disappointed sigh... man… what the fuck happened here? While Double Dragons 1 and 2 (all three of the 2s) weren’t exactly the best beat-’em-ups of the 80s and 90s, they were some of the most popular at the time, and the original games still hold up somewhat all the way up to today. So, of course, they needed to follow up the first two (or five) installments with a third entry to pull a hat trick, but during development, something went very wrong. Instead of being developed by Technos, the company that developed the first two games in the series, instead, it was outsourced to another developer while they were working on WWF Superstars, which is incredibly sad, seeing a company prefer to work on a wrestling game rather than their own franchise. Instead, it was developed by East Technology, a company that had previously made Gigandes, a space shooter that has only one 3-star rating on Backloggd with no reviews, so I can tell we are in good hands here. The result of this outsourcing would be seen with Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone, the game that would signal the beginning of the end.
Now, it’s not as if outsourcing your game development to a different company is a bad idea, as this has become a common practice in the industry, and sometimes, it can pay off. However, there are plenty of times where this outsourcing can lead to a disastrous result, which can be plainly seen with this game. At its core, it’s still Double Dragon, but it feels… off. REALLY off. That makes it pretty bad overall, for plenty of reasons, as it just doesn’t feel good to play at all. And let me just say, Mr. Dragon 3, I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed, and that, in this case, is worse.
The story involves the Lee brothers going around the world and collecting sacred stones (ha ha, good one, Mega), so it is basically now a Final Fantasy game, the graphics are character sprites do look improved, but the animations are pretty piss poor, the music is alright, although the loud sound effects can drown it out at points, the control is… well, I’ll be touching on that very soon, and the gameplay is like Double Dragon, except if it was a poorly made bootleg you bought at a game convention from the shifty-eyed, pimply nerd.
The game plays like your typical Double Dragon game, where you travel through several, VERY short stages, you beat up every single thug and goon that gets in your way, using plenty of different moves to take them out, solve a puzzle in one or two instances of the game, and take out plenty of bosses along the way. The new aspect of the game would be with the item shop in the game, where you can purchase health, powerups, weapons, and even extra lives to help you out on your journey, which is pretty helpful overall. However, with that being said… there is a MAJOR problem when it comes to this store.
You see, usually when it comes to shops in beat-’em-up games, you usually have access to gold, or coins, or some type of currency in order to purchase the health, upgrades, or whatever you need in order to take on the upcoming threats you will face. However, in this game, in order to buy anything, you need to insert ACTUAL REAL MONEY into the arcade machine, using credits in order to get these items. This is one of the earliest examples in video games of that dirty word that makes me quiver in fear whenever it is uttered… microtransactions. If there is some sort of compensation for this, thankfully for the Japanese version of the game, this method of payment was changed completely, but even so, the fact that an arcade game from 1990 has any form of microtransactions at all is completely unacceptable. I thought that shit was just introduced in more recent years, but no, they were doing this shit all the way back then too, which really cements the feeling that god is dead, and there is no hope for this industry.
Ignoring that glaring issue for a second though, my main problem with the game as a whole would be that, controlling the game just feels… wrong, at least, in comparison to the previous two games. It is your basic setup for these games, having a punch, a kick, and a few special attacks, but the way that you move around the arena, and the speed at which you execute these attacks, feels really awful. It feels like the game is just trying to keep itself together by a couple of strings, and any wrong move could break it into pieces… that’s how weird it feels to control. Yes, the game all in all is still the usual stuff that we have come to expect from Double Dragon, but these two aspects completely ruin the entire game, as without a proper way of getting items without reaching into your wallet, or even a good feeling for your character or your combat, then you don’t have a beat-’em-up here. Instead, you have a mangled corpse of the previous two games, reanimated and shifted around to try to capture that same lightning in a bottle, only to completely miss the mark by a few thousand miles.
