Game of the Week: Double Dragon

Arcade Game: Double Dragon
Age When Played: 10-12 years old
Location: Skateland
Money Spent: 2 Pocket Loads of Quarters
Completed: NO

Flash this title, kids will come running!

Growing up in the 80s I distinctly remember two things, roller skates and arcades.  When roller skates are mentioned, I remember a place called Skateland.  When arcades are mentioned, I remember Double Dragon.  This was a 2 player cooperative beat em up game that my friends and I would always play when we went to Skateland.  The senseless violence wasn't what drew us towards this game, it was the 2 player cooperative senseless violence that drew us towards it.  When my best friend and I started playing, we would always draw a crowd.

INTRODUCTION:
Video games these days often start out with a flashy movie scene which most younger gamers will try to skip because they just want to play the game.  Double Dragon has an intro too, a gang of thugs walk up to a woman, one guy punches her in the stomach and carries her off the screen.  Then the heroes come out of a garage with the sound of a sports car revving its engine and start beating the ever living crap out of everybody.  That's as good of an intro as I need.  This was the first time I had ever seen blatant violence against a woman.  I guess Japanese game designers figured the best way to motivate players was to beat up their girlfriends first.  Come to think of it, this was also the first time in a video game I caught a glimpse of women's underwear.

Dude, not cool!

Well, at least she has on clean underwear.

GAMEPLAY:
Double Dragon has 3 buttons, punch, kick, and jump.  Pressing jump and kick performs a spinning backwards kick while pressing jump and punch performs an elbow attack.  There are a variety of other attacks like grabbing heads and smashing them with your knee, the shoulder throw, uppercut, jump kick, and headbutt.

There are plenty of weapons in the game, too, including the baseball bat, knife, dynamite, and the whip.  The whip is interesting because you can only acquire it from the only female enemy in the game.  Having a female enemy in a video game was fairly new for this time period.  Also, you can't grab her head, hit her with your knee, or throw her.  I guess the game designers figured punches, kicks, knives, baseball bats, and whips were okay to to hit her with, but grabbing her head was too violent.  The final weapon of the game was an automatic rifle which only the last boss of the game had.  There was a rumor among my friends that the final boss would drop his rifle and you could pick it up and use it.  That rumor was completely false, but in the 80s we didn't have internet to confirm or deny claims like this, so it was just fun to think it could happen.

Double Dragon also has objects throughout each level that can be used as weapons including oil drums, rocks, and cardboard boxes.  That's right, mission 2 has cardboard boxes that you can throw at enemies.  Even as a kid I realized that it didn't make sense to use cardboard as a weapon because I used to play with cardboard all the time and never got hurt.  My only thought was since mission 2 takes place at a construction site, the boxes had to be filled with bricks or something.

There are a total of 4 missions in Double Dragon, so the game is relatively short.  I tried playing this game recently and finished it in 15 minutes without losing a single life!  How in the world did this game devour so much of my money?

Ducking = Invincibility

Swing and a Miss!

DIFFICULTY:

Mission 4, now DIE!

The enemies had an unfair advantage, ducking.  The enemies could duck while you couldn't, and when they ducked, nothing could hurt them even when you were blatantly hitting them.  Hit detection was poor because occasionally when using a baseball bat you'd swing right through enemies causing no damage.  Mission 3 has a broken wooden bridge that forces you to jump over, and if you miss you'll fall in the water and die instantly.  I found it odd that you wouldn't just swim out of the water.  Mission 4 is the last stage and it starts you out dodging concrete blocks that randomly shoot out at you.  Getting hit makes you fly backwards forcing you to dodge all of the blocks again.  Two hits and you're dead.  I've even been hit twice while flying through the air and then died.  Even the last boss is too much of a coward to fight you alone bare handed.  He has an endless supply of henchmen with him and fires an automatic rifle that kills you instantly.  Mission 4 is a money trap that makes you keep pumping in quarters because you're too committed to quit.  No wonder my friend and I never finished this game.

I'll save you sweetheart....maybe!

