Double Dragon

Genre:

Action

Year:

1988

Developer:

Technōs Japan

Publisher:

Arcadia Systems

Perspective:

3rd-person, Side-view

Theme:

Fighting

Releases:

MAME 2003 (1987), DOS (1988), ZX Spectrum (1988), Amstrad CPC (1988), Amiga (1988), Atari 2600 (1988), SMS (1988), NES (1988), Commodore 64 (1988), Atari 7800 (1989), Atari ST (1989), Game Boy (1990), Genesis (1993), Game Boy Advance (2003)

New York, not so distant future, two brothers Jimmy and Billy Lee trained in martial art of Sou-Setsu-Ken, which the teach as part of self-defense in their school of martial arts for kids. This is a basic story of an action beat 'em up game: Double Dragon. This ideal scenery is disrupted when Billy's girlfriend - Marian is kidnapped by a gang of Black Warriors, which are lead by a man named Willy. The Lee brothers have no other option,: they have to go on a rescue mission to save Marian, while beating up a couple of tough guys from Black Warriors gang. Double Dragon introduced several additions to the Kunio-kun belt scroll beat 'em up formula, such as a continuous side-scrolling world adding a sense of progression, two-player cooperative gameplay, the ability to arm oneself with an enemy's weapon after disarming them, and the use of cut scenes to give it a cinematic look and feel. The player takes control of martial artist Billy Lee, or his twin brother Jimmy (also known as Hammer and Spike in the supplementary materials for the American arcade release), as they fight their way into the turf of the Black Warriors gang in order to rescue Billy's girlfriend, Marian. The player character has a repertoire of martial arts techniques which they can perform by using the joystick and three action buttons (kick, jump, and punch) individually or in combination.