Hart Deer's: DOUBLE DRAGON for the Atari 2600 walkthrough/FAQ! XXX XXX X X XXX X XXXX X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X XXX X XXXX X X X X X X X X X X XXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXX XXXX DRAGON. You can visit me on the web at http://www.hartdeer.net Table of Contents: 1. Riveting Predlude 2. Gripping Meta Strategy 3. Variations on the Gripping Meta Strategy 4. A Few Words about the Missions 5. Tips & Secrets 6. Frequently Ask Questions 7. Immodesty 1. Riveting Prelude This game is, without question, the HARDEST game in the Double Dragon series. I'm not kidding. This game is so hard that I am the only person who has ever beaten it, and that includes the programmers. After beating the game, I ate my own hand, which was much easier. This game has many fun and unique challenges. The first challenge is that many of the enemies can jump kick you at will, which will set them up to combo you, which will randomly eat some or all of your life. The second challenge is that the collision detection is based on an imaginary box extending a few pixels past your enemy (works against you, as well). The third challenge is that even if you overcome the first two difficulties, once you run into the Abobo group in Mission Two, the Abobo's will pound you like fresh meat in the county pen. I'm not kidding. The character on the TV screen will die, but in real life, it will hurt you to sit down. There are many theories as to how a game this mind breakingly bad came to be. One theory is that the programmers thought the idea of a 2600 version of Double Dragon was ridiculous, and released it as a debauched April Fool's prank gone horribly wrong. Another theory is that God has sent this game to punish humanity for our sins, but since not everyone has committed multiple genocide while fetishing with invertabrate lovers, I don't think humans have done anything bad enough to deserve this game. Anyway, I stuck it out and I beat this nasty little abortion. I am proud of doing something absolutely nobody has ever been able to do before, and I can only imagine how many millions of hours people have spent trying. With my sage advice, you too can climb the mighty mountain of madness which is... the 2600 Double Dragon. 2. Gripping Meta Strategy The first thing you must do is master your arsenal of deadly martial arts techniques. To throw a punch, just hit the fire button. To throw a kick, hold down on the joystick and press fire. The jump kick is up and fire. The elbow is diagonally up and fire, and it aims in the opposite direction of the diagonal. This is so that you can't cheat by walking around and fighting at the same time. Fortunately, the only way to victory involves staying put. You may notice that the enemies do not want to approach you if you are on the far left side of the screen. There is a sweet spot where you are close enough to the side so the enemies will not attack, but over just enough that your own attacks can hit the enemies as they wander back and forth nearby. To find the sweet spot, walk your guy to the bottom left of the screen and face right. Tip-toe right one pixel at a time, and punch after each step. In the position you're in after a punch, you want the two rightmost pixel columns of your foot to be positioned directly over the two leftmost pixel columns of the hat on the icon next to your remaining lives. That's it! Just get there, and hit people as they wander barely into range. Don't get cocky and think you can beat this game without exploiting this AI glitch. Just suck it up and hide in your sweet spot like the smelly G you are. Trust me, deviate from the master plan, and the computer is more than able to cheat you into an unmarked shallow grave by the railroad tracks quicker than you can say, "I'm going to personally hunt down the programmers and sell their dripping innards to witches on the black market." 3. Variations on the Gripping Meta Strategy There's only a few minor polishing points you need to be the toughest bopper in a world of pixels so big, Simon Belmont flees in fear of their awesome girth. * For maximum damage, you need to start with kicks and end with punches for each knockdown. For the normal guys, it's two kicks, then punch. For the ladies, it's two kicks and a punch for the first two girls on the screen, and then just one kick and one punch for all the girls that wander in from the sides. For the Abobos, give three kicks, then a punch. * If an enemy approaches from the far side of the screen with a weapon to throw, stay at the bottom until the enemy is roughly three fifths of the way across the screen, then wander straight up. They will throw and miss. Meanwhile, you can start beating them up as they wander into smackdown range. If an Abobo throws a box in this scenario, you can pick it up and chuck it at him, if you want. * If any enemy approaches from behind you with a knife, stay off centered below them and just kick like a madman until you get the knockdown. Then, wander