I'm not sure that it even looks all that tough. It's a cool sprite, I thought. You use a cyclone kick even more in this game than you did in the other one. And the TV commercial, which I was blown away at the time, is you have this, like, flipping move where you, if you timed positioning right, you would jump over and then grab a guy from the head and then toss them over the screen, which, oh, yeah, that is really cool. but was functionally not all that useful. But anyway, as you went to the other stages, you got more characters.

You got the little, like, stubby Chinese guy who had a claw. And then you also got a ninja who had a sword and shiricans, and it was just cool in principle, if not in practice. And then the last boss, you bought some mummies. And then there was Cleopatra, the ghost of Cleopatra, who I think was actually Marion somehow. Well, I mean, why not at this point? There's only so many women in the series.

There's Linda and there's Marion. So it's going to be one of the two. No, there's Cleopatra. No, but there's not. Oh, that's true, yeah. And I was able to beat this game when I was a kid somehow. But, yeah, it was, I don't know, it was definitely too difficult to really enjoy. Even though the globe dragon thing, it fixed some of the, it feels like Double Dragon 2,

and it wasn't as messy as the arcade version was. Is this the last version or the last Double Dragon games that the creator worked on? I don't even know how close he did because he quit something. time after this, right? I think. I don't know where he went after this. I'm not sure he stayed in. No, I think he may have still been involved with the Super Nintendo game, even though it was

directed by the other guy that I mentioned before. Yeah, in the interview I, or article I read on Polygon, he talks a lot about how much he resented being stuck making nothing but Kunio Kun and Dragon Double Dragon games. Yeah. He just felt like, I mean,

they made money for Technos, and it's hard to argue with that, but at the same time, It's like, how many more, like, violence man games can make? And it does, you get the impression with Double Dragon 3. Somebody's running out of steam somewhere. Yeah. And I do applaud it for just the absolute insanity of the plot. I mean, there's no reason to do it, but there's also no reason not to do it.

So it's in the Double Dragon story, such as it is, it doesn't really exist. Like, you can just do whatever with these characters. Why not make them magical punks who, like, travel the world, rescuing magical artifice? facts. I mean, something definitely was lost along the way, like the gritty sort of, I'm fighting my way into the suburbs and then into the forest, really just kind of went away, but sure, why not? I mean, in addition to the series having to sort of one-up itself, it was also competing against increasingly fantastic brawlers from the competition, which included things like, obviously, final fight, but stuff like growl, where, you know, Taito's game,

where you're, like, fighting your way through a bunch of... Animal wrestlers, yeah. Yeah, like, just to save endangered species. And Puli Rula, which is just like, what the hell is going on? So I can see where they were just, you know, at some point they said, well, we got to keep up somehow, so let's just throw it all in there. You get the impression that they could have made other hits, but they didn't. I mean, it's kind of glossed over and forgotten, but at one point the NES is packed with a

technos game because the the the uh which one was that that was the one that was the one that was packaged with the adapter i think or maybe not the super spike the soccer game oh okay yeah yeah and then also super spike volleyball yeah is them because uh billy i think it's super spike v ball man i'm sorry super spike the ball because it's an apostrophe the ball the ball yeah but billy and jimmy are a volleyball team in that and i choose to view that as canon i mean why not there's nothing they can't do it's kind of like that piece of downtime between Marion's abduction and murder? Let's play some volleyball.

Play some volleyball, yeah. Why not? They tried a couple of times to bring the Cuneo games out here, like the soccer game, the volleyball. River City Ransom, obviously, and then crashing the boys. Yeah, Street Challenge. I think they did all right, too. I don't think they were as big a deal as Double Dragon, but, I mean, not River City Ransom

is kind of a sleeper kind of cult hit. I played that back in the day, but I didn't know anyone else who did, and it wasn't until Immulation came along, which is another reason that emulation should not be beaten down and suppressed because people discovered River City Ransom through emulation and said, this is crazy. How did this game exist on NES?

