Double Dragon

Double Dragon is one of the first beat 'em up action games. It is a spiritual successor to Renegade, which led to the development of River City Ransom.

The Game In A Nutshell
A guy with a machinegun kidnaps a dude's girlfriend, so the dude and his brother beat up a bunch of people on the way to save her.

The narrative branches depending on how many players are playing during the final boss. In one player mode, the player saves Marian, whereas in two player mode the players are given a chance to challenge each other, and the winner saves Marian.

Gameplay Features
Double Dragon combined level exploration with real-time melee action. Clunky by today's standards, Double Dragon was a leap forward for its time.

Double Dragon features enemies with different attacks and AI that will utilize weapons when appropriate. Enemies can hold the player while others jump in to deal damage, as well.

Additionally, these weapons can be acquired after an enemy has dropped them. Each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Double Dragon allows for huge amounts of environment exploitation. Enemies can be killed more efficiently when lined up near pitfalls. This comes at the cost of occasionally placing the player in unsafe positions.

The game also provides some elements of emergent exploration. As shown by the video above, the player can trick an enemy into throwing his character onto the final boss's waiting platform, triggering the encounter earlier and breaking intended gameplay sequence.

Later games, such as Double Dragon Advance, incorporate these core concepts as well.

Music
The Double Dragon Theme plays during the game's title screen and during the final boss fight against Willy. This may be one of the earliest gameplay-as-cinema moments in video gaming. The player(s), having defeated every other challenge in the game, is provided with a wide open room and a combat gauntlet against enemies whose patterns have been seen before. The only new enemy is Willy, who has spent the entire game hiding behind an army of brutish thugs. This entire scene might as well be the end of a martial arts film where the hero obviously triumphs at the end. The entire game plays out like an episode of Fist of the North Star, musical style included. Not surprising, given the well-documented similarities between the franchises.

Here is the ending to the first episode of FotNS. If one asked how it felt to play Double Dragon (or one of its remakes or improved sequels) at its highest levels of skill (no continues, no lives lost, or no damage for the whole game) then it might be described as feeling like this:



This musical choice of playing the protagonist's theme or the game's title/opening theme during a final boss fight has been repeated in other Double Dragon games, as well as other video games such as Dragon Force and various Sonic The Hedgehog games, to various degrees of success. This blatantly heroic theme music during a climactic battle may have come full-circle with Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage, which switches back and forth between Kenshiro's famous Ai Wo Torimodose theme and a darker version of the game's title screen music as the fight progresses.



Fist of the North Star influenced Double Dragon's world and aesthetic design, which became a game tradition (or trope), until eventually a Fist of the North Star game came around to actually use the same technique. We'll call this an interesting observation.