down and to the right so they will chase you without picking up the knife. (If they get the knife anyway and throw it, walk up or down to dodge.) When you can, cut up and left then down and left to get around the enemy and back to the sweet spot. Attack as usual, and they will die soon. Then, retrieve the knife and wander out into the middle of the screen, and you can line up horizonatally with the next enemy and throw the knife for an instant kill. * If an Abobo approaches from behind with a box, wander away to the right until the Abobo starts to approach your latitude. Then cut diagonally up and to the right; the Abobo will throw and miss. When the Abobo approaches some more, You can cut straight down, then up and to the left on the diagonal to get to the other side of the Abobo, then down and to the left to return to your sweet spot. * If an unarmed Abobo comes out behind you while there's already an earlier Abobo near the top of the screen, just wander out a ways to the right, then turn and jump kick straight through the new Abobo's head, then haul tail back to the left side of the screen to get back into your sweet spot. You might get hit once, but you'll live and prevail. * Kill an enemy with a bat the same way you would any other enemy, and take the bat. When you have the bat, the next enemy can be fun. Knock him down first by just barely connecting with his outer pixels as he wanders into range. Then, keep walking in on him as you swing whenever he tries to stand up. The right timing will give you equal times for the bat swinging sound and the enemy crumpling sound. It's a pretty peppy pace. * If an enemy comes up behind you on the left with the bat, stay a little below him and kick like a madman. He will be so busy trying to pick the bat up, he will let you keep kicking him until he dies. * Save time with the girls by just walking out of the sweet spot and fighting in the middle of the room. Once you have the feel for clipping enemies as they wander into your attack range, the girls are no problem. They don't jump kick. They don't combo. They don't counter attack. On later missions, you'll need every second you can get. Make up time on the girls. * The last boss can shoot you, so zig-zag to get in close. Then, slightly below his firing line, walk him down to the bottom of the screen with rapid kicks. Once you're near the bottom and he falls over (the animation looks like some kind of retarded cat), scurry to the top of the screen above him so him will chase you back up there and you can repeat the procedure. Repeat until dead. This is all you need to know. No kidding. Every last stinking bit of it. 4. A Few Words about the Missions Mission 1: Three easy screens. Learn the timing of tagging enemies as they barely walk into hitting range, and also get the timing of keeping enemies down with the bat. The purple hookers at the end of the stage will be a deceptively pathetic boss fight. Mission 2: Abobo's come out on the second screen. Despite my excellent advice, they still might smear you into paste the first time you encounter them. However, I guarantee, get past them and you've pretty much got the whole game licked. Mission 3a: More of the same. Annoying. Mission 3b: Yawn. The Abobo's at the end require one more knockdown than before. I guess that's Atari's substitute for the bad-ass green Abobo of the arcade Double Dragon. Mission 4: You might hit a snag when the Abobo's start wandering in right behind you with one already above you on the screen. Just play it cool and do what I told you to do. In the last room, you have to fight a whole bunch of yellow guys who are quite ordinary except they take a lot of knockdowns to kill, and they are great in number. When the last boss comes out with the machine gun, just remember that if you are below his line of fire and you keep kicking, he is useless to himself. Nevertheless, the last battle might eat up a life and change, but hang in there. Your reward is a kiss from your girlfriend, and she is simply marvelous, despite looking exactly like all the purple hookers you've been killing throughout the game. Congratulations! 5. Tips & Secrets There is a way to unlock a secret new mode of gameplay. Take your Double Dragon cartridge, run it through your washing machine three times, run it over with your car twice, soak it in vinegar overnight, let it dry, and shoot it with a shotgun four times while holding left on the player two joystick. When you put the game back in your Atari, you will notice it's a lot more fun to play. 6. Frequently Ask Questions Who the hell thought this would be a good idea for a game? >> Satan. How do you deal with the pain? >> Crack, self-mutilation, incontinency... the usual. 7. Immodesty Well, that's my FAQ. If you weren't smart enough to come up with such a strategy yourself, don't worry. You could very well be a genius and never even start to fathom the sort of intelligence it required of me to put this together. Oh, and one more thing, you're welcome. :)