Yeah. I mean, you get the impression they really could have done more than they did, but perhaps by sticking so closely in focusing so much on double dragon and the like that they lost that opportunity. And then they end up getting beaten at their own game by Capcom

who was releasing like a new brawler every month. month. They end up getting beaten at their own game by Frickin Battletoads. Oh, yeah. There's that. Yeah. But, I mean, there were, there were something like five Coonio Coon games released in the U.S. on NES, and none of them were

presented as belonging to any of the others. Like, they changed the names. They didn't give like a sense that, hey, these games are all connected. These are all part of the franchise. These are the same characters. They always relocalize them, changed them around. So I feel like that was a

opportunity like if you say hey here's you know you know you love that uh spike in the boy or crash in the boys well you know here's like crash here's a chance to fight through the streets with them they try to do that because there's supposed to be another crash in the boys one of the other one that they're supposed to look like like the this maybe uh the hockey one and that just never ended up coming to be yeah these were pretty i mean more than competent games i think um they they hold up pretty well now and they're fun like the four player aspects of some of them yeah are are really cool. That was used to really sell

like the four-player one. Yeah. It was the, yeah. That was, I really wish I could remember what version of the India, but I know it was like a combo cart that has. Anyway.

Yeah, so you get the impression that they would, they did have their, you know, Capcom ate their lunch when it came to the brawlers. Especially because, you know, Double Dragon 4, which was made particularly for the Super Nintendo, it is, I know some people that like it, but I think it's markedly worse than Final Fight. Don't you mean Super Double Dragon? Yeah, yeah. Double Dragon 4 came out in 2017, sir. People called it Double Dragon 4. I mean, and for all intents and purposes, it was.

And then Double Dragon 5 came out. Yeah. So at that point, everyone was like, oh, so Super Double Dragon was Double Dragon 4? Yeah. Why not? I mean, that's, yeah. But I'll admit, I played the first two Double Dragons, and then I played Double Dragon 3 and said, oh, and I never bothered with the series after that. I didn't play Super Double Dragon.

I didn't play Double Dragon five. I saw Double Dragon for Neo Geo at an arcade and was like, what in God's ever-loving name is this? This is not Double Dragon. Yeah, I mean, Super Double Dragon is, I think it's kind of a infamously sort of unfinished game. Yeah, it doesn't, well, it feels weird because it doesn't feel like it's, you know, most of the games at time run at 60 frames a second, and that runs at 30. And those sort of, like, 2D games that run that slowly just don't feel right. Yeah, it feels weird. I mean, I had a friend I grew up with, you live down the street from me.

He had this game. It was one of his first Super Nintendo games, and he loved it. He was a huge, probably the only Double Dragon Superfan I knew. And he loved this game. And it does have some, it is, it's a competent game. It feels like a good, decent double dragon game. I love the sound effects of the guys like barfing when they died. You know, like that, but it's, it's weird.

It's very Super Nintendo feeling in a way. But, yeah, you're right. The 30 frames for second. How many brawlers were there? they're on superannias. There were so, there were dozens and dozens of brawlers. If a, if a brawler needed to stand out or wanted to stand out, it needed to have something different about it. Yeah, at this point it was even like losing its lunch to rival turf. The sprites were kind of on the small side. They were small, which is sad compared to like how double dragon has such big,

relatively well animated sprites. I mean, Capcom, I feel, had it right with Final Fight where they just kept getting wackier and wackier and bigger and bigger with each final fight. Um, so Final Fight three, You've got some pretty crazy stuff happening. Kind of like Streets of Rage, really. But, yeah, Technos just was kind of like, what do we do with Double Dragon? Yeah, it's hard to say. Like, I can't, I'm sitting here. I'm trying to think of other stuff to say about Super Double Dragon.

I just can't. I just, yeah, I can't hear it. It just disappears into an ocean of brawlers from that time. I recall a lot of slap base for some reason. That's Super Nias. That's every Super Nias. I think the Super Famicomers may have come later and actually had some extra stuff in it did you because they were on a like a time crunch and uh just couldn't finish it up but this is

when oddly the IP of double of double dragon kind of took off i know it was so weird because right when the games were like losing yeah there was a comic from malibu is that right well this i don't know anything about this is neat to me there was a comic book there was a cartoon yeah of all the inappropriate things sure double dragon there was of course the movie i had a we probably should talk about the movie because you can't really talk about the NeoGeo game without talking about the movie. So this was a, I want to say Carol Co movie. Maybe I'm mistaken, but some kind of smallish studio that was on its way out. And I guess emboldened by the success of the Super Mario Brothers movie, they said, yeah, we should do that with another video game

property. And they went with Double Dragon. And it's weird. We've done a a whole episode on the Double Dragon movie that Bob hosted. So we don't need to go into too much discussion detail here, but it's, it was, did you say it was written by Paul Dini? Oh, uh, yeah, Paul Dini was the co-writer. The director is the, that's the first thing that director ever did, which is no surprise. Was it also the last? I don't know.

