HIGH An astounding collection of games for the price.

LOW Wonky controls and odd video options can stall the action.

WTF Why can’t the NBA develop triple levels of nets?

Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle is a collector’s dream come true. This package features all of the NES-era Double Dragon titles as well as the cult classic River City Ransom and lesser-known Crash N’ the Boys, along with all 11 (!) Kunio-kun games from the “Family Computer Disk System” in Japan, here localized for the first time.  The 18 titles are not all equally strong and some are mere novelties from a system long dead, but there’s a great deal of enjoyable gameplay and inspired goofiness to be had.

It’s not possible to cover all 18 games comprehensively in this review, so I’ll have to make due with some generalizations, but my job is made a bit easier by the fact that several of the titles are mirror image US/Japanese versions included in the same bundle. 

 For instance, Renegade and Nekketsu Renegade Kunio-kun are the same game with different text, difficulty settings, and some sprite swaps.  However, these differences honestly aren’t large enough to make playing through each one worth it — it makes more sense to choose one and skip the other. 

The titles range from straight-up beat-em-ups like the Double Dragon games to parody sports offerings like Super Dodge Ball and Nekketsu! Street Basketball All-Out Dunk Heroes.  I’m going to outline them all below, but first some general observations. 

While there are options to tweak graphics settings to make things look prettier on modern televisions, I found that anything other than the default visual settings caused too much lag with both the joycons or the Pro controller, making some of the offerings unplayable. Also, for some reason the between-stage music is cut off in Double Dragon when in an alternate graphics mode. 

Controls vary from game to game, but anything requiring multiple button presses (such as the spinning cyclone kicks in Double Dragon II or special throws/attacks in Super Dodge Ball) were more difficult to pull off with standard buttons.  To save my sanity, I took advantage of the option to use a shoulder button as the combination of button presses. 

Finally, some of the more esoteric goals and abilities in the sports titles aren’t well laid out, so I had to track down an FAQ online to figure out how to play some of the games to their fullest.  Now, with all that said, let’s go through the list.

Double Dragon: The NES classic.  No simultaneous play, and one must unlock all special moves by leveling up the character.  Still enjoyable, but I have Nintendo Online so this was in my catalog anyway.

Double Dragon II:  Better graphics and some killer new moves along with two-player arcade-style action.  The aforementioned cyclone kick and flying knee are a bit fiddly to pull off, but it’s still a solid title. (Also in the Nintendo Online catalog.)

Double Dragon III:  My least favorite of the trilogy.  Good looking, but infuriatingly difficult with a one-death game over system.  Having access to alternate characters as the game progresses is pretty cool, though.

Renegade:  Yuck.  Wonky controls and unappealing visuals.  Crazy difficult and not very engaging.

Nekketsu Renegade Kunio-kun:  The Japanese version of Renegade that slightly plays up the silliness while lowering the difficulty.  Better than the US version, but still not worth spending a ton of time with.

Super Dodge Ball: A classic!  Fairly easy to win in one playthrough, and blasting opponents in the face with an ultra spinning dodgeball never gets old. 

Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club: This is Super Dodge Ball, but with high-schoolers and a bit of a plot.  It’s different enough to be enjoyed on its own terms.

River City Ransom:  Still one of my all-time favorites, and yet not the standout in this collection.  Purchasing power-ups by reading books and eating sandwiches is always amusing, as is the running commentary from defeated foes in this 2D brawler.

Downtown Nekketsu Story:  The Japanese version of River City Ransom with some slightly different visuals (the guys all wear school uniforms), and different translations.  Pretty cool alternative to the US version.

Crash ‘n the Boys Street Challenge:  An interesting oddity.  This is a series of sports-like activities such as hammer throw, swimming, and a weapons-filled footrace with the signature Kunio-kun flair like lots of fighting and over-the-top silliness.  The controls are terrible for foot races (wiggling back and forth on the control stick as fast as possible), but it’s interesting.

