It’s very hard to get people to agree on the first game to introduce a new genre, especially since many genres have nebulous and subjective qualities that can often be applied to games in other genres. The beat ’em up certainly suffers from this since it has some similarities to typical sidescrolling action and platforming titles, but no matter how loose your definition of one is, you can’t really say Double Dragon was the first. However, it is quite clearly the game that really helped codify what we now easily recognize as a beat ’em up. A tilted plane for the action with eight way movement, two player co-op, picking up weapons, and having to defeat on screen enemies to keep moving forward are all present here in the first Double Dragon game, and while the home ports may hold a higher place in the hearts of many, the arcade version was what kicked off a golden age of beat ’em ups.
The title Double Dragon refers to two martial artists twins, Billy and Jimmy Lee both running a dojo where they teach locals the means to defend themselves. The local gang known as the Shadow Warriors hardly want a populace who can stand up to them, so they move to get their revenge on the brothers. These details aren’t really shown well in the game, the action instead starting with the easily understood small scene of some thugs coming up to Marian, Billy’s girlfriend, punching her in the gut, and carrying her off. Billy and Jimmy head off on a rescue mission, beating up whatever members of the Shadow Warriors crop up to stop them from saving Marian.
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Billy and Jimmy, sometimes referred to as Hammer and Spike in American marketing of the game, both bring the same set of skills to the table. A punch button, kick button, and jump button are all you have on the cabinet, but pressing them together or with certain directions can influence which actions you take. Your basic punch can quickly combo into a few hits on opposing enemies, but a kick can cause foes to bend over in pain, the player able to grab such enemies if they’re close enough and hurl them away for some decent damage. In two-player mode, a successful grab can hold an enemy in place while your partner whales on them, but there is partner damage so a degree of caution is required whenever the two twins are trying to fight near each other. While you can’t jump punch, a jump kick will allow you to approach enemies while also potentially damaging them, and by pressing jump and kick simultaneously, you can do a backwards jump kick to help if you’re surrounded. Jump and punch will also do something if pressed at the same time, the brothers pulling off an unassuming backwards elbow strike that might actually be their best move due to its strength and the fact that enemies rarely ever try to avoid it. It’s almost gamebreaking in its effectiveness and knowledge of its utility can almost rob the already simplistic fights of some of their challenge, but it still at least requires timing and positioning to use properly and you can still find yourself on the end of enemy attacks if it’s all you try to pull off.
The last move in the Lee brother repertoire is perhaps their worst one, the headbutt activated by pressing twice in the left or right direction quickly. It has short range, is hard to pull off without putting yourself in needless danger, and its reward is mostly just knocking a single enemy away, but the real problem with it isn’t the attack’s design but an issue with the game as a whole. For a game made in 1987, the large impressive human sprites with readable and reactive designs were certainly impressive, but it seems like Technōs Japan were pushing against the technological constraints of the time. When it’s just you and two enemies on screen or Billy and Jimmy are both working over a single thug, the game runs smoothly, but once more bad guys enter the screen or parts of the environment like an elevator or conveyor belt add something else animated to the action, things begin to chug. Slowdown is rampant in Double Dragon whether you go it alone or with a friend, the game struggling with a relatively small amount of enemies on screen and not attempting to accommodate that problem in the slightest. It can take multiple seconds for certain actions to fully complete if the screen is crowded enough, and moments like the final boss fight toss out a lot of little baddies to really make the game’s pretty simplistic action lose its appeal. The headbutt becomes easy to activate by accident as you try to move in a direction but the action’s delay in resolving leads to you pressing that direction again, and while Billy and Jimmy can pick up weapons like a bat or whip to deal heavy damage to foes, the time it takes to use these or throw things like rocks and knives can make it easy to miss or turn out to be not worth the effort.