I saw him say he was like an MTV director or something like that. He did a lot of music videos. So like, and that's not out of the pale like McGie or whatever's name was did, uh, did Charlie's Angels, and that was a lot of fun, but this was no Charlie's Angels. Yeah, I mean, the thing about the movie is, like, it's, it definitely seizes on the post-apocalyptic thing. So we're back, the pendulum has swung back from, uh, double dragon three and super double dragon back to the future. And, uh, but they don't drive a Trans Am, which is mistake number one. They drive a station wagon. Now, the station wagon does spew flames out the back, which is pretty cool,

but it's not as cool as the transit. I mean, how do you make a station wagon cool? Flames is not enough. I had a station wagon and a caught fire, and that wasn't cool. It was just, it was just a sad station wagon that caught fire. Oh, well, I mean, if the flames are coming out the back, at least it looks like you're going. Okay, mine was on the engine. Yeah, that's that's not right. And it's just weird.

It's just a weird, weird, weird movie. But they do, like, Linda Lash appears in it. Abobo is a main character. Yeah, he's a dude, like a muscular dude. And then at some point, they mutate him into this weird, like, lumpy looking thing. It's terrible. He becomes the human on pom-on. Yeah, I don't know.

Like, he's, and what's interesting is I noticed that there's, like, they have these weird little computers on the, on the, like, the sun visors of their cars. So, like, you flip down the sun visor, you can get information on whoever's in your area. And they do it to a bobo. So they're checking Foursquare? Yeah, so it says, Abobo is a Seagallian, like Stephen Seagalian, you know, karate expert, and can bench 800 pounds. And that's the information they have on him.

And there's like a file photo of a bobo. And it's like, wow. I mean, and then the bad guys do the same thing to Billy and Jimmy in the same scene. Who writes their biography? Is it just like a double dragon in the universe Wikipedia? That's why it's a dystopia, man. They've got tabs on everybody and it's in everybody's like sun vizers. But yeah, it's bonkers.

Like the bad guy is completely made up for the thing. But who really cares? Like, oh, they didn't have machine gun, will you? Like, I don't care. You know, it's like. But that really? That's what people complain about? No, I don't think.

I think that's exactly yet. Nobody complained. Nobody saw it. It's a very, like, kind of weirdly kid-friendly movie, in a sense. Because, well, they assumed it was popular with kids, so it can't be that violent. It has a vibe, like a look to it, and maybe it's the special effects or something that kind of reminds me of the garbage pale kids movie. Oh, yeah. It's the weirdest thing, but, like, that's the first thing that comes to mind when I see that.

It's me, it looks more like a Power Rangers episode with, like, an extra thousand dollars. It's that same sort of, like, cheapness, yeah. Like weird, electro-mechanical, you know, puppetry type stuff. Very strange desks for some reason. That's always a feature. Yeah, like Alyssa Milano from Who's the Boss is in it. She plays Marion. So they tried.

Yeah. It's okay. Her career recovered. She did find good work later. Yeah, yeah. But it doubles back to the arcade game, which I had never known until I tried it that it actually tied in very loosely to it. Like, it actually has some FMV footage from the movie in it.

Like, you're in an arcade at one point. It has like Scott Wolf and the other guy. that played the other Lee brother just doing stuff. And you can play as Marion in that game, too. Like, she's actually not just the damsel in distress. In the movie, she leads some kind of like Guardian Angels-esque street gang but for justice. Yeah. Called, like, what is it called the rough core or the, or like the, some weird stupid name.