Surprise! Nekketsu New Records! The Distant Gold Medal:  The Japanese version of Crash ‘n the Boys with alternate text.  Worth a look, but as limited gameplay-wise as the US version.

Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club – Soccer Story:  This is a great soccer title that encourages rough tackles and charging up super powerful kicks.  It plays fast and loose with soccer rules, and it’s a blast.

Kunio-kun’s Nekketsu Soccer League:  An expanded sequel of the soccer title above, with league tables and alternate field conditions which make play more challenging.  It also offers player meetings to encourage teammates, a story mode, and halftime chatter.  It’s a significant improvement over the already-excellent predecessor.

Downtown Nekketsu March Super-Awesome Field Day!:  This is another sports-adjacent title featuring obstacle courses, climbing minigames, and relay races over rooftops and through storm drains with the same weapon usage Kunio is known for.  It’s intriguing, but unclear objectives and controls make it a bit of a chore.

Downtown Special Kunio-kun’s Historical Period Drama!  The “prequel” to River City Ransom set in Japan’s feudal past.  Featuring more diverse terrain (rivers to ford, hills to climb, and so on), more interesting boss battles, and enhanced graphics, this is one of the best in the bundle.  I spent a lot of time with this one.

Go-Go! Nekketsu Hockey Club Slip-and-Slide Madness:  Kunio-style hockey.  Much like the soccer title, this one isn’t realistic, but the ice physics are silly, and the violence is over-the-top.  I was surprised with how well-designed it was.

Nekketsu Fighting Legend:  An enjoyable team-based arena brawler that allows players to make interesting use of the terrain and special moves to knock opponents out.  Not much to it, but the battles are neat in short sessions.

Nekketsu! Street Basketball All-Out Dunk Heroes:  A completely insane basketball-inspired romp with triple-decker hoops, ‘aggressive’ defense (as in punching and kicking) and humorous special shots and wild dunks.  I’d heard of this one in the past, and despite some unforgiving difficulty and a steep learning curve, it’s an excellent title.

Overall, what’s most amazing about the Double Dragon & Kunio-kun: Retro Brawler Bundle is that even the titles I won’t go back to as often are interesting, good for short bursts of play between the more engaging offerings. Fans of the classic NES titles would be remiss in not grabbing this immediately, and I hope they bring on an SNES bundle!

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Arc System Works.  It is currently available on the PS4, and Nintendo Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch.  Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed.  Several of the games included were finished, but all were tried. I attempted to connect to multiplayer modes on numerous occasions, but was unable to find any lobbies to play online.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Alcohol Reference, Mild Suggestive Themes, Mild Violence, and Simulated Gambling.  Various street fighting techniques are employed, including the use of improvised weapons such as baseball bats and knives (though no blood is shown).  Female characters are sometimes depicted in revealing outfits and there is rear (male, for comedic effect) nudity when Kunio (or Alex) enter a shower in the River City Ransom and related titles.  Violent tackling and fighting are depicted in the various sports titles. 

Colorblind Modes:  There are no colorblind modes available in the options. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers:   All audio cues have a visual component, and all dialogue is in text form for all games in the bundle.  There are no font color or style choices, and the text cannot be resized in the options.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.  Each game offers a full manual in its individual pause menu to take players through the various commands.   

HIGH Unlocking the character who can kill anything with an invisible ki blast.

LOW Trying to beat that same character in the main game.

WTF Oh, Marian, will you ever stop getting punched in the stomach?

More of an experiment in nostalgia than an actual game, Double Dragon 4 takes players back to the early ’90s, and asks “What if there had been a fourth NES Double Dragon game”?

Following on the heels of the solid Double Dragon Neon, this is a bold direction for the series to take, especially since the NES Double Dragon games were not particularly good titles. That’s not to say I didn’t love them at the time, it’s just that while I can go back to Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, and even Friday the 13th and have good experiences, Double Dragon 1 and 2 were largely terrible, thanks to cheap AI, inexplicable controls, and terrible framerate issues.