The slow down really hurts the entire experience, but there’s not much to the design of this half hour long beat ’em up that would have made it exceptional even if it was absent. The levels you move through sometimes ask you to jump over small holes or move to higher areas, but for the most part you’ll be shuffling forward to fight the same small selection of thugs. Regular thugs have pretty similar attacks to your characters and can use the same weapons as you, and while the later versions of the basic baddies get better at defending, they still don’t require too much thought or strategy to eventually beat down. Linda, which seems to be the name of every female enemy in the game, will crack a whip to fight you and Abobo, a large muscular man who comes in different colors, serves as the large tough enemy whose durability and damage output make him threatening when he appears, but the game’s few bosses and stronger enemies are often just recolors or redesigns of these enemies, only the final boss really being a totally unique design. Sometimes there are level hazards to avoid like wall traps, but much of Double Dragon is a straightforward adventure where you easily beat up what’s in your path.
- 'Double dragon' is launched by TECHNOS arcade action game, the first generation in 1987. There are already 4 generations to come out and become the ancestor of the scroll fighting game.
- Arcades in Fort Wayne, IN.
The play stagnation is technically found in many beat ’em ups due to your simple moveset and consistent goal of defeating everyone on screen to get to the next screen of baddies, but the low enemy variety and slow down really do Double Dragon dirty. It’s hard to get into the cathartic groove of easily trouncing waves of thugs when the game is dragging along and not presenting anything too fresh in regards to enemy types or alternate forms of challenge. Four stages, decently sized health bars and some extra lives, and your busted back elbow attack do mean that at least the issues with the design won’t demand too many quarters from you, dropping into pits and one of the final boss’s attacks being the only way to instantly die, and even with slow down you can usually safely avoid these fates. Ultimately, the original arcade release of Double Dragon certainly seems like more of a historical relic to be appreciated for what games came from its design rather than one that really shows the appeal of the genre it codified.
THE VERDICT: Double Dragon may have once impressed the world with its beat ’em up gameplay, but time has not been kind to it. Its enemy design is basic and fighting as Billy or Jimmy is equally simple, especially if you realize the potential of some of your attacks. However, while this could have lead to a brainless visceral brawler, the flow of the action is constantly ruined by the fact the hardware can’t handle even a mild amount of characters or items on screen. Double Dragon is constantly chugging as fights experience frequent slow down, it sometimes just as disorienting to be fighting at regular speed because the game so often crawls along at a sluggish pace. Whether or not Double Dragon turned out too basic for its own good, the slowdown is too constant and impactful to ignore, the start of the beat ’em up golden age unfortunately archaic and stilted because of it.
And so, I give Double Dragon for arcade machines…
A BAD rating. Double Dragon’s design is essentially the baseline that all beat ’em ups after built off of, but while that may make it feel antiquated and lacking for certain modern audiences, it’s really the slowdown that ensures that Double Dragon doesn’t stand the test of time. Even if the most generic brawler thrills you, dragging out the action doesn’t provide that visceral thrill or power fantasy because you are still losing the battle with the hardware’s limitations. The shockingly low threshold for the action to begin to crawl means very few moments of Double Dragon have the chance to be exciting, and while co-op definitely makes the experience more tolerable, it’s shocking it was integrated because it makes it more likely you’ll encounter these issues. I have looked past certain glitches and instances of slow down before because a game was good enough to excuse some small faults, but a thirty minute experience where most of it is struggling to achieve a decent speed means you’d actually be ignoring the majority of the game if you only focused on the fluidly running parts. The basic enemy and fight design perhaps benefits the game in that the game doesn’t turn out worse by asking for more complexity or skill to succeed, because if you were waiting seconds to pull off the move you needed in a high pressure scenario, that would make Double Dragon much more annoying to play than it already is.
I am thankful that the ideas of Double Dragon were salvaged for use in games that weren’t flawed on a technical level. It is quite possible that its home console ports turned out better since they had to reduce their graphics to work and thus did not have the same frame rate issues, but the arcade version really feels more like a prototype for genre hits like Final Fight and Streets of Rage rather than something that can hope to rub shoulders with them. Thankfully, at the time people would take what they could get, so Double Dragon and beat ’em ups as a whole could achieve future success and create some enjoyable games off the backbone they borrow from this title. Technōs Japan may have been pushing into territory it wasn’t prepared for, but its clunky little brawler at least left a positive legacy.
Double Dragon (NES) | Table of Contents | Walkthrough
Table of Contents
Controls[edit]
- : Use the direction pad to control Billy Lee. Press the pad in the direction that you would like Billy to move. When standing near a ladder or chain link fence, you may use the pad to climb up or down these surfaces.
