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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 8, 2016 15:41:59 GMT -5
Something funny about all of those references in the Game Gear version of Double Dragon is that if it happened today they'd all be official because Sony owns Virgin, EMI and Columbia.
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Post by chronotigger65 on Mar 8, 2016 19:05:35 GMT -5
About freaking time this article showed up. Why did it take so long for this to happen? Final Fight and Streets of Rage got theirs years before this one.
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Post by alphex on Mar 9, 2016 8:13:58 GMT -5
About freaking time this article showed up. Why did it take so long for this to happen? Final Fight and Streets of Rage got theirs years before this one. Dude, don't be a dick.
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Post by Magma MK-II on Mar 9, 2016 9:30:51 GMT -5
This just got posted on a MUGEN forum: i.imgur.com/AZWVELA.pngThe story of this franchise is a sad one, indeed. It's like after the second game they didn't knew what to do with it anymore.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 9, 2016 10:13:31 GMT -5
About freaking time this article showed up. Why did it take so long for this to happen? Final Fight and Streets of Rage got theirs years before this one. Dude, don't be a dick. I jokingly predicted to Kurt this reaction would happen a couple of months ago because if there's one thing I've learned from writing about any beat'em up, it's that it's physically impossible to fellate the Double Dragon series enough for some people no matter the context. I love the series (even DD3 and Return of DD) but people will ask if I know Double Dragon exists or have heard of it (even in response to pieces where I mention Double Dragon!) because otherwise how could I possibly be saying any other beat'em up has cool moves or is fun? Any positive thing I have ever written about any beat'em up - I get a few sternly worded emails in response about how those things are not true or "objectively wrong" because I didn't properly respect Double Dragon. Any positive acknowledgement of another beat'em up is taken as a vicious assault on the reputation of the Lee Brothers!
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 9, 2016 13:41:22 GMT -5
About freaking time this article showed up. Why did it take so long for this to happen? Final Fight and Streets of Rage got theirs years before this one. Back in the early days of the site, when it was hosted on Classicgaming, we had a policy that we wouldn't cover games that already had coverage somewhere else on the network, because it was redundant. We've since loosened that (even though Double Dragon Dojo is also hosted on Kontek nowadays) but the only other major reason is that it's a large series that required a lot of time to catalogue. The story of this franchise is a sad one, indeed. It's like after the second game they didn't knew what to do with it anymore. There's a lot about these games that suggest that Technos' management was just not very good. I don't think they had any real direction for it, they just knew it was really popular overseas and needed to crank them out as quickly as possible to capitalize on it. Double Dragon was great but suffers from huge slowdown, whereas the sequel is basically just a reskin with more troublesome controls. Then they farmed out the third game to some third tier studio. The fourth game was a return to form in some ways, but it was still clearly rushed and incomplete. Then the movie AND cartoon series came out and the only thing they had to show for it was an atrocious Western-developed 2D fighter, then a better but still not fantastic one for the Neo Geo. From there it's just sort of existed to whoever wanted the license, which has resulted in great things (Advance, Neon) and not-so-great things (the XBLA game). I feel the series kept its popularity longer due to the quality of the NES games. Double Dragon II for the NES is much better than the arcade game, same with Double Dragon III even though it's infuriating in many ways.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 9, 2016 13:55:48 GMT -5
The NES versions of Double Dragon 1/2/3 definitely kept the game alive in the US. No one played DD3 in the arcades the minute it was found out that one has to walk into a shop and drop more quarters.
Super Double Dragon IV, man that game was set up to be a big deal, with regular TV commercials in the US and everything. I like it a lot but again it's clearly rushed, and while it had hype for its release it was forgotten pretty fast coming out so close to the faster and much flashier Streets of Rage 2 on the Genesis and what were considered more ambitious action and adventure games on the SNES released not long before or after like Link to the Past along with the explosion of one on one fighting games in arcades and at home.
Technos' unwillingness to commit to the series either being a Fist of the North Star wannabe or a Warriors wannabe or a Saint Seiya wannabe (I still can't believe the endgame of arcade Double Dragon III is real, it's so far away from anything else in the franchise) contributes a lot to how unfocused the later games are. The games didn't have the time or budget put into them to encompass it all in a good way so it feels slapped together and unfocused. Some people say the games are like The Warriors in the US and like Fist of the North Star in Japan but I don't think that really does justice to how muddled they are in general.