…And the less said about Double Dragon 3, the better.

In light of this, it’s a little strange to see a brand new game attempting to recreate those experiences exactly as they were — every terrible design choice and bad bit of code has been faithfully reproduced, with only a single technical improvement made: The framerate is now rock-solid, no matter how many characters appear onscreen at once. Sadly, this winds up creating problems of its own…

Set after the events of DD3, Double Dragon IV follows the Lee brothers on a trip that starts in the deserts of the American Southwest and ends at the base of Mount Fuji, with a dozen detours to beat up bad guys along the way. It’s remarkable how well the developers have captured the feel of Double Dragon 2 on the NES, which serves as this game’s visual and gameplay foundation. The character graphics are perfect, the combat is finicky, the AI is incredibly cheap — it even features a couple of ill-advised one-hit-kill platforming segments, which are, famously, the worst part of the series.

It’s an incredibly hard game as well. The developers have tuned it for two-player co-op, but even with both Lee brothers working together it can be a challenge getting through all twelve chapters with just five credits. There are any number of enemies that can stun-lock a player into oblivion, and with up to eight foes being able to appear onscreen at once, encounters generally range from unfair to purely masochistic. Only the ability to access already-completed levels makes the game beatable by anything but an incredibly skilled single player.

Something happens after the game has been beaten, though — Double Dragon IV actually becomes incredibly interesting.

Finishing the campaign unlocks a challenge tower, featuring a hundred floors of enemies, and climbing the tower unlocks enemies for use in any game mode. This means that players can play the entire game as Abobo, should they see fit.

After the slog that was the story mode, I found replaying as my enemies to be surprisingly delightful. Each foe is armed with either a ranged weapon or a devastatingly powerful super-move that can lay waste to the opposition, and with the entire game taking just 25-30 minutes to beat, I found myself going back time after time to try all the villain movesets. The developers have included a surprisingly deep bench of characters — not only is every foe from the main mode playable, enterprising players can unlock characters from the original games, including the low-res Billy Lee from DD1. As bonus content goes, this is incredible stuff.

Despite how fabulous the extra stuff is, though, Double Dragon IV just isn’t a good game. It is, however, a compelling and fascinating oddity. For franchise fans it’s a must-purchase, since it’s as much a historical trip as it is a new entry. While I can’t recommend it based on gameplay, the fact that it’s such a straight-faced resurrection of a long-dead style alone makes it worth a look. Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Arc System Works. It is currently available on PC and PS4. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4.  Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed many times.  2 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains blood, violence, language. Yes, it’s a game about goons punching each other in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but it’s pretty tame, largely due to the pixel-art graphics. There’s a little blood here and there, but enemies simply flash and disappear when defeated, and the supposedly ‘harsh’ language is such a small part of the game that I honestly can’t remember where it appeared.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no audio cues of note.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

HIGH RoboDragon!

LOW Unskippable cutscenes in a game meant to be oft-replayed.

WTF A giant tank? Thank god I trained for this!

For such a trailblazing title, Double Dragon never made much of a mark as a franchise. While the original helped to define the 2.5D beat-em-up and featured a huge number of bold new innovations for the genre (Two-player co-op! Environmental attacks! Moving floors! Kick thrown weapons out of the air!) the characters never caught on with the public, and the series petered out after just five titles, a Neo-Geo fighting game and a crossover with the Battletoads.

Perhaps brutally killing off Marian at the beginning of the second game wasn't a great choice. That never happened to Princess Peach.

There hasn't been a new Double Dragon game since 1995, and the franchise was so poorly-managed that when the original arcade version came to Xbox Live a few years back, a crippling technical limitation was left intact: attempting to play Double Dragon co-op led to terrible framerate issues.