STRATEGY:
One word, elbow.  For some reason I did not know about the elbow trick.  Enemies would duck, dodge, jump, and counter every other move except the elbow.  Flinging out an elbow made all enemies a deer in the headlights, because you'd always land a hit.  Also, it was super powerful.  Every enemy including the final boss only take a few strikes with the elbow to die.  Had I known about this move back when I was a kid, I could have saved myself 2 pocket loads of quarters.  I remember playing Double Dragon with my best friend trying to finish off the last boss of the game.  We drew quite a crowd, and I remember him yelling, "I'm out of quarters!"  I yelled back, "Take some out of MY pocket!"  "You're out of quarters too!"  "THE OTHER POCKET, THE OTHER POCKET!"  Well, we both ran dry of quarters and the boss was still alive.  The crowd dispersed and we went back to our parents dejected.  When asked where all of our money went we pointed at the arcade machine called Double Dragon.  Had my friend and I known about the elbow strategy back then we would have been Double Dragon masters.  Aside from the odd physics and overpowered enemies, the game is still a fun button mashing slug fest.  They made many different versions of Double Dragon, but the original arcade is still the best, and I strongly recommend playing this version if given the chance.

Game of the Week: Pit Fighter

Back in my younger days I remember pizza, bumper cars, and arcades machines.  Fortunately there was a place in my hometown that had all three called JR's Entertainment.  This place was a hotspot for childhood birthday parties, and during one such party I happened across a game that immediately grabbed my attention.  This game was called Pit Fighter, and I instantly became mesmerized by its photorealistic graphics and full motion video intro.  Now, by today's standards the game looks outdated, but as an 11 year old in 1990, this was really high tech.  The game used photographs of actors that were then animated to look like they were fighting each other.  One could argue that this had already been done with the introduction of another well-known fighting game called Mortal Kombat.  However, Pit Fighter came out in 1990, while Mortal Kombat came out in 1991.  History indicates that Pit Fighter was actually the inspiration for Mortal Kombat, which adds to the games significance.  I know few people that can say they've played Pit Fighter in its original arcade form.  Since this game was the first of its kind to use live actors in costumes to create digitized animation, having played it as a kid feels pretty significant.

GAMEPLAY:

As far as the gameplay is concerned, it's pretty straight forward.  You have a punch, kick, and jump button along with various button combinations.  Pressing punch and kick together will pick up your opponent while pressing punch, kick and jump together performs a super move.  As a kid, I was unaware of these various strategies, so I just mashed all of the buttons and hoped for the best.  I'd put in quarters, press buttons, run out of quarters, and then go home.  I thought the game was a blast, and even playing it many years later I find it entertaining.  There were many releases of this game on many home consoles, but the arcade version was the best by far.  Here are some comparisons.

The original arcade version.

ARCADE:

The arcade version was awesome.  The machine itself had 3 controllers for up to 3 simultaneous players.  Just press punch, kick, and jump until the red life bar of the opponent is gone and move to the next opponent.  If you die, just put in more quarters and continue where you fell.  When I was playing this as a kid, that's precisely what I did.  I just put in money and mashed buttons until I ran out of quarters.  The farthest I had ever gotten was the match right before the final boss.  You had to fight two guys named Chainman Eddie that looked like they were dressed in just socks and underwear.  Under certain conditions I've been knocked out in just one hit during this match.  This was the "Cash Grab" stage.  In other words, programmers found it necessary to ramp up the difficulty once players progressed through most of the game as a way to ensure that players would continue to put quarters in the machine.  Programmers let you get so far into the game that it made you feel too committed to simply quit, so you just kept putting in money.  Well, it worked for Pit Fighter because I only made to the stage right before the last boss simply because I ran out of quarters.

SNES version of Pit Fighter

SUPER NINTENDO:

Pit Fighter was ported to every home console system, but the two I'm most familiar with were for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.  The SNES version was not even close to as good as the arcade.  Back then, the arcades were always superior to the home console versions, and this was no exception.  The characters were still the same, but one big problem was the difficulty.  The learning curve was too steep, and I would often die at the first match.  Along with the ridiculous difficulty, you also retain the remaining life throughout the entire game.  You have one life and no option to continue.  The game designers took the liberty of making the sound effects, music, and voices sound nothing like the arcade.  When you put bad controls, one life, and no continues into the Super Nintendo version of Pit Fighter it starts to become forgettable really fast.

Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter

SEGA GENESIS:

However, the Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter was really fun and followed the arcade pretty well.  This version was actually playable.  The single biggest improvement was that you had multiple lives.  This made your inevitable death much easier to stomach. Pound for pound I would say that the Sega Genesis version of Pit Fighter was the closest thing to having the true arcade game in your home.  Since I've completed the arcade version many times I noticed that the Genesis version had all of the same characters, sounds and controls.  I was actually able to finish the entire game my first time playing through.  Aside from the obvious changes to the graphics, the game was true to the arcade in every way.

Pit Fighter haunted my childhood.  I threw so many quarters at this arcade game and still never managed to defeat the final boss.  Many years later, with the help of modern technology, I was able to download Pit Fighter and finally beat it.  I now realize how easy this game actually was, and even though it's a game that was made in 1990 it still remains one of my top favorite beat em ups.

Game of the Week: Galaga

The Arcade Version of Galaga

I get more requests for Galaga on my arcade machines than most other games of that era.  It's good that people remember the classics.  My recollection of this game stems from an old laundromat in my hometown where I unfortunately had to waste my Saturday washing clothes with my mom because I was too young to stay at home by myself.  This was the early 80s, so I had no tablet or smartphone to keep me entertained.  This was back in the day that if I got out of line my mom would spank me in public in front of other parents.  That was NORMAL!  So, I had two options, sit quietly and wait for the clothes to finish, or face my mom's wrath.  Luckily there were always one or two arcade machines in any giving laundromat at any given time.  Being a kid in the 80s was awesome because there were arcade machines everywhere.  Gas stations, laundromats, barber shops, restaurants, they were all over the place.  Of all the arcade machines that were released in the early 80s I kept seeing either Pac-Man or Galaga.  Pac-Man was released in 1980 and Galaga in 1981 which were both produced by Namco.  Back at the laundromat, I would ask my mom for quarters to play this game which was always met with, "Do you want to wear dirty clothes?"  Apparently that meant that the quarters were for washing and drying clothes, not for playing video games.  So I spent my time staring at the blinking Game Over screen watching the endless loop of high scores and gameplay only to be left wondering what it was like to play this masterpiece.  Well, I have played it since then and frankly, it's pretty basic.  Your ship only moves left and right while the fire button shoots a pathetic little projectile straight up.  You can only have two of these projectiles on the screen at once so you have to be careful about mashing the fire button.  The enemies fly in and collect at the top of the screen and once they all pile in they will start to break off swooping down at your ship while shooting projectiles of their own.  The enemies at the very top will also swoop down, but they take more hits and will occasionally try to suck your ship in with a tractor beam.  If your ship gets captured you'll have the ability to take it back by destroying the ship that originally took it.

Enemy tractor beam taking the ship.

Goodbye...

Reclaimed Ship

You more or less have an option to have your ship get captured or not.  This can be a worthwhile strategy as long as you still have one ship in reserve.  If you don't have any other ships, it will be game over.  Your captured ship will then start attacking you along with the ship that did the capturing, but be careful not to destroy your own ship.  Only take out the ship that captured it.  Once you reclaim your stolen ship you will then have two of them side by side which makes shooting targets much easier, but also makes you a bigger target as well.  The whole purpose of the game is to destroy all of the ships on the screen, move on to the next stage, rinse and repeat.  There are the occasional bonus stages in which ships quickly dart in but they won't stay.  You get bonus points for those you shoot and extra bonuses if you destroy all of the ships during the bonus round.  Overall, Galaga is still really fun to play.  Most children today probably wouldn't give this game the time of day as it would be too simple and boring for their taste.  However, if you were a kid in the 80s like me, this game will bring back some of the fondest childhood memories that no child today would ever understand.  That's why I feel that Galaga will forever be among the greatest arcade games of our childhood, because being able to relive childhood experiences never gets old.

If You Can't Have it, Build it!

