Despite some frame rate issues and some shallow gameplay, this will definitely satisfy the old-school gamer.
Like in all 1980's games, the story is simple: a street gang kidnaps your girlfriend, Marion, so you as either Hammer or Spike (better now known as Billy and Jimmy Lee) have to fight your way in 4 Missions getting passed Williamses/Roepers, Lindas (chicks with whips), the big bad Abobos, and not to mention your "clones" that mimic all your moves. The last enemy, of course, is Machine Gun Willy who tries to literally gun you down. You also can pick up some weapons like bats, knives, whips, boxes, dynamites, and barrels.
Gameplay is also simple. The default control scheme is identical to the arcade layout. The X button is kick, the A is to jump, and B is to punch. You can set some combos in which you can at times overthrow your enemy, an uppercut, a spin kick, a jump kick, a jumping backward kick, and the almighty (but kinda cheap) elbow smash.
Some of the new features include HD graphics in which the textures from the original arcade have been "smoothen" out, but you can also go back to the original arcade texture if you like. Achievements such as finishing the game without losing all your lives, and not losing your life to the water in Mission 3 can give you an incentive to practice and play all over if you like. Leaderboards on the score are even better (I'm currently 895 out of at least 6000-10,000 all-time in Medium difficulty).
This game is definitely for the old-school gamer that just wants to beat the game after having nightmares wasting a bunch of quarters at the arcade. This is also a better than identical version of the arcade, now that you can team up with someone on Xbox Live.
Which leads to a few problems: 1) It's hard to find someone to team up with you online 2) The frame rate suffers from a slow down when 4 or more enemies appear at the same time. Now, I understand that programmers want this to be faithful to the arcade, but given the technology that we have, this should no longer be an issue. 3) The weapons have an awful hit detection. You'd think that having a weapon (exception of the knife) would make you more powerful, but it's the same reach as your regular natural attacks. Yet the enemy is deadlier with the weapon. 4) Enemies fall for the elbow smash almost too easily. When you have your back turned, you can push jump and punch at the same time with your thumb to perform an elbow attack. You get hit less, but it makes the fighting experience a bit shallow.
Again, despite some negativity, this is an excellent version of Double Dragon (and yes, it's much superior to the NES version) that old-school gamers should download for $5.