The developers responsible for Double Dragon Neon had their work cut out for them. What should the first Double Dragon game in 17 years look like? Since every gameplay element that Double Dragon pioneered is now a standard feature in the genre, what set Double Dragon apart from the rest enough that it deserved a remake? In what seems like a brilliantly audacious choice, the developers focused on the one thing that Double Dragon had going for it—one of the all-time great musical themes.

Neon isn't a remake of Double Dragon, it's an answer to the question "Could a game possibly be as awesome as Double Dragon's opening music?" The answer, astoundingly, is yes.

In sharp contrast to its predecessors, Neon is a broadly comic take on the 2.5D brawler. The Lee brothers have gone from stoic badasses to dudebro caricatures. The lead villain—once a random man with a machinegun—is Skullmageddon, a rock and roll lich-king who only gets around to explaining his motivation in a closing musical number that's worth playing the entire game just to hear. Marian, the love interest whose kidnapping kicks off the plot, remains unchanged, in that she still has no character to speak of.

The game consists of ten levels which start off with a fairly straight recreation of the original, then quickly take a left turn into the utterly bizarre. I'm not going to spoil any of the game's strange twists—but suffice it to say that the level and enemy design is based around an "everything but the kitchen sink" concept which would seem sloppy and desperate in a less entertaining and technically accomplished title (koff…Comic Jumper…koff), but here it just feels like the developers had so many great ideas that they couldn't bear to leave one out of the game.

All of this design magnificence would be wasted if the gameplay wasn't there, so it's a good thing that Neon offers such tight and well-executed combat. The fighting system is surprisingly deep, with the basics—punching, kicking, jump attacks—being easy enough to use to carry the amateur players through most of the game. More advanced players will find a wealth of mechanics to explore and master. The depth comes from the game's key innovation—special moves and perks are awarded in the form of "mixtapes" that enemies drop when beaten up.

The tapes carry inside them either a stance (set of stat boosts or passive ability), or a special combat move. The player can have one stance and one move activated at any time, and much of the game's fun comes from experimenting with different combinations. Mix high defense with the ability to steal items and go loot farming! Turn on health absorb and hurricane kick to suck the life out of opponents! Max out the special attack bar then go nuts with the screen-clearing dragon attack! This huge variety of gameplay-altering moves and augments take what could have been a merely fun two-hour brawler and raise its replayability level an incredible amount.

There are two drawbacks to the mixtape system, however. The first is that it's not easy to switch between them. I recognize that the game wants players to pick a move and stick with it, but many of them are only useful in very specific situations, and it's kind of a hassle to pause the game and flip through a menu every time I want to knee-drop a stunned Abobo. The bigger issue, though, is how needlessly convoluted the system of leveling up mixtapes is.

Simply finding a new tape isn't enough—the player has to find ten tapes to level up each individual move. This wouldn't be so arduous if it weren't for the fact that the player can't just collect or buy all the tapes they want. No matter how many how many fireball tapes I came across, I won't be allowed to have more than ten unless I "upgrade" the tape at a Smithy. Unfortunately, the Smithy needs mithril to improve the tapes, and it can only be procured by beating bosses. Yes, levels can be easily replayed after being beaten, but after going through an entire level to kill a boss just so that I can go through another level to reach the Smithy, I'll have spent twenty minutes just to earn the right to go looking for more Dim Mak tapes. I'm not saying the game had to be dumbed-down to the point where enemies just drop a single currency that is used to unlock all the game's features, just that this whole process seems one or two steps more complicated than it needed to be.

While the developers may not have fully thought out the game's big new idea, that flaw doesn't overshadow everything incredibly solid about Double Dragon Neon. Beautiful design work, humourous absurdity, legitimately great music, all working to support the great core gameplay. Neon is probably the best Double Dragon game yet, and it contains enough great elements it to warrant a sequel or two. Who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if this version of the franchise wound up outlasting the original. Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS3. Approximately six hours of play were devoted to single-player modes (completed 2 times) and one hour of play in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains suggestive themes, partial nudity, fantasy violence. The broad slapstick violence is impossible to take seriously, but they're not kidding around when they say "partial nudity". A few characters are so scandalously clad that it borders on M-rated territory. It's nothing that older teens can't have access to, but it is an issue worth noting.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: While the game features no important audio cues that don't have visual accompaniment, it is a largely music-themed game. While you won't have ay trouble actually playing the game, you will be missing out on key parts of the content.

