Double Dragon Longplay (C64: Binary Design) [50 FPS]

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AL82 Retrogaming Longplays

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Published on April 6, 2015 11:19:29 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQbVgyBfKLA

Game:

Double Dragon (1987)

Duration: 18:57

1,962 views

28

Developed by Binary Design and published by Melbourne House in 1989.

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Back when I first started recording longplay videos, Double Dragon was one of the first C64 games that I tackled. Unfortunately, the original video is poor quality and isn't cropped, so I decided to revisit it and record a new video in better quality. This also means that I've had to play through this excuse for a game for a second time...

I've covered a lot of terrible games since I started recording and reviewing videos and this is still the worst of them all. Although Dick Tracy on the C64 is equally terrible, I had no preconceptions about what the game would be like. On the other hand, Double Dragon is one of my all-time favourite arcade games and was a game I so desperately wanted to be able to play at home, so imagine my complete dismay upon loading this thing up and playing this sorry excuse for a game. Apparently, the game was so bad that an apology was shipped in the box, trying to explain/excuse the quality of the end product.

Things start out reasonably well, with a nice rendition of the arcade game's theme tune written by Charles Deenen from Maniacs of Noise. Things continue to look quite promising when the first level loads and the background graphics are nicely drawn and closely resemble the arcade's. However, once the Billy Lee sprite appears on the screen and you start playing, the whole illusion is shattered.

Firstly, the character sprites are simply laughable. Not only are they all poorly drawn, but they're all comprised of two separate sprites with a bloody great gap in the middle, as if they've been sawed in half by a magician! The walk animations for all of the sprites contain two frames, so they skate across the ground.

The game's combat is devoid of any fun whatsoever. The majority of the player's attack moves have either been removed, whilst those remain all behave exactly the same. It's impossible to pull off any kind of combinations and all moves do the same damage, so there's absolutely no reason to use anything other than the standard kick. It's well known that the arcade version can be beaten by abusing the reverse elbow and it's a very similar case here, except replace elbow with kick.

Things become even easier once you acquire a weapon from one of the enemies. Once equipped, all the player has to do is stand still, hit the fire-button to repeatedly swing the weapon and just wait for the enemies to walk into the blow; just keep hitting fire this way and you'll soon win the game.

Of course, you don't even have to fight all of the enemies if you don't want to. Someone must have covered the scenery in a good coating of glue because your opponents regularly get stuck on parts of the scenery, allowing you to beat them up without challenge. I skipped the Abobo on the bridge during level three completely by accident; by walking closely to the bottom of the bridge, the idiot got himself stuck and I was able to walk by unchallenged. I tried the same trick on the next stage, but the game glitched and I was forced to face two waves of the green Abobo as punishment...

In fact, so much has been stripped out of the game to actually get it working on the C64 that the whole product is completely compromised. Throwable weapons, such as the oil drums, boxes and knives are missing and the final boss doesn't even fire his machine gun! The game does feature simultaneous two-player coop, but it adds precious little to the game, plus there's no way you or your friend would waste time trying to play through the game.

Something I didn't realise until a few years back is that Ocean developed their own version of the game, released only on cartridge and disk formats. It still doesn't come anywhere close to the arcade version, but it is definitely the better of the two C64 versions.

For those of you that had the misfortune to own this, you have my sympathy. For those that didn't, just count yourselves lucky...
#retrogaming

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