Overall, while the core game itself is still Double Dragon, to an extent, it is a far cry from what we have been given so far from the previous two games, and a horrible way to cap off the original trilogy. I wouldn’t recommend playing this game at all, not even if you were a big fan of Double Dragon. Don’t even play through any of the rereleases, just let it die in the pile of trash that it belongs in. Oh well, maybe the other Double Dragon III on the NES could have at least some semblance of quality that this one didn’t have, but judging from what I have heard about it over the years, that may not be the case.
Game #263
Now, it’s not as if outsourcing your game development to a different company is a bad idea, as this has become a common practice in the industry, and sometimes, it can pay off. However, there are plenty of times where this outsourcing can lead to a disastrous result, which can be plainly seen with this game. At its core, it’s still Double Dragon, but it feels… off. REALLY off. That makes it pretty bad overall, for plenty of reasons, as it just doesn’t feel good to play at all. And let me just say, Mr. Dragon 3, I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed, and that, in this case, is worse.
The story involves the Lee brothers going around the world and collecting sacred stones (ha ha, good one, Mega), so it is basically now a Final Fantasy game, the graphics are character sprites do look improved, but the animations are pretty piss poor, the music is alright, although the loud sound effects can drown it out at points, the control is… well, I’ll be touching on that very soon, and the gameplay is like Double Dragon, except if it was a poorly made bootleg you bought at a game convention from the shifty-eyed, pimply nerd.
The game plays like your typical Double Dragon game, where you travel through several, VERY short stages, you beat up every single thug and goon that gets in your way, using plenty of different moves to take them out, solve a puzzle in one or two instances of the game, and take out plenty of bosses along the way. The new aspect of the game would be with the item shop in the game, where you can purchase health, powerups, weapons, and even extra lives to help you out on your journey, which is pretty helpful overall. However, with that being said… there is a MAJOR problem when it comes to this store.
You see, usually when it comes to shops in beat-’em-up games, you usually have access to gold, or coins, or some type of currency in order to purchase the health, upgrades, or whatever you need in order to take on the upcoming threats you will face. However, in this game, in order to buy anything, you need to insert ACTUAL REAL MONEY into the arcade machine, using credits in order to get these items. This is one of the earliest examples in video games of that dirty word that makes me quiver in fear whenever it is uttered… microtransactions. If there is some sort of compensation for this, thankfully for the Japanese version of the game, this method of payment was changed completely, but even so, the fact that an arcade game from 1990 has any form of microtransactions at all is completely unacceptable. I thought that shit was just introduced in more recent years, but no, they were doing this shit all the way back then too, which really cements the feeling that god is dead, and there is no hope for this industry.
Ignoring that glaring issue for a second though, my main problem with the game as a whole would be that, controlling the game just feels… wrong, at least, in comparison to the previous two games. It is your basic setup for these games, having a punch, a kick, and a few special attacks, but the way that you move around the arena, and the speed at which you execute these attacks, feels really awful. It feels like the game is just trying to keep itself together by a couple of strings, and any wrong move could break it into pieces… that’s how weird it feels to control. Yes, the game all in all is still the usual stuff that we have come to expect from Double Dragon, but these two aspects completely ruin the entire game, as without a proper way of getting items without reaching into your wallet, or even a good feeling for your character or your combat, then you don’t have a beat-’em-up here. Instead, you have a mangled corpse of the previous two games, reanimated and shifted around to try to capture that same lightning in a bottle, only to completely miss the mark by a few thousand miles.
Overall, while the core game itself is still Double Dragon, to an extent, it is a far cry from what we have been given so far from the previous two games, and a horrible way to cap off the original trilogy. I wouldn’t recommend playing this game at all, not even if you were a big fan of Double Dragon. Don’t even play through any of the rereleases, just let it die in the pile of trash that it belongs in. Oh well, maybe the other Double Dragon III on the NES could have at least some semblance of quality that this one didn’t have, but judging from what I have heard about it over the years, that may not be the case.
Game #263