Still an instant classic, and remains the foundation for beat-em-ups everywhere.
Double Dragon, the grandfather of the beat-em'-up genre of games, is a treasure that has been remade and re-hashed more times than the original Resident Evil. I'm not here to talk rehashes though, im here to talk Originals.
Double Dragon starts with the infamous gang of thugs, bashing your Girlfriend square in the gut, and whisking her away to do god knows what, coincidentally right as you walk to the scene. What do you do now? You kick thug butt!
Moving works well, the D-Pad controls all movement of your character, only this time, with depth! thats right folks! Double Dragon adds a whole other dimension to the playing field to add to the fun! So you move, up moving you up instead what would usually be, looking up or jumping, and down moving you down on the field, as opposed to crouching.
"But Garrett! this is 2009 and we have full 3D games now! nobody cares about this added dimension because we have better things now!"
Well, back in the day, not EVERY console was graced with the ability to produce polygons and create 3-Dimensional images. this is a 2-D game, and a darn good one at that.
Double dragon has a surprising amount of moves for a 2-button controller. double tapping the forward button on the D-pad allows for you to head butt, or at least thats what it looks like... One button is used to punch, and the other is used to kick. Push both buttons at the same time? you jump in the air and perform a spinning kick! but wait, theres more! push both buttons WHILE moving, and you perform a flying kick, which is quite effective for just about every enemy in the game, so learn it well.
The graphics in this game are well... 8-bit. not a whole lot to say. there's a lot of color in the game, which is good, and it runs smoothly. I positively adore watching my characters teeny weeny little legs scurry while walking, which is quite a smooth movement.
A major letdown in the game is how short it is. You've got 4 levels of game play to go through, and levels could take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, so your looking at about an hour of game, not that it matters because chances are, you'll never beat it.
The game is RUTHLESSLY hard, but its enjoyable at the same time. You've got 3 lives and a whole lot of continues to complete this game, but once you get to that last level it seems like all of that gets thrown out the window. The game is easy to get used to, and starts off not unbearably hard (easy is much too strong of a term, its still relatively hard), then eases into difficulty as you progress, as it should be.
There isn't a whole lot of replayability of this game, unless you really enjoy it (duh.). there is a multi-player mode, that is actually the single player mode, but with 2 people! the second player literally jumps in whenever they please.
At the end of the day, double dragon remains one of my favorite games, but also lacks the lengths to make it a truly magnificent game.