Double Dragon

Learn to pick your battles

Some Atari 2600 conversions weren’t worth bothering with, as Nick discovers

» Atari 2600 » 1988 » Activision there aren’t many shops that i remember opening as a kid, but a few stuck out. Future Zone was a shop that just sold games, so that excited me. Blockbuster Video was bigger and further away than the local independent video shop, but Lightning and Hunter from Gladiators were there for opening day, which made it memorable. And then there was Toys R Us – no explanation needed. It was during those early days, when I was looking at the shop’s dwindling selection of Atari 2600 games, that I became aware that there was an Atari 2600 version of Double Dragon.

I knew Double Dragon – not from the arcade, but from the Master System, and even there it seemed too complex for the old system to handle. I was curious about how it looked on the 2600, and still young enough not to understand that a good version could be impossible. When I finally got to play the game many years later, I finally understood that this was indeed the case – while it just about passes as Double Dragon, this conversion isn’t much fun compared to either the arcade game or other 2600 beat-’em-ups.

When I praised the virtues of playing games on so-called ‘lesser’ platforms in an earlier issue, it struck a chord with some readers out there. But it’s always worth remembering that there are two sides to that particular coin, because while there are many good conversions out there (and some truly miraculous ones), sometimes it’s possible to be just a bit too ambitious.