It didn’t impact our performance one way or the other but it was off-putting. Further dulling my impressions was the ever-present sprite flicker. Feedback like this is typically visual and audible but in this game I felt it was only inadequate. Regarding hit detection, when I sock an enemy, I want some feedback to know if it landed and how effective it was. While my reliance on a meager, yet successful, moveset left me with a tepid outlook of the game, I can’t take any blame for the ambiguous hit detection or graphical issues. It doesn’t look like much here, but the enemies could be overwhelming. The myriad of options was too much to keep track of in the heat of battle and my narrow use of attacks ultimately caused an uninspired playthrough. Different button combinations resulted in different attacks, including head butts, elbow smashes, and throws. I relied on simple punches and kicks to defeat our foes although the combat system was surprisingly robust. Enemies almost always outnumbered us and we fought independently of each other in an effort to divide and conquer, coming together at the end to wail on the stage ending bosses. Through four distinct stages, we put the hurt on dozens of entry-level miscreants, confronting the odd miniboss now and then, but always at the end of each stage. In the half-hour session it took us to beat the game, we played as Billy and Jimmy Lee, siblings proficient in martial arts, on the hunt for the thugs who kidnapped Marian, Billy’s girlfriend. Persistent sprite flicker and vague hit detection didn’t help matters. The depth of combat and stage variety was a drastic improvement over the primitive Black Belt but my natural tendencies resulted in an initial playthrough that was less entertaining than later entries in the genre, such as Streets of Rage. Playing through the Sega Master System version with a friend this past week served as my first hands-on experience with the series and it was a little underwhelming. It was an extremely successful game, spawning a live-action film, cartoon series, and unsurprisingly, many sequels and home conversions. The maiden entry was originally released as an arcade game in 1987 and ushered in what most consider the Golden Age of the beat ‘em up genre. The Double Dragon series is one that I have no particular fondness for.
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