Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone

The Good
In many ways this game does good on graphics, with impressive scenery, smooth scrolling and decent sprites. The music is catchy, even if it lacks the traditional slums theme. The shop is a neat little feature to give powerups that are not available anywhere else. Thankfully you can return to a shop you visited previously. It's a relief that you can stock up on health if you afford it. To add to the gameplay, you can try playing as twelve different characters, but the US port of the game had the misfortune of making them selectable during a continue instead of the start.

The Bad
Everywhere, the gameplay is a complete car wreck. The frame rate is so bad, choppy and stuttering, it feels like you're playing a stop-motion video game. Hit detection is all but non-existent with the enemies prone to making mince meat out of you with little you can do to have a decent fighting chance. There's no easy way to execute your moves and there are almost no weapons to extend your range of attack. Enemies take practically forever to defeat and there are no health bars for clear indication. Having three players doesn't do much to even the odds.

Storywise, this game's plot does not make a whole lot of sense. Straying from the trend of Billy and Jimmy rescuing a damsel in distress, they are now looking for an artifact already discovered in 1799 and currently in the British Museum. The good old ultimate goal is to find lost treasure and give it all away to charity, thanks to some random fortune teller. Also the plot does not explain how the Oyama, Chin and Urquidez families became involved.

The Bottom Line
This game cannot really compete with more sophisticated beat-em-ups of the time such as Final Fight and Streets of Rage. I've given praise where it's due, but for the most part, this third entry of the Double Dragon series isn't worth the effort to finish. Even the NES conversion doesn't do justice. It's as bad as the 1994 Double Dragon movie. If you're a sucker for spending all your loose change to finish this game, you've picked the right arcade cabinet.

The Good
-->Detailed VGA environments and colors, really showed what a VGA card was capable of

-->Introduction music is cool

-->Fairly challenging without being impossible

-->Ability to utilize different characters in the different countries the missions take place in is cool

-->The first decent Double Dragon game for the PC, unfortunately, it was also the last.

The Bad
-->No in-game music

-->Sound is seriously lacking (low-fi adlib sound effects)

-->Character animation is stiff and jerky

-->Collision detection can be off at times

-->The enemy AI seems a bit too fond of cheap tactics, crowding around you for a cheap beatdown

The Bottom Line
Billy and Jimmy Lee, the "Double Dragons" from NYC set out on a new quest, this time to seek out the Rosetta Stone. The adventure starts in the city with the player taking control of Billy Lee, putting the hurt to the local street thugs. As you travel from China to Greece to Egypt, you will encounter shops along the way that allow you to exchange coins for more energy, to buy more moves such as the famous "Cyclone Kick", and to buy alternate characters like Sunny and Chin.

If you have played and enjoyed Double Dragon games in the past, or enjoy beat-em-ups, you will most likely enjoy this title as well. While I had several beefs with the game, such as the lack of in-game music, and the choppy character animation, DD3 remains at its core a decent game, if you can tolerate its few issues.