"How not to make an Arcade Translation"

To be perfectly clean, I'm a big fan of the Double Dragon series. Not just Double Dragon, but anything that says Technos Japan Corp and Kunio-kun. While the Double Dragon has it's share of lackluster titles (like the Arcade version of Double Dragon 3), the overall series is not as bad as people think it is (just as long as you exclude Battletoads vs. Double Dragon and Double Dragon 5, which are NOT actual Double Dragon games). The Genesis hasn't been very lucky when it comes to Double Dragon games. Ballistic's Double Dragon 1 had decent graphics, but the slow play controls and the bad audio ruined everything. Eurocom's Double Dragon 3 was for most part, an accurate port of the Arcade game, but that wasn't good to begin with and the messed up the controls a bit and ruined the music. When I heard that they made Double Dragon II for the Mega Drive and PC Engine in Japan only, I was curious. The PC Engine version by Naxat Soft was an excellent port of the NES, with arranged music, great graphics, anime-style cinemas and great gameplay. Double Dragon II for the Mega Drive by Palsoft, on the other hand is the total opposite.

The Genesis has a history of doing Arcade-ports. Most of them were excellent, like Sega's ports of Capcom's CPS1 games (Strider and Ghouls 'n Ghosts) and Shadow Dancer. However, for every good Arcade port, there was always a bad one behind like the Punisher, Mortal Kombat and this game.

The basic concept in this version is the same as the other versions of the game. Your girlfriend, Marian is murdered and as one of the Lee boys (Billy or Jimmy), it is your mission to chase after the muderers and get revenge. Unlike the NES and PC Engine versions, this is a straight port (or should I say mockery) of the original Arcade version. There is three buttons (Left Attack, Jump and Right Attack) and certain combinations leads to special attacks like the infamous Elbow Smash and the Cyclone Kick. However, one of the move from the Arcade version was removed in this port, which is the Jumping Side-Kick.

The enemies are same too. All the generic punks are here (Williams, Roper, Linda, Abobo and Bolo), as well as the five bosses (Burnov, Abore, Chin Taimei, Willy and the Shadow Twins). The only guy missing here is Jeff, the evil-looking clone of Billy and Jimmy. All weapons from the Arcade game is here too; Boxes, Whips, Knives and Shovels.

From the previous description, the game seems like an accurate port of the Arcade version, right? Wrong! The first thing wrong with this game that I noticed with this was the graphics. While certainly better than the SMS version of the original Double Dragon, the characters are too small and the colors are too dark. DD2 for the NES looked better than this.

Then I though ''Graphics don't make a game! At least the audio has to be decent''. Wrong again, every audio in this game; Voices, SFX and BGM sounds like they were translated from the Arcade to a blender. Kazunaka Yamane must had felt mocked when he heard the music from this game. Of course, Genesis game aren't known for good audio (except anything by Yuzo Koshiro), this is worse than usual.

My last though was ''As long as the gameplay is there, that's all that matters'' and that is true. But unfortunatelly for this version, the gameplay has been completety tarnished. While the controls are very responsive (the only good thing about this game), the enemies are next to impossible on all three difficulty levels. Enemies usually round up on you and their attacks are almost unavoidable. In order to make it to the end, you gotta set the number of continues and lives as high as you can on the Option Screen and for what? The ending in this game is even worse than the one used in the Arcade version. The ending consist B&W scenes of Billy Lee beating up the four bosses and the words The End.

Well there you have it. Double Dragon II for the Mega Drive has three strikes agaisnt it. It's one of the worst ports in history of Arcade ports. It's no wonder why it was never released outside Japan. If you're looking for an Arcade perfect version of Double Dragon II, buy the Jamma board or the Arcade Machine. There has been several bad ports of Double Dragon games in the past for various computers like the Amiga or Spectrum ZX, but at least they have an excuse for being bad. Palsoft's Double Dragon II for Mega Drive was release for a system that is capable of Arcade-syle A/V and Gameplay. You would think that after three years of the original Arcade release, the Mega Drive version would be Arcade Perfect. Instead it's a big stinker and should be bought for Collection Purpose.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/00, Updated 08/19/00