Amidst the sea of near indistinguishable first- and third-person shooters, MMOs and MMO shooters at PAX East, I found it somewhat ironic that two particular titles that stood out to me where both remakes of classic games: XCOM: Enemy Unknown
and Double Dragon Neon.

XCOM wasn't playable on the convention floor, but the developers were giving 25-minute gameplay presentations to limited groups of gamers who were willing to line up for the preview.

The beauty of Enemy Unknown is that fans of the original X-COM can rest assured that this isn't a duck-and-covered shooter with old X-COM elements retrofitted in. This is unquestionably a turn-based strategy game with alien resource and research management at the heart of its gameplay.

During the demo presentation, the developers walked through a classic X-COM-style intercept mission that gave audiences a sense of the tactical combat flow and highlighted the 4 specific roles of squad characters, which include assault, support, heavy weapons and sniper.

The thing that I found most striking about the gameplay was that there was no grid on the play map of any sort. Players select squad members and can freely direct them to any point or cover position, which made the game feel more open and non-traditional/hybrid-ish.

Commands for squad members can include pinning down enemies with suppressing fire, taking clear sniper shots and lobbing grenades. Aliens will also attempt to ambush squad members running through open spaces and larger brute-type aliens would smash squad members who aren't given properly coverage.

The big visual difference is that once commands are executed, actions immediately play out in dramatic cinematic slow-motion close-ups where you can see the detail and personality of the 3D models interacting with one another in bloody engagement.

Environmental damage to the surroundings and destructible building walls will also play strong factor in the strategic battles. Characters will also not faint and be revived. Death is permanent in order to add to the tension to the gameplay.

Closing out the presentation, the developers also gave a sneak peek of the home base which they likened to a childhood "G.I. Joe aircraft carrier" toy that only the rich kid on the block could afford. In that base, there will be all kinds of options for squad mates to hone their skills and of course research and develop captured alien technology.

Everything from the style of the art to the game design choices made it abundantly clear to me that not only are the developers fans of the original X-COM games, but they have a strong sense of what made them so great and that has me super psyched for this release.

In literally the final hours of PAX East, I also managed to discover Double Dragon Neon tucked away in one of the farthest corners of the exhibition hall.

At first glance, I'll admit I wasn't bowled over. There hasn't been a Double Dragon sequel that really grabbed me since Super Double Dragon on the SNES. Seeing the cheesy "neon" moniker left me a little puzzled.

It wasn't until one of the staff members explained the concept that Double Dragon Neon is essentially a tribute to all things eighties like Big Trouble in Little China did I really get it.

Just recently on the GameCritics.com podcast, we talked about how many eighties action movies would make terrific IPs for games and how it was near criminal that there isn't a Big Trouble in Little China video game.

Well boys, our prayers have been answered in the form of Double Dragon Neon where Marian bears a striking resemblance to Kim Katrall, Billy and Jimmy Lee sport ass kickin' mullets, embarrassing fashion choices abound and when a co-op player goes down, the other player can revive him by symbolically rewinding a cassette tape with a pencil (turning the thumb stick).

The fighting gameplay also felt worthy of the Double Dragon co-op legacy. In addition to the standard punch and kick combos, there were also grappling attacks that could be initiated upon stunning a foe.

The classic knees-to-the-head and elbow-drops-to-back were absent, but throws and double noggin knockers (if you grabbed two stunned enemies close together) livened up the action. The staff person assured me more grappling techniques would be unlocked as the player progresses through the game.