But she's like actually like, she's the police chief's daughter, but she also leads a vigilante gang. And it's easily the least ridiculous thing in the movie. So it's like, I mean, there's a couple of other, like, characters from the double dragon universe, but the last boss of that game is also, whoever Robert Patrick's character was in the movie, that he was like the main back. It's a long way down from Terminator 2, man. Oh, yeah. And that game just didn't make much, because it didn't really look that much different from any other, like, NeoGeo fighting game at the time. So, like, who cared? It didn't look as good as, you know, that was when you were starting to get into some of the.

the latter day king of fighters not latter day but you know like king of fighters was starting to kind of find its groove yeah and like the good Fatal Fury is like real about yep well I think we're down with that

yeah yeah Well, there's also Rage of the Dragons, the other Neo Geo game. I don't really know anything about this one. Is this the one that's like basically not official? Yeah, it's not official. I love this game. I love the character designs.

I love the music. It's not, it doesn't have a good reputation because it's not like particularly well, well balanced. But I just think it looks cool. It sounds cool. I'm a sucker for any fighting game that has a tag system. So that automatically makes it really cool. And, like, it's a typical fighting game where you have, like, the two characters are, instead of Billy and Jimmy Lee is Billy and Jimmy Lewis. Not to be mistaken for Jenny Lewis of the wizard fame.

Yeah, there were lots of other characters that were cool. There was sort of like a psychic girl and a goth outfit. There was a woman with really long hair that's just sort of like a mummy. I don't know what her deal was. Yeah. It was a dude was a huge afro. But this was all made by a Mexican company called a Voga. And they made it with an idea to try to get the double dragon license, and they weren't able to.

So they just created it as a tribute game called Rage of the Dragons in a way that was sort of a rip-off, but not really. Like, it doesn't use enough of the double-dragon feeling. It doesn't look like a double-dragon game. Yeah. I mean, Million, which was the company that owned it at this time, apparently knew about it. And did nothing to stop it because they couldn't afford, like, the legal fees, which is crazy because they could have just accepted the license offer. Like, what? Maybe they just couldn't do it.

Because, again, like, it was produced by a Mexican company. I think it may have actually been developed by, I'll see, Noise Factory, if that was the actual developer. Because they went on to do another game called Match for Mele, which was like the next game in the Power Instinct series. It actually had some of the characters from Rage of the Dragons in it. Maybe there must have been some sort of legal thing because they, They ported matrimally to the PS2, and they couldn't use the Rage of the Jagans characters for some reason. It was a different publisher. But anyway, I like the way this game just feels, even though.

It's very flashy because it's a, you know, it's a late era NeoGeo game. I mean, it never got any ported or anything like that. I don't think it was really that popular, but it resonated with me. They had it in Chinatown Fair, so I always played it a lot, except when there was, like, that one guy that would, and always in those sort of arcades. Like, if you dare to try to challenge me, just crush you. yeah um and then there's another fighting game right there's uh the double dragon five which is license that only came out in america it's based on the cartoon it's based on the cartoon um i only played it very briefly because it's it's bad there were a lot of weird game cartoons at this

time that are just really cheap because there was a there was a street fighter cartoon right about the same time yeah there was a dark stalker's yeah that was a little bit later but mega man yeah Mega Man was before that, but yeah, the Dark Stalkers, Street Fighter, a lot of really weird choices. Earthworm, Jim, I can actually understand that one, but... They tried to do Battletoes and Bubsy that didn't pan out. Oh, yeah, yeah, Battletons. So we skipped Battletoads and Double Dragon. It's because it's only barely a Double Dragon game.

It's really is a Battletoads game that, I guess, since it was published by Trade West, and since they had done the Nintendo version of the original Double Dragon, there's still some way they're able to use those characters. But it plays, like, a double, a Battletoads game that just has, like, the sprites from characters from Double Dragon, too. After you kill Cleopatra, I guess, like, the next, like, if you go, oh, we're going into space to team up with some, like, Ninja Turtle ripoffs from England. Why not? I mean, the thing I like about it. The Dark Queen basically is evil Cleopatra, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's. I mean, this game, this game is pretty much Battletoads. It just happens to have the double dragons Yeah, it's a really, like they put it out on everything they could And the NES one, I remember being really technically accomplished. I mean, that's no surprise he's rare, but it's really crazy that they pulled that off. But yeah, that's, you know, it's out there.

