Double Dragon was the 3rd NES game I played, following Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt. It was also the first video game my father rented for me from a video store that was located next to our local K-Mart in town. For whatever reason, as much as I knew the title of the game was Double Dragon, I thought it was a game based on the Karate Kid movies! Daniel-san’s girlfriend got nabbed, so it was time for him to kick some ass! Keep in mind, I was 5 years old at the time, so this game could have been based off Thundercats for all I knew.

Seeing this title screen makes me start humming the Double Dragon theme song.

For what its worth, Double Dragon on the NES isn’t exactly the best port of the arcade hit. Due to the fact that the NES couldn’t reproduce everything its arcade cabinet brother had to offer, Technos had to change things up a bit. One of these changes is the inclusion of an experience based system that would allow you to perform more devastating moves based on each level you gained. While it’s a neat implementation, I often found myself getting the crap kicked out of me because my enemies had some of these skills right from the start. The other major change was that two player co-op play was non existent in this version. Instead the only two player option was a one on one fighter featuring a variety of characters from the game. While my younger brother and I often played this two player option very often, we longed to take on the main quest together.

Billy Lee swings for the fences in Mission 2.

I always appreciated the variety of locations in this game. From city streets, industrial areas and woods with intricate cave systems, the game gave a memorable presentation. The music that played during each level was diverse and fit each stage to a tee. One of my personal favorites being the track from Mission 2. While getting to point A and to point B really just meant kicking the crap out of everyone in front of me until the stage ended, the developers did add a few platforming elements to the game to mix things up. Unfortunately, they often just ended up frustrating me to no end when I was kid. Replaying it now, the jumps don’t seem as bad as they did back then, though they can still be very unforgiving; screw up once and you lose a life!

The platforming elements of the game frustrated me to no end when I was a kid.

While the Sega Master System version of Double Dragon will always be my favorite, the NES version is where I got my first experience at side scrolling beat’em ups and from this I would eventually go on to play other title in the genre like Streets of Rage, Final Fight and the Rushing Beat series. While the changes to this port of the game are certainly not perfect, its still worth checking out!