Double Dragon (Neo-Geo/Arcade/Playstation, 1995)

 

Double Dragon: The Movie: The Game is the first Neo-Geo game I've ever beaten. How is that even possible? Well, it's what the list says. This is an arcade fighting game that I'm long-overdue to take a look at. This game should have gotten a lot more respect from consoles. Hard to believe that the far-inferior Double Dragon V was the fighting game that most consoles got. I played that one on the SNES and it was one of the most mediocre games on the system. Then again, this one might be a little too advanced for the SNES. Outside of the Neo-Geo, as far as systems that people actually had goes... it did get a PS1 release. In Japan. I didn't even know this game existed until a few years ago.

This is from the Dragonball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 school of design, so it's in that short phase where developers weren't sure if they had to incorporate 3D to their 2D fighting games or not.

We get a sweet intro FMV, where we see that this game is indeed based on Double Dragon: The Movie. Whoaaaaa!

On the left is my dude Mark Dacascos, a criminally-underrated martial arts actor who finally made it big, for a moment, as the main antagonist of John Wick 3. It took decades of grinding, but he finally got some respect from a major movie. Him and Scott Adkins should go bowling. Keanu deserves credit for knowing who to go for in casting his adversaries. Donnie Yen was a star already, but he's another one who got the Keanu Rub.

Would be awesome to get Donnie Yen, Iko Uwais, Mark Dacascos, Scott Adkins, and Jackie Chan all involved in one project, the best martial arts actors around doing one big movie. Market it as the modern ultimate team-up of martial arts actors that people respect, and that don't get enough praise (besides Jackie). I couldn't put together a better cast than that. Chuck Norris and David Carradine would have also been in that group, no doubt, as the wisened sages that bring their cred to the proceedings.

The villain of the movie is nefarious kingpin Koga Shuko, played by noted T-1000 Robert Patrick. Not sure where Koga fits into the video game series. When I was a kid, the bad guy was Willy, with his machine gun. And of course...

...Abobo, the most consistent recurring antagonist of the series. Well, he's playable in this game, and he sports a big codpiece to give his opponents a target to zero in on.

Here's Marian, played by Alyssa Milano in the movie. She wasn't a particular bad-ass in the movie, but she sure is in this game.

Beware, cause the PS1 version has loading screens where everyone has horrible haircuts. Get used to looking at those horrible haircuts a lot. Because these loading screens just go on and on. While I was testing the PS1 version, I timed one of the loading screens and it was a legitimate 30 seconds of loading before a fight started.

Note: The Neo-Geo version has no loading whatsoever and is infinitely more playable as a result.

There's a "3D Mode" you can choose on the title screen. Well, don't. It just turns the game into this weird mashup where your 2D characters are fighting inside of this 3D diorama. Nothing about this works. I think the idea was that you could turn the stages into 3D environments and move around in them. Ya, no. No.

Much like Ryu and Ken, or Terry and Andy Bogard, this series has two co-leads stealing each other's heat. Here's BIMMY.

And here's Jimmy, played by Mark Dacas...wait a minute, this doesn't look like him at all! I guess they couldn't use any of the movie likenesses in the game.

Abobo is the big Zangief-style bruiser.

There's also Marian, an actual playable fighter. My God! She is very rarely playable in this series; Double Dragon Gaiden and its weapons-loving Marian is the only other game I can think of that has her.

2A Marian will fuck you up! Just try it, pal!

...her official artwork is pretty bad though. Who is the lunatic responsible for the haircuts in this game's artwork?

Luckily, once the game starts, Marian is super cute. And looks nothing at all like Alyssa Milano. Which...is fine with me, actually. I can do without her having an Eminem Haircut.

This game has a ton of animation frames; everything is super well-animated. And Marian is somehow cute in ALL of her frames. I only have so many screenshots I can fit into a post here.

As Marian shows off her unnecessarily-sexy jumps, it's a good time to mention that the game has double jumps in it. A bit like how some Street Fighter II characters can double-jump off of walls, everyone in this game can double-jump at any given time to soar over their opponent.

It looks like Marian is sitting on the barrel while the guy gets down on one knee to start worshipping.