And then you're at this point, it's kind of, I mean, if there was double dragon in advance, which we already talked about, then they kind of went radar silent until, again, double dragon neon. Which I don't know. That game is the people I know are. sort of split on the quality of the game. I think it was really good. It doesn't play like a double-dragging game. I remember playing it as a demo at

Pax East. The year before it came out, like the year that it came out, and I was like, I don't think this is for me. I thought the demo was really bad and then when it came out I started to play, and I thought it was... Yeah, I was really surprised when it came out and people were praising it really heavily because

I thought it was kind of bad, and I felt bad because I liked the guys that way forward, and I know they were kind of like, so what do you think? Jeremy Parrish guy who knows retro games and I was like it sure is a game that exists thank you because it looks kind of low budget at first

because the characters are Polygon right all the backgrounds are 2D and when you first see it it doesn't look that much doesn't look all that inspired but then you like go into one of the Chinese pagoda type Japanese pagoda type palaces and it just rockets off into outer space

that's so cool I mean I gotta say like it's a great game no but I mean you mentioned I think briefly this is a way forward game, right? So Way Forward does not make like terrible games. You know, they just don't. Even the license, like, pay the, pay the bill sort of games, they're... They can be pretty good.

Yeah, they're all right. And this one is like, you get the impression that this is like somebody's like passion projects. Like, I really want to get the double dragon license. Well, it's cheap. Good for you. Lucky you. And then he like, you know, sought out input from the series creator and who liked it. And, you know,

he said he felt like more like a Western game than which, of course, it would. Yeah. And it is. It's not really much of a double dragon game, but it is like kind of a tribute to all beat them ups everywhere. You know, like, and it has this, this 80s nostalgia vibe that seems kind of played out at the time it came out, but it's, it is well done. But the music that game is like, Jay Kaufman does a lot of the way forward games.

And like beyond, there's a lot of, like, there's in-game in-universe bands that sing these, a lot of the songs, not only during the stages, but there's like these different tape power-ups. there's a different band for each of these tape power-ups. There's like a, like a Devo type of band. There's a, um, how does the tape power-ups work again? Oh, I can't even remember. But there is one that's, oh, God.

You can, like, equip them, right? Yeah, you equip them and they were, like, moves. It's, it's an interesting way of dealing with, like, we want to have a bunch of moves and it beat them up, which can't have too many moves at the same time. Yeah. Or else it gets too weird, but, and then it works pretty well. Like, I don't, I wouldn't say. I'd say it's like a, like, you know, like the second coming of Double Dragon or anything like that, but it's a fun game.

I would get it pretty cheap. I would rather play this game than most Double Dragons that aren't like two or Double Dragon advance. And it's got a definite style and sense of humor. And the Space Pagoda thing is really cool. Yeah, then you go into outer space. Eventually you fight like these two deranged mutants that was like Bimmy and Jimmy. That was like a reference to that infamous spelling error that was in Double Dragon 3 and the Nintendo. a version. Yeah, so it's funny you mentioned earlier that the 80s retro thing,

an 80s nostalgia thing, it already played out. But I don't really think that's true because, you know, this was what, seven, eight years ago, six, seven, eight years ago. And it's only been in the past couple of years that you've seen stuff like Stranger Things and Atomic Blonde, try to get that like 80s, neon, hey, retro, wow, so vibes. So maybe video gamers are just ahead of the curve on being nostalgia. Maybe that's why retronauts is so successful. I mean, it was very much like the kitsch value aspect of it, I think, whereas I think stuff like

Stranger Things is trading on that. Remember when kids' movies were really creepy and good? No, but I mean, there's all kinds of stuff in there that's like, whoa, we are dressed as Ghostbusters because it's the 80s and Ghostbusters just came out. I got to admit, I've seen two episodes of Stranger Things. I didn't dislike

it, but I also saw only two episodes of Stranger Things. So it's, you know, I just, I just, I can't get I have to go in on a TV series and I just never do but yeah I mean it's maybe maybe I'm just thinking stylistically it felt like we'd already gone through a 80s revival of 80s style stuff and like the hair metal thing finally made its it's dreaded uh prophesied comeback in a way and it just felt like by that time I was like uh but you know they did a good job and it has a definite it's not phoned in at all um but uh we're going to talk about a game that kind of I think

is sort of... Yeah, we need to kind of wind down, but we do need to reach the sad end here by talking about the two phoned in games. Yeah, there's one that was Double Dragon 2, Wander of the Dragons, which was made by Creedion's studio, I think called Gravity, which was known for Ragnarok Online. And I think, like, people had shown this.

