Thursday, March 25, 2021

Super Double Dragon (Super NES, 1992)

Is this Double Dragon IV? For a long time, yeah, it kinda was. Eventually they went ahead and made an actual 4th game by name, which messes with the lineage of this one a bit. However, considering the one after this on the SNES is called Double Dragon V, I think this game can still stake a claim to being the real fourth.

To further add to the confusion, the Japanese name of this game is Kick Master VI: Revenge of Punch Lord - First Blood II: Like A Biohazard.




When it comes to Super Double Dragon, you gotta go two-player! Unfortunately that requires having a friend in the room. ...or a friend.

::Mad World begins to play as the camera slowly zooms in on the game::

Single Dragon begins!

Right off the bat, this looks and plays a lot like the NES original, just better. Like some other "4" games of the time (Castlevania IV) it sorta overlooks two-thirds of the original trilogy and draws heavily from the first game.

Either way I want to finish up the retro console DDs so I'll be looking at this and Double Dragon V as well. Not sure about Battletoads and Double Dragon but we'll see. I'd love to because it looks awesome, but it also looks pretty rough as is BT tradition.

More buttons means more moves. Look at this mighty Yakuza kick.

The Shadow Organization (brotherrrr) made one mistake: They brought knives to a fistfight. Billy Lee's fists are registered deadly weapons in all 50 states. I like that we're brawling in an airport, complete with a ticket counter. Was this inspired by 1991's Die Hard 2?

They realize the knives aren't working and start bringing dual swords. Billy Lee just punches right through that. BAD DUDES!

He takes up as much room as possible with his arms while soaring through the air, like Kenny Omega.

Finally, we arrive at a plane...and they let us board? No need for a check-in process or identification when you're Billy Lee.

It's a globe-trotting adventure, as we set out for...

...China! Time to set the governmental regime straight on their oppressive, genocidal policies.

ANNNND the site just got banned in China. ::holds earpiece:: Actually, apparently it already was.

Beating up a pad is cool, but you can also knock it into your foes!

I battle a master at this point. I miss the foes of the original game, like Chintai and Abobo. The bosses/enemies in the other DD games just aren't as appealing to me.

Of course, we get the requisite construction site level. That looks like San Francisco in the background.

What appear to be the villain crew show up at this point. That's right, we're gonna have to go through all of these foes. The leader in the red jacket looks like Schwarzenegger + Michael Jackson, aka everything cool from the era.

(Editor's Note: The actual leader is the guy in the yellow pants)

First up is Pennywise the Clown. These fights would be a lot easier without the Shitter Adds (tm)

This series being what it is, later on it throws ill-advised platforming at you. The controls for jumping etc are much better than in the earlier games in the series, at least.

I battle Ze Terminator at the end of the bridge. After Streets of Rage, this game looks slow and ponderous. I think this was the point in time when this series had been pretty effectively supplanted by SOR and Final Fight.

In the lair of the Shadow Clan we fight multiple monks.

The next of the villain squad is this weirdo, who splits into two images. What's with these brawlers having bosses that split into two images?

Get past that and we get the final boss, yellow pants guy, the dastardly Duke.

He's no Willy, but he's the most challenging fight in this game.

Duke is no match for flying kicks with giant arm florishes. Annnnnd that's it for this one, put another DD in the win column. It's a cool game but it's kind of average and forgettable. Doesn't stand out at all compared to the other beat 'em ups of the early 90's era. Safe to say the series' era had gone by at this point. The early DD games were always more of a trend-setting deal anyway. They set the tone for what followed.

*Dragons



1 comment:

  1. I completely missed this one growing up.

    Yeah, use just like you said, the native 16-bit games made this series fade away and classify itself as obsolete.

    ReplyDelete