This will just be Marian: The Post at this point.

Marian's long kicks are good for keeping her larger, slower foes at bay.

Next foe drops from a helicopter like he's Sting (wrestling version) or something.

Not sure who this guy is in relation to the movie. Presumably all of these characters showed up in the movie in some form, but I'm guessing most of them were minor roles.

As her opponent goes high with an arm-clobber, Marian goes low with an uppercut.

Editor's Note: Alright, I looked into it...this guy isn't in the movie. Matter of fact NONE of these characters are in the movie. As far as the selectable characters go, everyone is created for the game outside of the 3 protagonists and Abobo. The movie had a bunch of characters it could have made use of, like Mohawk Goon and Linda with her whip.

Marian's flying kick is amazing. Not since Lucia in Final Fight 3 have I seen such a gorgeous flying kick.

Even better is her special attack:

It's a variant of Guile's Flash Kick where she somersaults forward instead of doing a backflip.

Marian's victory pose is super-cute too. Is she ever not super-cute?

And to think, all we got on the SNES was that lame Double Dragon V game where everyone had large jaws and the closest thing we got to a likeable female character was that whip-cracking, somewhat homely Dominique woman.

Marian demonstrates the beauty of high kicks. A lot of her attacks have an ice skating type of movement to them. There's some ballet in there too.

Besides the long sweeping crouch kick, her weaker crouch kicks are these upward jabs that are ideal for punishing someone's neussen.

Burnov here might be a reference to the mohawked leader of Koga's riot crew in the movie. However, that guy was small and wirey, this guy is huge.

More importantly than all of that, even Marian's hops are sexy.

"Look at my butt!" says Marian.

We all owe her an apology for her being so rarely playable in this series. It took us until 2023. TWENTY TWENTY THREE. To get her playable again after this.

So go ahead. Kiss it. Apologize.

Speaking of playable wamen, there's a lot of hoopla online about how the new God of War game doesn't have Kratos in it. Even Domino's Pizza UK's corporate account is displeased.

YOU'RE MAKIN' DOMINOS CRY!

A lot of the hoopla is over Kratos being switched out. The thing is, though, the game is fully upfront from the get-go that it has a new protagonist. This isn't like, say, Metal Gear Solid 2 or The Last of Us 2 where 30% of the way through the game they switch you to playing as a new protagonist without warning, one that the fanbase doesn't like. Those were legitimate gripes as far as rug-pull protagonist-switches go.

This new game is more like Metroid Prime: Federation Force, very upfront that you aren't getting the protagonist people have been waiting four years to see again (or in Samus' case, like seven years) and you're not being swindled into buying something that's a bait and switch. Also, Kratos' wife is probably going to be a lot more interesting than the Federation Force Job Squad.

At that point, the only legitimate reason to complain is that this means we might not get another Kratos game for a long time, in this era of insanely long AAA dev cycles. Well, that's a legitimate complaint. A non-Kratos spinoff means the next main series game is probably delayed by a matter of years, unless the spinoff is being developed concurrently with a new main series game (it isn't, in this case). So that puts a ten year gap between Kratos games. I get the complaints, I was there with Metroid for a while and I'm there now with Fromsoft a bit (we're closing in on five years since their last normal game, while they keep making online multiplayer "arcade game" versions of their usual fare).

Maybe this Faye game will be just as deep as the main series games and add to the story in a way that makes it a worthwhile addition. It has the potential to, given how important this character is to the backstory of the series protagonist (and their son, who has been a focal point in the past two games). I don't think people are gonna come away feeling like it was unnecessary or a waste of time / a dev cycle.

Speaking of cycles, I hear there's a flying cube that looks a bit like a laundry machine and never shuts up, because every game has to have that sort of Myles type character now? Well that's just great. That or people are trolling about the flying cube. Half the criticism about the game seems to be just satirical trolling from people who are gonna probably play the game anyway and are just poking at the people who are going to get mad that they're saying anything.

