Mega Drive Longplay [075] Double Dragon

Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:53:37 +0000

Played By: BimmyLee83

The first of three shoddy arcade conversions of the Double Dragon series on Sega Genesis. While the music and graphics do an adequate job emulating the arcade, the sound effects are pitiful (punches and kicks sound more like menu-selection samples than fighting sounds) and the controls are unresponsive.

Like the arcade (and unlike the NES version), all the moves are already at your disposal when you start the game and pulling them off is simply a matter of combining the punch, kick, or jump buttons. However, the fighting here is extremely choppy and it seems that half the time, your button inputs don't register. Either that or they're extremely delayed, and these problems seem to arise only when you desperately need to fend off your attackers.

Also, connecting a blow is much more of a chore than it should be. I don't know how many times I've pummelled an enemy enough to land the finishing uppercut, only to have the uppercut miss, opening the enemy's attack window back up. I also didn't like the fact that when you beat a wave of enemies and try to move on to the next part of the stage, you practically have to be walking right against the edge of the screen in order for the game to scroll on to the next section. This makes walking blindly into a pitfall or an enemy ambush too common.

As lacking as the game is, there may be some nostalgic appeal to it for some people, and that's probably the only reason to ever pick it up again. Oh yeah, and two players can play together simultaneously this time around. Too bad the game isn't impressive enough for anyone to care. -