MaximRecoil
Well-known member
• No sound effect when you hit someone with a bat (but I believe there is one when an enemy hits you with a bat).
• Enemy AI that is at times laughable, featuring, among other things, zero fear of their own dynamite.
• A near useless "head butt" attack which is programmed wrong; i.e., instead of only performing the head butt when the joystick is quickly tapped twice left or right, it is always counting left or right joystick input as the first tap; meaning you can be walking along for a while, stop briefly, and then start walking again, and your character will head butt the air, leaving you completely vulnerable to attack.
• A near useless jumping back kick that has next to zero range.
• An elbow smash attack that is so overpowered that it renders all other moves pointless.
• Pressing the two buttons for the elbow smash will pick up a weapon if one is at your feet, leaving you completely vulnerable to attack, even though pressing those two buttons clearly indicates that you want to perform an elbow smash rather than pick up a weapon.
• Ridiculous amounts of slowdown. Quite a few games have occasional slowdown, but Double Dragon really shines in this area. There are entire sections which have excessive slowdown the whole time, e.g., the top of the building with the conveyor belt and elevator, and the final area where you fight Machine Gun Willy and company. The slowdown is bad in single player mode, and of course, even worse in 2-player mode. The funny thing is, some of the bootleg boards have less slowdown than the real thing, because the bootleggers ponied up for faster hardware than Technos did.
• Various random bugs, with a better than average chance of at least one of them showing up during a game.
Oddly enough, despite all these glaring flaws that never should have made it past the testing stage, Double Dragon is a fun game (it defines the genre as well), especially with 2 players. The classic kick > head grab > knee bash > overhead throw has to be one of the most satisfying attacks ever in a brawling game (very well animated too). I played the hell out of it when I was a kid in '87/'88, and everyone else did too. There was always a crowd of people watching and/or waiting to play.
• Enemy AI that is at times laughable, featuring, among other things, zero fear of their own dynamite.
• A near useless "head butt" attack which is programmed wrong; i.e., instead of only performing the head butt when the joystick is quickly tapped twice left or right, it is always counting left or right joystick input as the first tap; meaning you can be walking along for a while, stop briefly, and then start walking again, and your character will head butt the air, leaving you completely vulnerable to attack.
• A near useless jumping back kick that has next to zero range.
• An elbow smash attack that is so overpowered that it renders all other moves pointless.
• Pressing the two buttons for the elbow smash will pick up a weapon if one is at your feet, leaving you completely vulnerable to attack, even though pressing those two buttons clearly indicates that you want to perform an elbow smash rather than pick up a weapon.
• Ridiculous amounts of slowdown. Quite a few games have occasional slowdown, but Double Dragon really shines in this area. There are entire sections which have excessive slowdown the whole time, e.g., the top of the building with the conveyor belt and elevator, and the final area where you fight Machine Gun Willy and company. The slowdown is bad in single player mode, and of course, even worse in 2-player mode. The funny thing is, some of the bootleg boards have less slowdown than the real thing, because the bootleggers ponied up for faster hardware than Technos did.
• Various random bugs, with a better than average chance of at least one of them showing up during a game.
Oddly enough, despite all these glaring flaws that never should have made it past the testing stage, Double Dragon is a fun game (it defines the genre as well), especially with 2 players. The classic kick > head grab > knee bash > overhead throw has to be one of the most satisfying attacks ever in a brawling game (very well animated too). I played the hell out of it when I was a kid in '87/'88, and everyone else did too. There was always a crowd of people watching and/or waiting to play.


