Double Dragon

Marion has been taken away by the Black or Shadow Warriors and is being held hostage. If the game is being played by two people, both players can fight enemies throughout the game, but they are also able to hurt each other. When both players finally reach the end of the game, there is a one-on-one fight between the two to see who wins the girl.

Players advance through four stages. You start in a street, move into a factory, through a jungle/forest then end up in a castle. There are a variety of moves such as back-kicks, elbows, head-butts, uppercuts, knee-ing in the face and throws. You can steal weapons from enemies such as knives, clubs, whips and dynamite among others and use them against any of the enemies. You can also use oil drums, crates and big rocks to throw at your enemies. Not much else to do except walk along and beat the crap out of anyone in your way until you finish the game.

The third level is quite long, so unless you have played the game a lot you may not be able to complete this stage within the time limit, in which case you will lose a life. There are also instant die situations when you must jump over a bridge and holes.

The fourth level is very short. It only contains about six enemies!

The player can play either Billy blue, blonde, and blue eyes, player 1, or Jimmy red, brunette, and green eyes, player 2

• Enemies:
  • Williams - Generic punk. Not very strong but he wields a variety of weapons such as baseball bats, dynamite and daggers.
  • Lopar - He is a bit stronger than Williams and likes to throw away stuff like oil drums, rocks and boxes.
  • Lindas - Female punk who usually carries a whip. She's very fragile and does not appear as often as the other enemies.
  • Bolo - The big guy. He's very strong and likes to throw away people.
  • Abobo - The first boss, who bears a resemblance to Mr. T. He's just like Bolo. A green version of Abobo appears in the end of Mission 3.
  • Jeff - The second boss. This guy looks just like your character and he is every bit as good. He can easily escape from your grasp.
  • Willy - The big boss. Armed with a machinegun and not afraid to use it.

BUG This only happens in two player mode. On the second level right before the end of level baddie comes out, if one player looses all his lives, the boss will not appear and you will NOT be able to continue the game.PCHEAT Use the elbow smash against any enemy and you should be able to defeat them without any problem.PCHEAT This cheat requires two players. At the end of level two the one with the lift, player one should get the green enemy in a full nelson from behind when he is nearly dead and therefore low on energy. When all the other enemies have been killed, the games countdown timer should stop and if player two picks up the whip, the green bad guy should be able to be whipped indefinately, provided that this is done carefully. Player twos score will continue to increase and after about 20 minutes his score should reach 99,950. After that, everytime player two hits an enemy or scores some points the player should receive an extra life.PTRICK Sometimes, enemies will come out wielding sticks of dynamite. if you let them throw it, walk backwards and they should walk right into the explosion One of the oldest Double Dragon tricks.

The second in a long line of walkalong beatemups that helped spawn a large number of other games in this genre over the next several years. Still, its not a bad game which is probably why it made such an impression on the market.PThe Kanji characters in the title screen are in order Sou Twin Setsu also pronounced Sai and Ryuu Dragon. ISouRyuuI is another title for this game.PThe original Japanese version by Technos Japan has a different storyline than the one used by Taito in the International version. The Japanese storyline is more developed and does not use the Spike and Hammer aliases. Here it isBLOCKQUOTEIn the year 19XX, half of the world was ravaged by a nuclear war and violence ruled the streets in America. One of the most violent gang in America was called the Black Warriors, who ruled the streets with no mercy. Yet two siblings named Billy and Jimmy, trained in the arts of the Sousetsuken and owners of the Sousetsuken Dojo, were brave enough to face the Black Warriors. They taught their Martial Arts to their city and people gave them the nickname, the Double Dragon. Among Billy and Jimmys pupils, there was a female instructor named Marian, who was also Billys lover. The Black Warriors waste no time to capture her and lure Billy to their hideout. Now, Billy must penetrate the Black Warriors to save his girlfriend and face agaisnt the boss of the Black Warriors, Willy, once and for all. Billy enlists the help of his twin brother Jimmy in order to save Marian.BLOCKQUOTEPMost of the home versions of the game used this storyline for their adaptions. The Sega Master System version uses a combination of both Taitos and Technos storylines the original Mark III version uses the original storyline.PAs a side note Most of the characters in IDouble DragonI were named after characters from the Bruce Lees film, Enter the Dragon.PThis arcade game was even seen momentarily in the 1993 movie Double Dragon which also happened to be based on the game. In that movie, Scott Wolf played Billy Lee and Mark Dacoscos played Jimmy Lee.

Behind a clear front glass, the dedicated cabinet has a decorative cardboard frame surrounding the monitor that includes instructions for game play. The cardboard frame is usually two sided. There is the TAITO design on one side and the IDouble DragonI design on the other.PThe marquee and control panel art feature a drawing of a dragon and pictures of Spike and Hammer the good guys. The control panel includes their names.PMost cabinets used blue buttons for player one and red buttons for player two, but a middle release cabinet used yellow buttons for both players and used thicker bezel glass with white plastic protectors along its outer edges.PThe side art features the name TAITO at the top with a Yshaped pattern of lines in red, white, gray, and black. The first cabinets of Double Dragon had a different color combination for the side art. The black part of the side art was orange and the gray part was yellow. The cabinet features a lockable pullout drawer at the bottom that contains the power supply and gameboards.

Most standardvideo horizontal JAMMA games should work in this cabinet, with the possible addition of more buttons or different controllers. Also, the monitor in the original cabinet is rotatable so the cabinet can easily be converted to a vertical orientation. It takes about five minutes at the most to do this which makes it a very nice JAMMA cabinet to own

LICENSOR TechnosPThe game was developed by Technos and then licensed to Taito for manufacture and distribution in America and Europe. Technos manufactured and distributed the game themselves in Japan.PIf you want to pause the game, simply leave the coin input high and the gameplay stops, but the music carries on. This is useful for getting screenshots or taking sound samples.

The game uses Yamaha YM2151 and 3012 ICs for generating sound. The main processors are two 6809s and one 6309.

The original buttons for this game were a selfenclosed design that failed regularly. Operators had to replace these buttons usually with the mini switch buttons making the original manufacturer buttons hard to find. The Ultimate Pushbuttons are good replacements and are available from httpwww.happcontrols.com 539200XX.