The hands-on demo ends in a crazy cliffhanger. Entering a Chinese restaurant-looking building reveals itself to be pagoda-shaped rocket ship that launches into space. Once in space, Billy and Jimmy face off against a heavily armored Raiden-looking boss wielding a massive sword with Marian being held captive in the background.

So while the business of video games drive the development of countless first-person shooters and MMOs, I'm happy to see that game culture has progressed to the point where revivals and reimagining's of classic titles actually feels more than just desperate attempts to cash-in on nostalgia.

When done right and in a proper historical context like these two titles, it feels like there's actual cultural value and relevance in revisiting these titles as is so often the case in other mediums.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown is set to release in fall of 2012 for Xbox 360 and PS3 and Double Dragon Neon is due out on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network in July 2012.

When I look at my long and storied relationship with games, there's every other game in my childhood, and then there's Double Dragon. How much did I play this game? So much that, without fear of hyperbole, I can state that if I had set aside every quarter I put in the machine, I likely would have been able to pay for college entirely in loose change. Although that would mean that I would never have played all that Double Dragon, and I can't imagine what kind of person I'd be today if that were the case*.

So it was with some excitement that I noticed recently that Double Dragon was available on Xbox Live for the meager price five dollars. Loading the game up, I was happy to see that, in addition to the abominable graphics of the new version, as you can see in the Leprechaun battle pictured below, the original graphics were available for those so inclined. I was less than excited to hear the awkwardly remixed version of the theme song that played on menu screens. The Double Dragon theme is my favorite 8-Bit theme of all time, and the only way to hear it is to play all the way to the boss fight. Thanks, developers at Razorworks.

Starting up the game, I noticed something that my younger self had apparently been completely oblivious to. Double Dragon is a terrible game. Just awful. Really, inexcusably bad. So bad that I'm a little angry at my younger self for not noticing this a little earlier. I mean, sure, I was able to recognize its level of quality among 2.5 D beat ‘em ups as being better than Renegade and worse than Final Fight, but it's so littered with problems that I'm shocked that it was released completely unchanged, save for the terrible new graphics. Something like Frogger can be released without change or commentary, because it's just Frogger. As hard as it might be at times, everything works the way it's supposed to**. The same cannot be said of Double Dragon.

The first, and biggest problem is the slowdown mentioned in this post's title. At the time I first started playing Double Dragon, I'd only ever encountered slowdown once before, in certain Legend of Zelda screens, especially when using the projectile sword. It was frustrating, but only appeared in a very small portion of the game, so on the whole, not a very big impact. Double Dragon has slowdown any time more than three characters are on the screen at the same time. When two of those three are being taken up by the titular Double Dragons, you can be assured that the majority of the game will be played at jerky half-speed.

It's a little embarrassing that a game with such a major problem would have been released, but hey, it was 1987, and every videogame had massive technological limitations, this just happened to be one that pushed them a little too far. The thing I don't understand is how, twenty years later, the game can still have crippling slowdown. Isn't the Xbox 360 roughly 3-4 Billion times more powerful than the circuit boards that ran Double Dragon all those years ago? If the flaw was somewhere in the game's coding, why not take the time to re-code it? It wouldn't even have cost any more money had they used the time and resources they'd planned to spend on their ugly-as-sin new graphics.

If that were the sum total of Double Dragon's problems, it would still be a crippling, deal-breaking failure. But there are just so many other problems with this game. Here's a few others: Baseball bats have no sound effect when they hit people. There's a broken bridge that has to be jumped over to avoid instant death, but the pixels on the screen have little to no relation with its size according to the game's logic. What's funniest, though, is that the developers were completely aware of the game's three biggest problems, and rather than attempting to address them, they referred to them as ‘features' and listen them in the ‘hints and tips' section of the menu.