Many years ago I stumbled on a fantastic gaming concept called emulation.  Being able to play old consoles and arcades on my PC with just a simple piece of software was mind boggling at the time.  That's how I became obsessed with collecting as many game roms that I could.  I started my journey with a 14.4kbps dial-up connection.  That'll give you an idea of how long I've been doing this, and also give you a sense of how old I am.  To put this into perspective, it took approximately 20-30 minutes to download The Legend of Zelda NES rom which is a 129KB file.  Quick math: Your current smartphone takes pictures that are about 2-4MB in size.  One smartphone picture is 15-30 times larger than The Legend of Zelda rom.  So, back in my younger days of internet, this one picture would have taken me 6 to 10 hours to download.  I was ecstatic to have a 14.4kbps dial-up internet, so take this into consideration when you want to blast your internet provider when you can't stream Netflix on all 10 of your devices with your 60mbps connection. (4,200 times faster than my dial-up)  Spoiled brats!  Anyway, I felt that my collection of roms were missing something.  Specifically, my arcade roms were missing an actual arcade machine.  I figured it would be awesome if I could actually play an arcade rom the way it was originally created with an arcade machine.  I found a lot of great resources regarding cabinet design and hardware to get my project started.  Since my professional background centered around computer hardware and software, I didn't waste a lot of time figuring out the complexities of PC hardware requirements and emulator configuration.  My shortcoming came from the ability to follow a design, cut wood, and paint.  Regardless of my inability to drill a straight hole, I think my first attempt turned out very well.

My very first arcade build.

The design elements are pretty straight forward.  The button layout is a combination of the american Street Fighter design with the addition of the 7th button for the SNK design.  Both players have a coin button and a start button.  I finished off the design by adding a trackball in the center with its respective left and right mouse buttons.  The last element was the quit button for returning to the main menu.  In hindsight, I realized that the placement of the quit button was not ideal for eccentric Golden Tee players.  The location immediately above the trackball led some players to overshoot their swing and ultimately end their game.  This oversight forced me to remap the quit button just for Golden Tee which was much easier than telling players not to swing so stinking hard.  The final design elements include an acrylic front to protect the screen, a hinged control box that has a compartment for tools and spare parts, and finally the cup holders that can hold both standard beverages and coffee cups.  What better way to start off your morning than by finishing off a few opponents in Mortal Kombat while also finishing off your cup of coffee.  This is not my only arcade machine.  With my second arcade machine I decided to try my hand at revamping an existing arcade machine that no longer worked.  Learning from my mistakes, I designed a more streamlined control box and added games that were not specifically designed as arcades.  My next post will showcase this next arcade machine.  Stay tuned.

Remembering the Good Ol' Days

Ah, arcades, indistinguishable sound effects, horribly synthesized music, and incoherent spoken dialogue.  These are all things I remember walking into the few local arcades in town.  I remember a time when the term arcade was a destination, not a genre.  More of a noun, less of an adjective.  I would beg my mom to drop me off at my friend's house so we could stroll over to the nearby arcade and play.  I would also ask for quarters...LOTS of quarters.  When I ran out of quarters, the game over screen really meant something.  Time to call my mom to bring me back home.  I miss the arcades.  I often drive past areas of town where the arcades used to be and remember my first attempts at Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and Rampage.  Unfortunately when the arcade market dropped, my childhood entertainment destinations closed shop and never reopened.  Now we all just sit in front of out televisions with our Xbox or Playstation playing "Arcade" games.  As in the style, not the place.  I love it when games give you the option to play easy, normal, or arcade.  I feel that if I choose "Arcade" I should be given an address where I can find the actual machine.  It would also come with a warning: "Bring LOTS of quarters!"  It's not the same.  I was recently asked to speak with a group of young kids about video games for a project they were working on.  I felt like an old World War II veteran explaining the hardships I endured "back then".  "Well kids, back then I had to beg my mom to bring me to the arcade so I could play video games.  When I ran out of quarters I had my mom pick me back up and take me home."  One very perplexed young boy raised his hand.  "Let me get this straight.  You had to leave the house and be taken to a different location that had video games, put money into them over and over again, and after spending all that money you left the games there??!!  How many games where on that machine?"  "ONE!  One video game for each machine to spend your money on."  Upon seeing the look on that poor boy's face I though his head was going to explode.  Upon further explanations about how technology has progressed into our modern consoles, most of the children understood that playing video games was not that easy "back then."  Although one child asked "Why didn't you just play games on your smartphone?"  Um, yeah.  I'll just leave that topic for another post.