Wait, I just realized I don't care at all about this situation, or about people saying mean words about the game. What a first-world problem. Half the world lives under murderous or at least domineering third-world dictatorships, oppressive religions that kill women for showing thigh, and roving bands of Reavers. With all of this going on, complaining about a game, or complaining about people complaining about a game, seems kind of silly. And people get far more worked up about this kind of thing than they do about things that matter. It's wild.

Anyway, I'm playing this, and so are most of the people pretending to be mad. I understand people not liking the likely decade between Kratos games, but I don't think he's being phased out. I still need to play Ragnarok, so I don't have that same sense of missing the character that a hardcore series fan would. Their wanting Kratos Part 3 is somewhat valid, but it is what it is. At least they didn't get a game starring THE BOY.

Now for the real questions: Which goddesses will be in the threesome-minigame this time? And will I be able to shut that cube up?

This post is gonna kill it in SEO and the internet algorithm this week.

Things get serious when the next foe is Abobo. He should have been the second-to-last fight in the game, one of the bosses, because he's without a doubt, hands-down, the toughest fight in the game.

The key here is to stay on offense, because he's relentless. Only way to keep him from doing major damage with grabs and so forth is to pummel him and keep him at leg's length.

A super-effective move here, and in general, is the throw. Marian's throw is basically just her clotheslining her foe with them both falling on the ground. Looks like when two wrestlers hit a clothesline on each other at the same time, Hogan/Warrior style.

Abobo fires back by crushing Marian like a grape!

This guy, and his ability to inflate, is pretty much the most movie-accurate thing in this game. I'm looking through my post on the movie to see if there's much of anything else this game has from it, and there isn't.

This aged well though:

Yarp.

The post is basically a snapshot in time of 2020, and as far as I can tell, I batted 100% with things in it turning out to be true / aging well. Almost never do I look back on an old post and fully stand by everything I said in it. Well I do in that one. Would have loved to have been wrong, too, but I knew I wasn't.

Anyway, back to kicking the shit out of Abobo:

Marian wins and does a little hop and a twirl!

Here's something that would solve all of the antagonistic brother/brother dynamic between Bimmy and Jimmy: 2 Marians.

"That's right boys, you both can have me!"

There's a scene in MVC Infinite where Morrigan makes a clone of herself appear and the two of them try to seduce Ghost Rider. He just turns them down like a boss. That game is coming up.

I unleash more throws that look more like clotheslines!

Note the arcade machines in the background. Looks like Evil Marian is sitting on one of them. Trying to see if the machines are particular arcade games, but I don't think so. Some are a generic fighter, some are a generic shooter.

Marian's long kick might be the best sweep in fighting game history.

She has a second "throw" and it's Dusty Rhodes' Bionic Elbow.

Also the Kenny Omega V-Trigger knee strike, which finishes off Evil Marian.

Next fight is against this ninja, and the fight takes place on a damn biplane! Somehow, they keep their balance.

Speaking of the view, here's...Rebecca! The other female character!

...who?

She rocks a glorious pair of tonfas. I thought she might have been one of the female characters from the movie, either the woman who adopted the Lee brothers, or Koga's female goon. Well, the goon was Lindas. This character could be the one who adopted the Lees, but I'm pretty sure her name was Satori, and don't recall her ever using tonfas.

Another tough fight, probably the second-toughest besides Abobo.

Marian gets it on the redo. I like playing this in Japanese, because the dialogue is so horrendously bad that it's more entertaining to just fill in the blanks yourself. Here she is calling Rebecca a "licentious fricatrice"

WHOA. Language! In modern parlance, it means "lewd harlot"

Elsewhere, Jimmy is practicing martial arts with some random guy. Kinda looks like Andy Bogard a bit. This feels like a reference to something, but isn't. It's just some guy.

Hilariously, Marian dives into the picture and flying-kicks the random guy off the screen. Now Jimmy finds himself face-to-face with her succulent hips.

Is this the only game where you can sort of play as Mark Dacascos? Probably. Maybe they'll make a John Wick video game and he'll be in that.

He's basically Ryu/Ken here and has their Hadoken.

He also has their Hurricane Kick. Literally the exact same move. No Dragon Punch, though.

That's because... Billy has the Dragon Punch. A really scaled-down version of it so they don't get sued. Couldn't get a shot of it, but it'll be visible in the video of these fights in a moment here.