Tip 1: The Elbow Smash is the Most Useful Move in the Game

This is completely true. It's also an example of terrible game design. Allow me to explain. The game's combat system is extremely broken. The players and their enemies have mostly the exact same movesets, speed, and hit range as the player. They also have the computer's ability to know exactly when they've entered range. Basically this means that the computer almost always gets the first hit in, which inevitably leads to a series of hits. In addition to this, the enemies can duck whenever they like, rendering them impervious to damage of any kind. All put together, this makes the combat extremely cheap and very difficult, which explains the dozens of quarters I pumped into the machine each week. Sadly, as a child I didn't have access to the internet. If I had, another player could have told me that I was making the game fifty times a harder than I had to by following its rules.

Instead of fighting enemies, all I had to do was turn my back, let them walk up close, then use the power elbow. It seems that, because of a quirk in the enemy AI, foes will walk to within millimeters of the player before attacking from behind, giving the player all the time in the world to throw an elbow into their face. This strategy works on every single enemy in the entire game. It's so effective that the player need never do anything other than elbow, and, with the exception of a single cheap platforming instance, the game is easily beatable on a single life.

Tip 2 and 3: The Enemy AI is Terrible

The next two tips point out various ways that the player can ‘trick' the enemies into killing themselves. It seems that the developers forgot to program a fear of dynamite into the enemies, so the moment after it's thrown, they forget what it is. All the player has to do is back away from the dynamite, and the enemy who threw it will walk directly over it. By a quirk of fuse length, the dynamite will invariably explode directly under the enemy's feet.

Far more hilarious is the second suggestion, that, by careful moment, the player can trick the enemies into walking into hazards, killing themselves. What this really means is that, while for the most part, the programmers have hard-coded the instruction ‘do not walk here' into most of the game's sheer drops, there are a couple of different locations in the game that the programmers forgot to draw an invisible line over, causing the enemies to just walk right over the edge. Here's the earliest position where it can happen:

If the player stands down and to the left of point A, any enemies on platform B will just walk straight down, killing themselves. Yikes.

I mentioned in my review of VF5 that, at some point a series' strange, off-putting design decisions just becomes that game's style, and can no longer be questioned or critiqued: If you didn't like endless cutscenes and almost no gameplay, then why are you "playing" a Metal Gear Solid game?*** That being said, it's folly to go back in time and attribute an air of quality to a game just because it was influential.

For all of its flaws, Double Dragon certainly was influential. Coming out a year after Renegade, which had introduced the idea of a 2.5 Dimensional beat'em up to a wide audience, Double Dragon was a huge improvement. Bigger, better-rendered characters, varied, scrolling environments, and a variety of weapons set it apart from the crowd. It was also full of little details that set it apart from the crowd, like the way knives could be kicked out of the air, the way weapons thrown by enemies could hurt other enemies, and the fact that players could choose between throwing barrels at enemies, or merely kicking them across the screen.

Double Dragon provided an important stepping stone that would lead to Capcom defining the beat'em up genre with Final Fight, as well as leading to its own long franchise of titles (including the profoundly depressing Double Dragon 2: The Revenge) and even a feature film adaptation. In a special, console-only addition, Double Dragon the NES adaptation introduced most players to a 1-on-1 fighting game for the first time ever. None of that success excuses the game's obvious flaws, however, and I'm frankly stunned by just what a mess the game is. I'm more stunned that I didn't see it at the time.

That's not to say the game isn't worth purchasing, it just depends on whether the individual player values an incredibly flawed piece of gaming history at more or less than five dollars. Since that five dollars represents a fraction of a percent of all the money I'd ever spent on the game, for me, it wasn't a tough decision.

Really, though, it's a terrible game.

*(Actually, I can imagine it. I would be a more well-rounded person with better social skills who wasn't struggling under crippling student loan debt. So… yeah.)
** (For the record, Frogger's new graphics are also abominable.)
*** (However, Kojima's decision to stick MGS3 with a top-down camera is still inexcuseable, which Konami admitted by re-releasing the game with a better camera in Subsistence. This was a landmark moment in videogame history – for years, players have struggled through difficult games, and wondered whether the game was actually hard, or if the camera just sucked. In the case of MGS3, the camera just sucked.)