If you were up with the dickybirds this morning and turned on your 360, not only would have noticed Xbox Live asking you to download the spring update, you'll have also seen that the classic fighter Double Dragon is now available on Live Arcade.
Some of us here at CVG Towers have fond memories of Double Dragon, some don't and some can't even remember it. Speaking from experience I love it, or rather I seem to remember loving it. Quite why, after finishing the entire game in both single player and Xbox Live co-op in under half an hour, is beyond me.
Twin brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee set out on a mission to save Billy's lady friend Marian, who's been snatched by the Black Warriors. It must have been a good 20 years since we saw the intro but we still sniggered like school boys when you see a flash of Marian's underpants when she's lifted over the shoulder of the enemy.
Gameplay-wise it's as hard as nails. We must have either blocked that part out of minds or lost our touch over the years. As expected you get unlimited credits, so you can keep coming back for more.
As for combat, well you get to punch, kick and fly-kick the enemy on to the ground. Holding the direction you're hammering the buttons in makes your bloke violently knee enemies in the head or throw them over your shoulder. The flying kick (a classic back in the day) is performed by first hitting the jump button and then the X button to fly-kick left or the B button to fly-kick right. It takes a while but it's invaluable to your progress.
Occasionally enemies will hold you ready for a tag-team style kicking. Pressing A should get you out this crisis though. You can perform a head butt by double-tapping forwards and even lash out with an elbow in your quest to have sex later that night by rescuing the misses.
Double Dragon also introduced weapons into the combat. Pressing B allows you to pick up whips, boulders, knifes, baseball bats, boxes, barrels and dynamite. You've got to time your hits just right though, as enemies are quick and have clearly been programmed to take a step back when you swing at them. We thought as soon as we got the bat we'd breeze through all the six or so of the small levels. We were wrong. As soon as we'd picked it up, the weapon got knocked out of our hands and picked up by an enemy.
Immensely hard difficulty levels aside in single-player, the co-op mode is fun and much easier to tackle. Oddly it's painfully slow in places with more than five enemies on screen at once. We didn't expect this at all from our next-gen experience of Double Dragon.
Co-op is exactly the same as solo right until you get to the mysterious Shadow Boss, who basically cheats by coming out to play with a machine gun that cuts you down instantly. Once you've defeated him using the power of unlimited credits, it's a one-on-one fistfight for who takes the girl home - just like any major town in the UK on a Saturday night.
There's little in the way of extras to keep you coming back for more and the music is truly terrible. You can gaze at a couple of pieces of art for the original and play the game with or without high-res visuals.
Costing just 400 MS Points (£3.40) we'd only recommend a purchase to people who think they'll feel better sleeping at night knowing they've got a piece of their childhood on 360. We downloaded it this morning, played it for an hour, finished it a few times and laughed at the music and difficulty. We're done.
The only game I thought I wanted from the arcade thus far and quite frankly its the biggest pile of w*nk I now have on my 360. I'm glad it was only 400 points or I would have been p**sed.
Could be worse, could not come at all. At least some of us can play it if we really wanted to. Me, myself and I actually like this game. ok, it is w*nk but to me thats not the only reason why i play retro games, i play em to bring back the locked memories of my childhood. playing this game again reminded me of one of my old school mates that used to come round and we'd clock it together. i forgot all about him till i played this again and i remember having such a laugh. the key reason to playing retro games for me is to bring back those fond memories.
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Thats fair enough really. For me, I play retro games to see what I missed being that I'm only 19 and I can honestly say I no longer regret missing out on this. Very dissapointing given how often people rave about it.
If you think Double Dragon is hard you must be hyper w*nk at games. You basically need 1 move to beat the entire game (back elbow).
Next time you review a retro title, why not get someone to talk about it that's actually familiar with the original.
For me, this is a perfect port of a game I have very fond memories of. Sure you can clear it in 20 minutes, but some of the achievements are very tricky (finish mission 3 with a baseball bat to name but one).
This may sound strange, but I've always liked the classic Gameboy Double Dragon (1989) more than any other version, even this one. It's just more forgiving and entertaining. And the slower action and crunchy sound effects made the game much more satisfying, too.
I bought it after playing it loads years ago and found it still good based on it being retro beat-em up and the slowdown mentioned is same as the arcade release was so its just emulating it as it was .
Ive already completed it a number of times and wouldn't say it was hard tbh almost everytime ive played through it on myself ive never really needed to use a continue ive even finished it with only using 1 of my lives (default settings) *shrugs*
Too hard??? They're having a laugh aint they, this is a piece of p**s, the only Live game I have the full 200 points on. Double Dragon II was hard. Yeah it's short but this game is a solid gold classic.
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Retro gaming is great
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