It had popped up, like, on the partner network for quite a long time, and then just went radio silent. Like, people just thought it was canceled. And one day it just showed up, kind of unannounced, and it's just completely ravished because it looks very bad. It doesn't play that well. It's just a very, very poor game.

It's just not really whole much to say about that. That sounds good. I was not even aware of this game until, like I think I vaguely heard of it, but until I started researching for this episode, it was not something that was on my radar in any way. And after looking into the game, it's not going to be on my radar at any point after this recording.

Let's put it this way. If you're still hungry for Double Dragon after all that, like don't play this one, just get one of the Tiger LCD games. Yeah, go by the Atari 2,600 version. That's at least based on a good game. And then after that, it was the most recent one, Double Dragon Four, which was kind of cashing on the faux retro.

And that's Arc SystemWorks now. Yeah, Arc SystemWorks actually developed it. And it did have some staff members of the original technos. I think the original graphic designer may have been on it. I'm really conflicted about this one. I want to applaud the effort in a way, but this shows you like when you want it about the retro throwback retro game style.

It's not like Shovel Knight where they like very meticulously tried to recreate exactly how like using specific color pallets. Right. Yeah. And they just didn't do that in this game. They just didn't care. And they reuse. Shovel Night was was very specifically about recapturing the feel of NES games and, you

know, very, very specifically emulating some of the limitations, but not to be bounded by the hardware to, to say, let's exceed what, what we could actually do. back then, but in a way that feels authentic, whereas this doesn't do that. It's weird. I mean, they recycle old assets, which you think they wouldn't want to do, and it really stands out in a way with like they're kind of not, I wouldn't say like impossible to replicate, like, background graphics and stuff that you definitely couldn't be on an NES, but it's like, it's too colorful, it's weird.

And this feels dumb to care about in a way because it's like, it's not authentically bad, but you know it's not it's sort of like double dragon too but just like worse in ways that become more evident the more and more you play them yeah i mean it's got a lot of interesting stuff going on with like the presentation like it starts out i think the story is like billy and jimmy are driving their trans am across the nation yeah and they get like waylaid in the desert oh the one thing that i do think that ties in a little bit more the original is this first couple levels do kind of have that post-apocalyptic madmax field at the other ones like i mean you go to different places throughout the game and it sort of loses that

I think the main failings that I would say. If it were just stylistic problems, I don't think I'd care that much. It wouldn't disappoint me as much. But it's the hit detection is awful. It swarms you with enemies with no thought given to how you might attack this problem. It's not even, like, difficult in the way the arcade games were. It's just frustrating. It's weird.

And it's like the, the neat thing is still, like, in it, but it's much easier to use. So it's weirdly in balance, but doesn't matter because the AI is so strange. the levels feel empty because like it's designed for a widescreen monitor and from a technicalist perspective like I played on my computer but apparently the PS4 version has screen tearing

which is like how did that that must have just been like really shoveled out the door really quickly for something like that to happen yeah the PC version I have on Steam you couldn't even like make the play full screen there's no exit button it's like you need to actually like

close the window I'm done with this one. Yeah. I wanted to like it so badly. Yeah, I feel like this was their attempt to bring back double dragon. And for something that you would think would have such importance, they really just didn't put in any effort at all. It was cash in rather than recreation, resuscitation. It does.

I mean, I want to say it's like into this weird zone where it could be good. And I don't think it was totally phoned in. actually I shouldn't have said that. I'm sure people tried on it, but it just seems like some of the know-how was missing of how to make like a game of this style. That and I'm sure there were there were just limitations on you know, not that people didn't care, but the corporation at that level was just like, just get it done. Yeah. And, you know, there's only so much you can do no matter how much you care about a game if you're only given this much money and this much time. But, you know, that that's really on arc system works as opposed to

necessarily the dev team and I just look at other companies that have brought back old franchises like look at what Capcom's doing with Mega Man 11 like it looks promising yeah you know Square inix with the saga

series they brought back a the saga series with romancing saga two port for a bunch of consoles and that went over well and supposedly the Scarlet Grace for Vita that's coming to a bunch of different platforms is really good in like an unconventional way

but that's kind of what saga is so you know you compare this to that and there's there's a template out there there are examples to look at of developers who have said

there's publishers that have said let's bring back an old series and make it important again and this just didn't do it Blaster Master Zero is kind of like that where it does try to make a I think people have forgotten about it kind of quickly, but it does look, it's not, it looks like a, like, if there's a console between the NES and the S&S and yeah, it's like a, it's like,