- : Press the punch button to attack your enemies with your fists.
- : Press the kick button to attack your enemies with your foot.
- +: Press the both buttons together to leap into the air. Press the jump button while holding the joystick left or right to jump in either direction. Once you reach level 3, the regular jump is replaced with the Jump Kick attack.
- : Press the Start button to begin a new game, or to pause the action mid-game.
- : Press Select to access the main menu from the title screen, and to choose from among the various modes in the game.
Players[edit]
Throughout the game, you are in control of Billy Lee. If you are playing Mode A in a two player game, both players take turns as Billy. Billy is a well trained and highly skilled martial artists. He is on a mission to rescue Marion from the Black Warriors gang who have kidnapped her. To do this, he will have to travel through several regions that are broken up into four 'missions.' In each mission, he will have to do battle with large numbers of gang members, including one particularly strong member who serves as the boss for the end of the mission.
Billy can take a great deal of damage before succumbing to his wounds. A health meter is displayed at the bottom of the screen. When full, it contains fourteen units of health. If Billy sustains enough damage to empty their health meters, he will fall over and lose one life. Each player begins the game with three lives, with no opportunity to earn any more, regardless of score. If all of the players lives are lost, the game is over, with no opportunity to continue. This leads many to consider this version of Double Dragon particularly difficult.
Combat techniques[edit]
Just as in the arcade version of Double Dragon, Billy Lee has access to a wide variety of moves. Unlike the arcade version, not all of Billy's moves are immediately available to him. The Black Warriors fight rough, and it will take Billy some time to learn how they move and discover new ways to put his tactics to use. As he fights enemies, he earns fighting experience with each hit. After earning 1000 points of experience, Billy's fighting ability will increase by one level, up to a maximum of seven levels. At each level, he gains access new techniques. Certain new techniques will replace old ones, making the original techniques unavailable.
- Level 1
| Punch | Kick |
|---|---|
| Input: Experience earned: 20 Description: The punch is Billy's most basic technique. He uses both fists when fighting, so tapping the punch button will result in one punch being thrown, followed by the other. Swing consecutive punches to keep an opponent stunned. | Input: Experience earned: 15 Description: Kicks are another staple of Billy's fighting style. When kicking an opponent, he will perform a kick to the abdomen. Kicks are twice as strong as punches, but they come out slower, so it's harder to keep an enemy stunned with kicks alone. |
| Head-butt | Jump |
| Input: or Experience earned: 12 Description: A head-butt is performed by rapidly tapping the direction pad twice to the left or the right. This move does not have a long range, and it can put you at risk of being counter attacked if you miss, but it may save your life if you are surrounded at close range. | Input: + Experience earned: 0 Description: At level 1, Billy can jump, but he cannot attack in mid-air. Jumping can be used as an attempt to escape danger, or overcome obstacles. You can jump straight up, or you can jump to the left or the right by holding the joystick in either direction when you jump. |
- Level 2
| Uppercut | Roundhouse |
|---|---|
| Input: on a stunned opponent Experience earned: 10 Description: After the first level increase, Billy learns to increase the effectiveness of his punches. If he stuns an opponent, the nest punch thrown will be an uppercut. Landing an uppercut will knock the enemy down. | Input: on a stunned opponent Experience earned: 10 Description: The first level increase also improves Billy's kicking technique. When kicking a stunned opponent, Billy will perform a roundhouse. If the roundhouse connects uninterrupted, the enemy will be knocked down. |
- Level 3
Double Dragon Arcade Music
| Jump kick |
|---|
| Input: + Experience earned: 12 Description: This move is so helpful, you'll want to reach the third level as quickly as possible. Once you do, Billy's ordinary jump is replaced with the jump kick. You can still jump kick straight up or in either direction. Any enemy hit with the jump kick is knocked down, no matter how big or strong. However, be careful jump kicking from too far away. Smart enemies will dodge your kick by ducking. Also be aware that some enemies will also learn how to jump kick when you do! |
- Level 4
| Grab | |
|---|---|
| Input: Push forward while an enemy is stunned Experience earned: 0 Description: When you reach the fourth level, you gain the ability to grab your enemy's hair when they are stunned and leaning forward. From this position, you can execute multiple knee bashes to the face, or the powerful over-the-shoulder throw. Note that you can't grab Abobo, nor will you earn any experience from the following attacks. | |
