DOUBLE DRAGON GAME PLAY

The gameplay in most of the games takes place in a pseudo 3D perspective as seen in Renegade and later beat ’em ups, in which the player can move in four directions but is always facing left or right. In almost all cases the player moves to the right in a horizontally scrolling environment, encountering various enemies who attack and try to prevent the player from progressing. The player can perform a variety of unarmed fighting techniques against their enemies, as well use melee weapons such as baseball bats and throwing knives normally obtained from enemies or found on the floor. In some installments, there are techniques that can be done in combination with another player, the game also has an elbow move that enables the player to move to keep hitting the enemy without getting hit when moving side to side on a fallen opponent.

For most of the series, players take control of martial artist William “Billy” Lee, who battles against various adversaries such as gang members and rival fighters. He is often assisted by his elder twin brother James “Jimmy” Lee, who usually serves as the second player’s character in most of the games. The Lee brothers are characterized as successors of a fictional martial art known as Sōsetsuken (双截拳; “Twin Sever Fist”, also known as Sōsaiken), which combines techniques from other styles such as karate, tai chi and Shorinji Kempo.

The duo were actually unnamed when the original arcade game was initially released in Japan, although the names Hammer and Spike were given to them in the cabinet and promotional flyer produced by Taito for the overseas version. The names Billy and Jimmy Lee were first established in the Famicom/NES version of the first game and consequently used in other console versions and tie-in products such as The Original Sound of Double Dragon soundtrack album, but were not actually used in the arcade versions until Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone. Billy Lee’s name comes from a combination of Bruce Lee‘s last name with the first name of his character Billy Lo from the movie Game of Death, while Jimmy is named after musician Jimmy Page.

Because of the differences between the arcade and console versions of the games, the designs of the Lee brothers tend to vary throughout the series. While the original arcade game has Player 1 controlling a blond-haired Lee brother dressed in a blue outfit and Player 2 as a brown-haired brother in red, the NES version had their hair and outfit colors switched around: Billy was now the brown-haired brother in blue, while Jimmy became the blond-haired brother in red. Super Double Dragon was the first game to have the Lee brothers sport different hairstyles during gameplay, with Billy being given a laid down hairstyle and Jimmy a spiky flat top, a design convention adopted by later games such as Double Dragon Advance and the smartphone versions, although some of the promotional art and in-game visuals for the earlier games (such as the ending photograph of Double Dragon II: The Revenge and the story sequences/character portraits of Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones) had already depicted the Lee brothers with differing hairstyles. Other games such as the Neo Geo fighting game and Double Dragon Neon depict the Lee brothers as identical twins like in the first arcade game.

The two brothers are shown to be romantically interested in a young woman named Marian, a student in their dojo. The arcade version of the first game (along with most console versions) can end with both brothers fighting each other over Marian if two players reach the end together, with the survivor ultimately winning Marian’s affections. The Famicom/NES version, which establishes Marian to be Billy’s long-term girlfriend, changes the story so that Jimmy was actually the leader of the Black Warriors (a change made as a result of the lack of two-player cooperative play in that version) and was the one who orchestrated Marian’s kidnapping.

DOUBLE DRAGON LEGACY

While not the first games in the genre, the original Double Dragon titles laid the foundations for modern beat ’em up games. They influenced the creation of titles such as Golden Axe, Ninja Gaiden and Final Fight, which firmly established beat ’em ups as a popular game genre.

Double Dragon ushered in a “Golden Age” for the beat ’em up genre that took it to new heights with its detailed set of martial arts attacks and its two-player cooperative gameplay. Double Dragon’s success resulted in a flood of beat ’em ups in the late 1980s. Subsequent beat ’em ups during the late 1980s to 1990s followed the conventions set by Double Dragon.

Years later, original series creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto lamented the inconsistency in design and quality of the various versions and spin-offs of Double Dragon in games and other media. He attributed these failings to Technōs losing the control of the license and allowing a multitude of third parties to work on the franchise.

*Some of the content information above was provided by Wikipedia and KLOV (Killer List of Video Games).

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