I feel like it's a PC engine game. It's very much and that's that vibe. Not quite Genesis, but still more advanced than NES. And I guess this is where the double dragon story ends. Yeah, for now. Like that was a cheap game. It was like a $7 game. It wasn't even a full $10 one. I don't think it was like a $20 game when it first came out. It was really cheap, at least on the, on Steam it was. So it must not have been just to do it quick, get it out there sort of thing. So the last, like, good double-dragon game is actually double-dragging neon. Neon, yeah.

If that wasn't your schick, then advanced. Yeah, yeah. That's a long time ago. Yeah. It hasn't. But then again, think about what is the last good final fight game? Hmm. But have they tried?

Street Fighter 3? There was streetwise for the Xbox, which... No. I don't think as bad as its reputation suggests, even though it's not really. really all that great either. Well, yeah. I mean, this is another episode. Yeah.

Which we won't be recording. Yeah, fair enough. All right. So kind of a downbeat ending for the Double Dragon episode. But that's, you know, that's what we've got to work with. It's not our fault. So don't blame us. But, you know, there were definitely some high points in there.

And I think, you know, enough games came out that were very, very good that justify double dragon being known as a classic. So there's that at least. So go back, play your Double Dragon, your Double Dragon 2, Double Dragon advance. Ignore most of the others. It's for the best. Yeah. So anyway, thanks guys for coming and sharing the bad news about Double Dragon with us,

the anti-gospel. So why don't you tell us where we can find you on the internet, Kurt? I've run Hardcore Gaming 101.1.com. On Twitter is HG underscore 101. There's some Facebook page, which some, probably some arcane numbers if they haven't changed that. I don't remember. And I am riding his coattails. I do the Hardcore Gaming One-on-one podcast.

So you can find me on Twitter at GC9X. And you don't really get a lot of updates about the podcast because I'm too lazy. But I do, the podcast is now twice a week. So we rent games on a big list. And so it's called the top 47,8,858 games of all time. It's a dumb title, but I said come up with a better one and no one wanted to. So that's what it is. And for example, like we could, we would discuss Double Dragon not by talking about it game by game, but we just pick one, somebody nominates it, and then we got to decide how good it is compared to other games that have already been ranked.

And there's a, we put about books for different, either companies are different genres. And a beat-em-up book has been long requested. And one of our staff writers wrote something for Double Dragon. So we have a big retrospective on the site for that, but a big hurdling block. as the Kunio Kunukun games because there's so many of them and even a couple of them are 3DS and Japan only, so the region locking

makes it a pain. There's probably some cell phone games from like... Oh yeah, there's actually some double, there's a lost double dragging game. Nope, nope, nope. No, we can't talk about that. We're not even doing that. Nope, we're done. Okay, so that's out of bounds. All right. If you want to do a mobile games episode, Moba Gay,

Kusoge. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, so check out Hardcore Gaming 101's books. They're very good and pretty affordable on Amazon. And of course, for myself, I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me at GameSpite on Twitter. You can find Retronauts.com as Retronauts on Twitter, Facebook, at iTunes, the Podcast One Network. That's where you can listen to us. And you can support us and help us pay for our existence by going to patreon.com slash

Retronauts, $3 a month, get you early access to our podcast in a higher bit rate quality than you can get from iTunes and without advertisements. So it's kind of a good deal. Check it out. Keep us alive. We'd appreciate it. We'll be back in one week with a full-length podcast episode about a topic that hopefully will not end as badly as Double Trek. Thank you. And caller number nine for $1 million. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of...

Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Oh, gosh. Bad network got you glitched out of luck.

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if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine, Susan Collins, says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detourable. Detective, killed by friendly fire, was among the mourners attending his funeral.

Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue. Thank you.