Double Dragon 3: The Arcade Game

"Despite good graphics and having new characters to recruit - Double Dragon III lacks the quality beat 'em up mechanics that made the series famous."

Double Dragon III was originally an arcade game developed by East Technology instead of the series creator, Technos. The different combat engine - along with a strange plot, fantasy-based environments, and a shopping system where you paid real money for upgrades, weapons and new characters - alienated the audience established by the previous games. It was considered a failure, so several revamped versions of the game were ported to a handful of consoles to recoup the losses. I'm going to eventually review them all - starting with this one for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive...

Graphics 9/10

This version of Double Dragon III has the best visuals of all the home ports. The sprites are a nice size, and sport some good detail - although I prefer the old art style of Jimmy and Billy Lee better. The background environments looked nice too, although they weren't as polished as the arcade version. There was also a good variety of enemy designs, most of them exclusive to a certain stage. Some of the opponents were kind of silly, though (mummies, headless wooden golems they turned into tree stumps when they died). Overall, it looked pretty good for a 1992 game on Sega's console and the only real problem was that the animation was somewhat stiff and the color scheme kind of washed out.

Sound 6/10

Aside from the somewhat interesting 1st stage theme, Double Dragon III an average soundtrack that didn't do much to invigorate you. The battle noise was also pretty mild, featuring generic smacking sounds and a couple of dry grunts and death cries.

Control 6/10

Hit detection was really iffy in this game - as I would be aligned perfectly with an enemy and land several punches before their bodies reacted to damage. The weapons were also essentially useless due to slow swinging animations and limited range. I also had trouble activating anything aside from the most basic attacks, even after upgrading my character at a shop. There wasn't any response lag (well, from pressing a button) and the game was devoid of slowdown. The button layout scheme was ok as well.

Game-play 5/10

In the options menu, you can toggle the amount of coins (lives) and the characters you start out with. I would give yourself 25 coins to counter the game's difficulty and choosing anyone outside of the Lee brothers (although the muscled dudes are decent) is just going to work against you. That's right - the original protagonists of the Double Dragon series are no longer by themselves - having the company of 3 new characters that can be recruited during certain stages. There's the aforementioned muscled dudes of the opening level, who have a long-reaching kick and supposedly less speed and more power. Then there are two fat Chinese men who are pretty worthless in my opinion, and another pair of martial artists who I just don't see the point of either. Instead of simply swapping to a new character every time you die - you have to visit shops in certain stages and sacrifice one of your coins to add one of these people underneath whatever character you are currently. Meaning, when you die (no matter what stage) instead of Billy or Jimmy spawning back onto the screen - these recruits battle the enemies instead. While I'm all for fleshing out new faces to the series - with the exception of the muscled dudes, none of the other characters are worth wasting a coin on. These shops (which only appear in stages 1, 2, and 3) also "sell" weapons (nunchaku and a katana) which are so slow or limited in range you'd be better off bare-handed. In addition to recruits and weaponry, you can learn new moves (which I never noticed) and power-up your characters - each of which requires another coin. I'm not sure either of these are worth the money, once again - so aside from grabbing the muscled dudes in the opening level - I never bothered with the shops. As I mentioned in the control section - I couldn't figure out any moves aside from the generic punches, kicks, and jump kicks even with the "tricks" purchased from the shop. To make matters worse, the baddies have a habit of ignoring your punches due to what I assume is a glitch in the collision detection. I have some gripes with the level-oriented traps - like fighting off a gladiator while dodging a buzz-saw and spelling Rosetta on a floating platform nearly identical to the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The bottom line is that while Double Dragon III brings a bunch of new ideas to the table, the majority of them aren't worthwhile and the backbone of the beat 'em up action has significantly weakened.

Replay Value 3/10

Even though most of them aren't worth the cost of recruiting - there are three new character designs that add some variety to the game-play. Having two-player co-op is another nice addition, even though it is a genre standard at this point in time. Double Dragon III isn't a very long game, but I supposed you could come back to it every once in a while if you're aren't turned off by its uninspired mechanics and largely unsuccessful attempt to alter the basis of the series.

Overall 5/10

Even though it pales in comparison to the rest of the mainstay Double Dragon series - it was kind of nice that the Genesis/Megadrive got ports of the original trilogy. Since it isn't a 100% translation of the arcade version, there is some incentive to purchase a copy. If you're a big fan of the series or a beat 'em up enthusiast in general - spending $4 or $5 on this wouldn't be a waste as long as you're not expecting the quality of the earlier games.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/07