NES Classic Game # 7 / 30: Double Dragon II: The Revenge
While I was not able to complete Double Dragon 2, I was able to play a good bit of it. For a Beat-em-up, this is pretty fantastic for the NES. I have not played the first or the third Double Dragon games on NES, so I cannot compare, but on its own this is great. I was really surprised with how many moves you could perform, even if a lot of them are just finishing moves upon grabbing someone. The super moves are really good and are well balanced. It seems to scale in power based on ease of performance. Where the uppercut feels the weakest but the easiest to perform, and the spinning kick being a little harder to perform (and more situational) but feeling more powerful. Finally, there's the hyper kick which is really hard to reliably use, but is insanely powerful. Sometimes it's frustrating but being able to constantly and easily use the hyper kick wouldn't be all that fun.
On the negatives, the game ends up using a lot of platforming later on, which is especially horrid when 1) it's a beat em up and 2) jump is A + B. Another issue I had is that enemies often hit you right when you get up, leading to you getting juggled a lot if you mess up. It was partly my own fault for getting into those messes and not being able to respond with a super move, but it still didn't feel very fair.
As a whole, very fun but tough challenge. I recommend trying it out.
I'm not super familiar with the Double Dragon games but I know they're pretty influential to the beat-em-up genre, so I think this game should be on the mini. Maybe I'd replace it with the first game, but I'd have to play it to know for certain. I just know the NES port of 1 is more talked about.
7/10
While I was not able to complete Double Dragon 2, I was able to play a good bit of it. For a Beat-em-up, this is pretty fantastic for the NES. I have not played the first or the third Double Dragon games on NES, so I cannot compare, but on its own this is great. I was really surprised with how many moves you could perform, even if a lot of them are just finishing moves upon grabbing someone. The super moves are really good and are well balanced. It seems to scale in power based on ease of performance. Where the uppercut feels the weakest but the easiest to perform, and the spinning kick being a little harder to perform (and more situational) but feeling more powerful. Finally, there's the hyper kick which is really hard to reliably use, but is insanely powerful. Sometimes it's frustrating but being able to constantly and easily use the hyper kick wouldn't be all that fun.
On the negatives, the game ends up using a lot of platforming later on, which is especially horrid when 1) it's a beat em up and 2) jump is A + B. Another issue I had is that enemies often hit you right when you get up, leading to you getting juggled a lot if you mess up. It was partly my own fault for getting into those messes and not being able to respond with a super move, but it still didn't feel very fair.
As a whole, very fun but tough challenge. I recommend trying it out.
I'm not super familiar with the Double Dragon games but I know they're pretty influential to the beat-em-up genre, so I think this game should be on the mini. Maybe I'd replace it with the first game, but I'd have to play it to know for certain. I just know the NES port of 1 is more talked about.
7/10