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Post by alphex on Mar 9, 2016 14:57:28 GMT -5
I love the series (even DD3 and Return of DD) but people will ask if I know Double Dragon exists or have heard of it (even in response to pieces where I mention Double Dragon!) because otherwise how could I possibly be saying any other beat'em up has cool moves or is fun? Its gameplay style is different from both Final Fight, SOR and the Konami games. It's by far the most controlled of these games, even a single enemy can be a treat. FF is about crowd control, Konami games are about masses of enemies (who also have long periods of invulnerability) and have a very fast playstyle, and SOR is somewhere in between DD (enemies usually don't have long periods of invulnerability) and Konami (it plays a lot faster than DD). So I can see why some people argue that only DD has "true" challenge... but it's a fucking brawler. For four player mayhem, DD's playstyle doesn't and wouldn't fit. (Which is why I cut RoDD some slack; the slow gameplay somewhat fits the series. For a Konami game, it'd be way worse.) Speaking of RoDD... I love the series (even DD3 and Return of DD) EVEN RoDD? That one's easily among the very best of the series! DDA is objectively a better game, but in terms of atmosphere and shenanigans with the counter, RoDD is probably my fav for a quick romp with friends. (Wait, did I just prove your point? Either way, I don't like DD3 all that much. Actually, I'm not much of a fan of actually PLAYING the NES version of DD2, since the platformer sequences are way too frequent and way too stupid.) Hell, given its lack of love, I actually spent two weeks creating the ULTIMATE GIF SET* of the game, as even Tumblr has a dire shortage of such things for the game. *Not THAT hard, given the lack of competition. This just got posted on a MUGEN forum: i.imgur.com/AZWVELA.pngThe story of this franchise is a sad one, indeed. It's like after the second game they didn't knew what to do with it anymore. They still released good games, just way too little, too late. RoDD is a good game, but SOR2 just looks and plays way more... 90s, for a lack of a better term. Thus, the big years of the genre were spent with rehashes or rushed, half-finished games. In an interview with the original producer, he also voiced great regret about the series' lack of an unitary image and presentation.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 9, 2016 15:12:35 GMT -5
(Wait, did I just prove your point? WELCOME TO DEMON'S SOULS! It's true though you'll see a lot of people act like RoDD is a bad game and black sheep of the series! Crazy to me but people will like what they like. I can definitely understand not liking Double Dragon III (especially the arcade version, it is a pretty bad game for several reasons) but I really got into the NES game. It was a different time though, just being able to get other people to play as after beating them is awesome to a kid. It really is an absurdly hard game at times (but still not as bad as some parts of the arcade game, SPELL ROSETTA with THOSE jumping controls?).
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Post by alphex on Mar 9, 2016 15:19:42 GMT -5
I actually managed to spell ROSETTA just fine.
Also, the Trilogy release has special moves available from the very beginning. DD3 is actually a lot more fun that way. I get liking the NES version, it's just too damn hard for me to get into. I need my brawlers to be simple, so friends can play them with me!
Top 3 DD games for me: 1. DD Advance (objectively the best) 2. RoDD (personally, I somehow like this one's atmosphere more) 3. Arcade DD2 without slowdown (so either a pimped MAME copy or Trilogy)
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Post by Magma MK-II on Mar 9, 2016 21:43:43 GMT -5
It's telling that the series don't have a cohesive canon (like, at all, after the second game they're all over the place) and that the first game is probably one of the most remade games ever.
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Lord Dalek
Full Member
WHY DOES HE HAVE A SECOND/THIRD/FORTH/ETC. FORM?!?!
Posts: 249
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Post by Lord Dalek on Mar 10, 2016 13:28:33 GMT -5
RODD gets a bad rep I think because of Super Double Dragon being in an unfinished state and most casual gamers thinking that the Japanese version being identical when it clearly isn't.
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 10, 2016 14:22:53 GMT -5
RODD gets a bad rep I think because of Super Double Dragon being in an unfinished state and most casual gamers thinking that the Japanese version being identical when it clearly isn't. RODD is better, but it's still really rough around the edges. The game only runs at 30 FPS which is a really bad look for any console game of the era. It screams poor/rushed programming. To be fair, the original Streets of Rage also only ran at 30 FPS, but the controls on that felt slightly snappier.
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Lord Dalek
Full Member
WHY DOES HE HAVE A SECOND/THIRD/FORTH/ETC. FORM?!?!
Posts: 249
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Post by Lord Dalek on Mar 10, 2016 18:43:53 GMT -5
It's telling that the series don't have a cohesive canon (like, at all, after the second game they're all over the place) and that the first game is probably one of the most remade games ever. Yeah the plotline is a total disaster. Isn't it supposed to be post-apocalyptic? Is Marion dead or not? Is Billy the blond and Jimmy the brunette or have I got that backwards? WHO THE EFFF IS SONNY LEE? And so on and so forth. RODD gets a bad rep I think because of Super Double Dragon being in an unfinished state and most casual gamers thinking that the Japanese version being identical when it clearly isn't. RODD is better, but it's still really rough around the edges. The game only runs at 30 FPS which is a really bad look for any console game of the era. It screams poor/rushed programming. To be fair, the original Streets of Rage also only ran at 30 FPS, but the controls on that felt slightly snappier. Oh its definitely unfinished, you just need to look at all the story info that Double Dragon Dojo dug up in the game's code to see Technos literally had no clue how to deal with the SNES hardware. To be fair though, isn't complaining about how something runs on 30fps on a SNES a bit counterintuitive considering how bad the system clock was in the first place?
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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 10, 2016 19:46:20 GMT -5
Plus the new songs, I mean it's appreciated but do they really deserve any credit for hitting cut and paste on some Radiorama/whatever Italo-Disco songs?
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