Super Double Dragon

The Good
After the Double Dragon trilogy make a great success on both arcades and the NES (and other platforms too), it seems natural that Technos make a fourth game, for the SNES this time. Instead of calling it Double Dragon IV, they called it Super Double Dragon in the U.S. and Europe, while the game is called Return of Double Dragon : Sleeping Dragon has awoke in Japan, which is a much cooler title. This game is obviously based over it's more well known NES/Arcade counterparts, you play as the Lee brothers, Billy and Jimmy, and go out to kick the butt of bad guys.

First of all, the gameplay of the game is awesome. You can play alone or with a friend, and instead of having clunky controls like Double Dragon games on the NES, this time you get a really great control scheme. The four buttons of the SNES gamepad are used to kick, punch, jump and block enemy attacks, which is great. This new scheme allow for much more combos than the old Double Dragon games, and that is much more fun. You can also use L or R to charge a power gauge, allowing for even more combos, but this one is hard to use. In addition to that, enemies come up with various weapons (like in previous Double Dragon games) that you can be victim of, but if you're skilled you can grab them and use them to your advantage. This game features much more weapons than older Double Dragon games, and that is very cool. You can also sometimes use the background at your advantage. So yeah the gameplay is awesome. The only small flaw is that the animation is a bit slow sometimes, depending on which version of the game you have (there is a lot of differences between different regions and cartridge revisions I guess).

The graphics are really good, the Lee brothers looks different (head swap) instead of just palette swap, and they are much more detailed and don't have that cartoonish look any longer, adding a more serious overall feel to the game. The backgrounds are detailed and realistic. Enemies, while still not very varied, also look more realistic and are more brutal than before, as they also use combos and jumps against you. You can fight more than one type of enemies at a time, which is a great addition. And there is a new hard boss at the end of each stage that is each time harder than the previous boss, unlike the original Double Dragon which only featured multiple palette swaps of Abobo as hard bosses. And yeah, that big old Abobo is gone, we're getting more serious bosses this time, and you don't fight 2 clones of them at the same time, and that's good. You have to refight all bosses before the end of the game in a row, which can proof challenging.

The music of the game is awesome, there isn't many of it, but it's good. Also the Japanese version has more music (more on that below). I like the rocky style of the music in the game very much, it suit the fighting very well. The sound effects are more repetitive punches and kicks, but you get a couple of voice clips, which is cool. However, I'd have liked more exciting sound effects than just two repeated kick and punch sound.

The Bad
Simply put, there is no story line, no story scenes, and almost no ending. While those aren't really needed for a good action game, there were cool story scenes in Double Dragon II and III, (and also Combatribes, another fighting game on the SNES also by Technos) so coming back to the simple feel of the original isn't exactly what you'd expect when playing a new game on the SNES. Also the stages are a bit boring. Spikes, conveyor belts or something like this is lacking. There is one elevator in Mission 1 and another in Mission 7 and that's all. It gets the job done, but again, after playing Double Dragon II where enemies pops out fancy places jumping and spinning, it's quite bland to see enemies just walk from the border of the screen in this new SNES game.

However, all that I mention is lacking above was supposed to be in the game. Yes, an awesome story line with cool scenes, plot twists, and a sad ending was supposed to be there, among with longer stages, and more dangers from background. However, due to time constraint, the developers couldn't have finished that part and were forced to release the game as it. More music was also planned. While the Japanese version of the game is slightly better, with more possible combos and more music, it's so sad that they didn't took two months to get the game properly finished, especially now that is has been released for 15 years or so, if it was released 2 months later it would probably still be one of the best fighting games on the SNES. Unfortunately, today it has been completely overlooked by Street Fighter and Final Fight, and all Technos got is bankruptcy. However, even if this game isn't as good as originally supposed, at least the great gameplay is safe.

Another complaint is that while graphics are good looking and bright, why does Jimmy looks like gay whith it's PINK suit ?? Couldn't they make it plain red like before ? Fortunately you'll most often play as Billy, which is blue.

The Bottom Line
Although it was rushed by the developers, which is a sad thing, Super Double Dragon / Return of Double Dragon is a great game, and I guess it's worth a try for people who like Beat-'em ups, or just liked previous Double Dragon games. It's a great fighting game as it features cool combos and a lot of weapons, and cool missions. It could have been the best fighting game on the SNES, but it isn't. I recommend to download the Japanese version for your favorite SNES emulator, as it's overall better sounding and has more combos, and more balanced difficulty. However, if you run on a used cartridge of the regular western version, I'd say don't hesitate to buy it.