Super Double Dragon

"A pathetic epitaph to a great series"

I'm afraid I must disagree with everyone else's opinion on this one. Super Double Dragon is an absolute waste of time and is the worst game of the series (Double Dragon 5 included). Allow me to elaborate.

First off, I do need to give the title some props; it is a rare instance indeed where a game sucks so badly that it doesn't deserve any credit. SDD features some very nice graphics and a decent musical score (fans of the series will particularly like Level 5's theme). Your characters go where you want him to and will punch/kick when you tell them to, so no beefs about control problems. And.....um, that's it. Now for the bad news.

For starters, this game is no challenge what so ever. I'm not the best gamer on earth, but I think that something I've never played before should take at least a tiny bit of effort to beat. Such is not the case here. The bad guys show up three at a time and will ALWAYS try to sandwich you between them so they can attack from both sides. This gets more irritating than difficult. All the bosses are weaklings and I actually didn't know that I was even fighting the final bad guy until I beat him and the "ending" started playing.

And what an "ending" it was! I won't go into detail, lest I violate the no-spoilers rule, but suffice to say, once I got over the surprise of winning, I was annoyed at the lack of anything resembling a conclusion. Which brings me to my next point. This game has no storyline what so ever. The first Double Dragon pitted Billy Lee against Jimmy Lee. The second, the brothers united to avenge Marion's death. In three, they traveled the world to collect the sacred stones. But in Super Double Dragon, they....run around a bunch of randomly chosen areas of town, beating the stuffing out of anyone who crosses their for no apparent reason.

These gang members are, for the most part, all new faces. A few enemies look similar to some of the villains in Double Dragon 3. It was disappointing not to see Chin-Tai or Abobo or even Willy translated into 16-bit goodness. How good would Super Metroid or A Link to the Past have been if at least SOME of the old bad guys didn't make an appearance. There's also a rather small variety of weapons to pick up and use on your opponents. I miss hand grenades.

Finally, though the levels are very well detailed, they're unimaginative and straight forward. What happened to the glorious Double Dragons areas of old? What happened to the conveyor belts, the ledges you could fall off of, the water you could drown in, the spikes you could impale yourself, the stupid falling stalagmites on or those horrible blocks of stone that would shoot out and clobber you in the head as you passed by? Half the fun of all these little traps was tossing your enemies in front of , off , or into them, as they would get hurt or die just the same as you. But alas, there is only one level where you can knock your enemies off a cliff and into a pit (and I stood there and did it as many times as I could, you betcha!).

This game doesn't have much replay value, since it's not much fun to play in the first place. I haven't played through it on 2-player mode, but I'm guessing all that does for the game is make it harder for the enemies to surround you. Since being surrounded is the only difficult thing about this title, playing with two people would only make things easier (if one can imagine such a thing).

If you're a rabid collector or a fan of the series and want to own every Double Dragon game ever made, you might want to pick this one up. As for the rest of us, it's probably not worth the time or the money.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/06/05