He also has this...dashing attack. So yeah, that's Billy and Jimmy, the two protagonists. Not a lot of creativity in the movesets of this game.

Marian vs the Lee Brothers is all I recorded from this game. I mainly just wanted a recording of her hilariously dropkicking Jimmy's sparring partner off of the screen, which is the main thing worth seeing. These two fights give a pretty good idea of how the game runs.

After defeating all of the selectable fighters, culminating with the two main dudes, there are two bosses at the end. Before Koga is his main henchman, Duke. Not sure who this guy is in relation to the movie, or if he even represents anyone from it. Abobo really should have been the boss / 2nd-to-last fight. Then again, he wouldn't be selectable under those circumstances.

This Duke guy has a devastating energy punch, seen here as he SOCKS MARIAN right in the neussen! After punishing neussens all game, now it is she who is taking a pummeling of the neussen.

I fire back with the throw-clothesline, which the CPU seems to have almost no defense against, and make short work of this Duke guy.

Final boss is Koga Shuko, who doesn't look at all like Robert Patrick in this. His hair isn't even the right color.

His thing is that he throws fireballs, lots and lots of fireballs.

He also stops to taunt his opponent. This...is his undoing. Much like Happy Fun Ball, it is unwise to taunt Marian.

For the ending, Marian looks at jewelry in a storefront and wonders which of these HUNKY GUYS will buy something for her. She's hoping for Billy or Jimmy, but she'd accept expensive gifts from Abobo too even though she doesn't really like him.

You're leading these guys on, Marian! Stop playing games with their hearts!

(Editor's Note: All that stuff is actually what she says in the ending. It's pretty damn dumb)

So final thoughts on this game? It's a pretty mediocre fighter. Not mediocre in the early 90's barebone SNES fighter way, though. More mediocre in the mid 90's "not sure what it wants to be and doesn't really work on any level" PS1 fighter way. This is definitely one of the weaker fighting games one can play on the Neo-Geo, and it's probably all uphill from here. Yeah, I'm going to be doing some Neo-Geo in the near future, which should be interesting.

Another shot of MY BOY. Back when he still had hair and wasn't the Bald Dynamo everyone knows from John Wick 3.

To see an actual good movie with this guy in it, check out Only the Strong. It's online and on streaming and whatnot. It's a great 90's martial arts movie where an army veteran (him) gets a job teaching at an inner city school. Things aren't going too well with the teaching and he can't seem to get the kids to stop fighting, so he gets a brilliant idea: Start up a martial arts class and see if he can help some of the worse-behaved teenagers learn some life lessons and spirituality. Once he starts to breach the barrier of the kids thinking all of this is dumb and lame, he starts to turn things around for them, only to end up running afoul of the local drug lord, who looks like an evil mirror universe version of Duncan Macleod. Indeed, the bad guy isn't too keen on his Goon Pipeline being disrupted by somebody who cares, and things get serious.

It really is a terrific movie, and while it was never a huge hit, it did do quite a bit to popularize the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira. Several characters in the Street Fighter series ended up using it, which, quite frankly, can probably be attributed to Only the Strong. Not like anyone else was running around on the big screen making Capoeira look like the coolest thing ever. While most people know Dacascos as Zero from John Wick 3, I think Only the Strong might actually be his lasting cultural legacy. Well, here's the whole movie on youtube. Pretty cool that we have it where people can see it, and that it has 600k views.

Other Double Dragon Posts

Double Dragon: The Movie (1994)

Double Dragon (NES, 1988)

Double Dragon (Sega Master System, 1988)

Double Dragon (Game Boy, 1990)

Double Dragon 2 (NES, 1989)

Double Dragon 3 (NES, 1990)

Super Double Dragon (SNES, 1992)

Double Dragon V (SNES, 1994)

Double Dragon: The Movie: The Game (Neo-Geo, 1995)

Double Dragon Advance (GBA, 2003)

Double Dragon Neon (PS3, 2012)

Double Dragon IV (Switch, 2017)

Double Dragon Gaiden (Switch, 2023)