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.