Double Dragon 3 Game Boy Nintendo Retro Game Session
0Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone is a side-scrolling beat 'em up arcade game produced by Technōs Japan in 1990. It is the third arcade game in the Double Dragon series. Unlike the previous two games in the series, Double Dragon 3 was not developed internally at Technōs, but development was instead contracted to the company East Technology, resulting in a game that looks and plays differently from its predecessors.
As in the previous games of the series, players control twin martial artists Billy and Jimmy Lee, as they are approached by a mysterious fortune teller named Hiruko, who sends them on a worldwide journey to retrieve three mystical Rosetta Stones and uncover the mystery surrounding them in Egypt. Similar to The Combatribes, which ran on similar hardware, the game can be set for up to two or three players depending on the cabinet, with the third player controlling a new Lee sibling named Sonny. The U.S. version also features item shops where players could use additional credits to purchase in-game items such as weapons, additional moves and new playable characters in one of the earliest forms of micro transactions in a video game, although this system would end up being removed in the later-released Japanese version of the game in favor of a conventional character select feature similar to Golden Axe or Final Fight.
The game's arcade release was followed by home versions for the Sega Genesis, Game Boy and various personal computers. In 2013, emulated versions of the arcade original for various platforms were officially released by DotEmu along with the previous two arcade games in a bundle called Double Dragon Trilogy.
A version for the Nintendo Entertainment System titled Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones was released in February 1991, a few months after the Japanese arcade release. This version is not a port, but rather was actually a parallel project that was developed simultaneously with the arcade release. While the plot of the two versions are similar, the graphics, gameplay system and characters featured in the NES version are very different compared to the arcade version.
Double Dragon 3 was ported to various platforms under license from Tradewest. Versions were released for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST in late 1991, followed by the IBM PC, Genesis and Game Boy in 1992. These versions of the game were developed by The Sales Curve, with the exception of the Genesis version (which was handled by Software Creations). The Game Boy and Genesis versions were published by Acclaim under the title of Double Dragon 3: The Arcade Game, distinguishing them from the earlier NES release.