| Knee | Throw |
| Input: while grabbing an enemy Experience earned: 0 Description: When you grab hold of an enemy by the hair, you can bash them in the head with your knee. There is a limit to how much you can do this however. After four hits from your knee, the opponent will collapse, and you will be forced to let go. | Input: while grabbing an enemy Experience earned: 0 Description: While you still have your opponent by the hair, it is possible to throw them over your shoulder. Doing so will send them flying and they will land on their back. To do the most damage to your opponents, it is best to knee them in the head three times before throwing them. Beware of attacks from behind while you are holding on to an enemy's hair. |
- Level 5
| Straddle | Face punch |
|---|---|
| Input: over a downed opponent Experience earned: 0 Description: Once you reach level five, you earn the ability to straddle a fallen opponent. From this position, you can punch them in the face. However, not all enemies are susceptible to straddling. Some enemies will kick you off of them if they still have enough strength, and some enemies won't let you straddle them at all. Note that you can press to stand up at any time. | Input: while straddling an opponent Experience earned: 0 Description: If you successfully straddle an opponent and they don't throw you off, you can essentially punch them in the face until they are completely knocked out. You don't earn any experience for this move, and you do have to beware of enemies that may interrupt you and attack you from behind, but it's a quick way to end a fight. |
Double Dragon Arcade Cabinet
- Level 6
| Elbow |
|---|
| Input: when an enemy is close behind Experience earned: 3 Description: It will be very late in the game before you gain access to the powerful elbow move that proves to be phenomenally effective in the arcade version of the game. Even so, once you earn it, you may find it quite as useful. It's still quite damaging, but the game determines when you can use it. It will only occur if an enemy is standing behind you. If there is another threat in front of you, pressing will result in a regular punch. What's more, enemies in the NES version are not as averse to attacking you from behind as they are in the arcade version, so they may strike you before you get a chance to hit them with it. |
- Level 7
| Spinning roundhouse |
|---|
| Input: on a stunned opponent Experience earned: 0 Description: The very last move that you earn in the game is the spinning roundhouse attack. This move replaces the ordinary roundhouse as the finishing kick that you use against stunned opponents. Not only does it look cool, it does a great deal of damage, and it knocks enemies down rather quickly. You'll need it to survive the challenges that you'll face towards the end of the game. |
Double Dragon Arcade 1up
Weapons[edit]
While you do not begin the game with any weapons, it's possible to pick up, and utilize, any weapons that you have knocked loose from opponents' hands. To pick up a weapon, you must stand over them while they are on the ground, and press punch to bend down and collect them. Note that while you are collecting a weapon, you are vulnerable to attack. Be aware that your opponents can also knock weapons out of your hands, and pick them up to use against you. Also note that it is not possible to grab an opponent while you are holding a weapon. You may use any available weapon until you get the thumbs up to proceed to the next section, at which time any existing weapons disappear.
- Melee weapons: It is possible to pick up a bat or whip and use them against your opponents by pressing the punch button. These are the only weapons that help you earn fighting experience (30 points per hit) and will always knock down the opponent. Enemies will be cautious when you possess one of these weapons, and will be hesitant to approach you if you swing them constantly.
- Throw weapons: Some enemies carry around knives or sticks of dynamite. If you pick one of these weapons up, pressing the punch button will cause you to throw them. A knife can be thrown across the screen, and can cause more damage than any unarmed attack. A stick of dynamite is thrown to the ground near your feet. Shortly after it lands (whether it was trhown by you, or dropped by an enemy), it flashes before detonating. Anyone caught in the blast, including yourself, will lose a significant amount of health. You earn no experience points for using either weapon.
- Heavy weapons: During the game, you may encounter barrels or crates, or even boulders. These heavy weapons can be picked up and thrown at opponents for a good amount of damage by pressing punch. Crates simply bounce off the floor or any nearby walls that they hit, but barrels and boulders will continue to roll forward in the direction they were thrown after they land. You also earn no experience points with these weapons.
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