Ultimate Guide: Return Of Double Dragon
The Double Dragon success of meant That a lee fourth adventure for The brothers was always interestingly, going To be on The cards. The later Japanese release Turned out quite Differently To its earlier western counterpart
ew scrolling fighter franchises are as well-known as Double Dragon. First released in Japanese arcades in 1987, Technos Japan’s influential brawler made a big impact both in its homeland and overseas, and set up the template for the modern scrolling fighter in the process. The huge success of Double Dragon meant it was ported to all manner of consoles and home computers, from the ZX Spectrum to Atari’s Lynx, with varying degrees of success. Two arcade sequels followed, largely sticking to the same rigid formula which had worked so well for the 1987 original, but many felt that they failed to eclipse the sheer brilliance of Billy and Jimmy’s debut, although the NES sequels, which are quite a bit different to their arcade counterparts, remain well-regarded.
When work on a fourth Double Dragon began, Technos shifted away from the arcades and instead pledged to create its sequel as a Super Nintendo exclusive. This made a lot of sense in many ways, particularly as the aforementioned NES versions had performed very well for the developer. After losing out on publishing rights to Acclaim for
Double Dragon II and Double Dragon III, Tradewest sought to seek out a new publishing deal with Technos with the intention of releasing the game in North America and Europe. The deal went ahead but Tradewest continually pushed Technos
Japan to release the game early – in fact, Super Double Dragon was released 11 months ahead of its Japanese counterpart, which was renamed to Return Of Double Dragon. As a result of this earlier release jump, the western version of Technos’ game features quite a few differences to the later Japanese effort, a release which is superior to Super Double Dragon in every way.
Of course, no one knew about the changes when Super Double Dragon was first released, and even if they did it’s unlikely to have changed the lukewarm reception that the western release received, which is particularly baffling when you consider how popular the arcade franchise and the NES games were. “Yet another crap Double Dragon game,” was Total’s summation of the game. “The graphics are decent but there’s no challenge – it’s just a case of hit and hope.” The magazine awarded it 61%, concluding it was a worse alternative to the likes of Final Fight,
Rival Turf and Turtles In Time.
Super Play also seemed largely unimpressed, offering a 68% verdict and suggesting that “it’s far more fun than Final Fight for example, even in one-player mode, but sadly it looks a lot worse”, although the great animation was rightly pointed out. While Super Play, along with other gaming magazines, criticised Super Double Dragon’s aesthetics, a secondary review from the magazine
noted the game was “a valiant attempt and deserves a higher score”.
Super Double Dragon quickly came and went in the west, but the extra time spent getting Return Of Double Dragon ready for the Japanese market meant that some of the issues noted in western reviews were fixed. Despite this added time, the game still did ship as codirector Muneki Ebinuma intended, as the cutscenes focusing on Return’s story were cut, for example (you can read more at bit.ly/returndoubledragon). Still, it was significantly better than Super Double Dragon because the extra development time allowed for plenty of gameplay tweaking (although the bug that stopped the brothers from battling each other like in previous games still couldn’t be fixed).
Revisiting Return Of Double Dragon today, it’s clear that Technos’ game received a rather rough ride on its original release. Yes, it doesn’t have the most imposing sprites, but they are all extremely well-animated and look absolutely great in motion. Technos’ decision to utilise smaller sprites also means there’s much more space for the characters to move around in, which becomes particularly important when participating in the excellent