Amstrad CPC

Double Dragon

Trivia

Marvel published a six-issue line of comic books based off of the video game in 1991, giving Marian an early casting as a police officer and giving the Lee brothers a very Marvelous father -- Stan!

In the movie "The Wizard", Jimmy is seen playing the NES version of Double Dragon at the bus station. Of course, the arcade version didn't look like that but this was Nintendo's movie so they put their Double Dragon in it.

In 1994, Universal released Double Dragon, the movie. Starring Mark Dacascos as Jimmy Lee, Scott Wolf as Billy Lee, Alyssa Milano as Maria, and Robert Patrick as Koga Shuko, the evil gang leader. In the year 2007, what was once called Los Angeles is now "New Angeles", a city half destroyed by the Big One in 2000. The city is now a metropolis out of Hell. Earthquakes, and tidal waves are part of the day. The smog is so dangerously thick that huge fans are on top of buildings to blow it away and phone booths are oxygen booths. The Hollywood River has overflowed, making many famous landmarks are a mere wreck. The urban areas that once stood in the South all the way to Long Beach are in the ocean. By day the police are out doing their jobs and normal people go about their lives, but their is a curfew. At night, the police and people lock their doors and the gangs emerge causing mayhem. Many known gangs are the "Mohawks", and "Gloves". The only ones who go out and fight the gangs is a group of kids and teens called "The Power Corps". The story is Shuko is doing all he can to acquire the Double Dragon. While he has one half, the Lees have the other. It becomes Good V.S Evil as the Lees, along with the Power Corps leader, Maria, to team for some good old butt-kicking action to defeat Shuko from using the Double Dragon to take over "N.A". All in all, the movie was unsuccessful.

Arcade fans and gaming journalists have been more than a tad critical of the many Double Dragon ports over the years. Take, for example, the following quote:

"As conversions from hell go...the various Double Dragons have to rank as some of the worst." --from Games(tm) magazine, Issue 19

OUCH!!!

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jun 29, 2004.

Kunio-Kun is also known as Alex, from River City Ransom or Crash Cooney, from Crash 'N The Boys Street Challenge (both NES games).

In the NES, Gameboy (and possibly other versions); it is two player but not simultaneously. Both players will play as Billy and Jimmy will remain a enemy boss character regardless. As a consolation prize however, the NES version features a "Mode B" in which 1 or 2 players can engage in a 1-on-1 fighting match with six of the game's characters using graphics more faithful to the arcade.

The NES release has a few bugs that should not have passed quality control since they can be triggered fairly easily (at least with the version on the cartridge I own). For example, you can climb up the wall at the end of the first level while it's obvious you shouldn't be able to.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia from the Commodore 64 instruction manual:

A NOTE FROM THE PROGRAMMERS:
Dear Game Player,
During our Herculean task of cramming as many as possible of the multitude of animation and graphic elements that make up the arcade game into the Commodore 64, we were faced with a problem. To get both one- and two-player options, and to achieve the authentic feel of two-player simultaneous action, simply took more memory than we had available.
But we knew how dissapointed you would be if the game didn't have the same two-player mode as the arcade game you know and love. So we came up with a memory-saving solution. We implemented sprite stacking techniques to create the animated characters (using two smaller sprites instead of one larger one to create each figure).
The resulting small gap you may notice in the characters at waist level, is the compromise that the architecture of the C64 forced us to make.
This should not impair your enjoyment of the game in any way.
The Programmers

Double Dragon was voted #75 in the Top 100 Games of All Time poll published by Game Informer Magazine (Issue 100, August 2001).

Contributed by PCGamer77 (3025) on Jul 28, 2001.

If you are playing a two-player game and both characters are still alive after you beat Mr. Big, Billy and Jimmy must fight each other to see who gets the girl.

Contributed by Macintrash (2535) on Jun 29, 2000.