Arcade Memories Game Of The Week - Double Dragon

[Bods]

It's monday, weather is miserable so lets get back to Arcade Fun

This was one of my fav games in the Arcades, always liked the fighting games which started for me on International Karate on C64 and this was next level when first played it, another one in the Cascade Amusements which was our go to place every Saturday when we had the weekly trip in to town

Another game changer, assume this is first 2 player side scrolling Beat em up? we loved it, with not much money spare to put in games, we could spend less than a £1 and play it too the end and how fun was it fighting for the girl with each other, great graphics, superb music, picking up weapons, getting whipped or whacked around the ears it's just fun all the way

This was straight on my most wanted list of machines to own but no idea what cabinet it was in we played, wish I had pictures of those machines in Cascade, To get original albeit American one as we didn't get dedicated here was superb and it featured in Retro Gamer was a bonus as not many in the UK back then

I bought it for Atari ST when it was released, yeah it was rubbish compared to the arcade but unless you could own the original it's all we had, could have been worse and had it on Atari 2600 though it looks great on the Atari Lynx

I know some will say but its rubbish to the 90's ones, yeah but it wasn't before they were around so you didn't think it was rubbish in 1987

Just a shame they didn't make a Japanese Cab for it with proper artwork rather than the Americanised Hammer and Spike nonsense

Anyone else play it regular in the 1980's ?

 

[_Matt_]

Double Dragon was probably the arcade game that blew my 10 year old mind the most out of every arcade game I've seen. It had everything in it me and my mates did for fun, throwing knives, attacking each other with baseball bats, throwing dynamite (fire works) and we most likely threw some barrels around too!

My Nan took me on holiday to Blackpool every year when I was young and it was there I played Double Dragon for the first time. I couldn't believe it! The graphics, 2p co-op, the amount of moves, the music, the sound effects and actually being able to pick up weapons I just couldn't stop playing it. We have quite a big local arcade but Double Dragon didn't appear in it until around a year later but luckily our local bowing alley did get it a few months later which was lucky as I literally hadn't stopped thinking about it since blackpool! I'd get my dad to take me to the bowling alley as kids wasn't allowed in on there own and made him play 2 player with me, I can't tell you how many times he'd end up falling in the water (often walking off the edge repeatedly) while trying to jump over the bridge 🤣.

So yeah, I've got a real soft spot for it. I bought a bootleg Double Dragon around 8 years ago as although I was absolutely convinced I already owned one I just couldn't find it so thought I must have just imagined it. Then a few years ago my dad sent me a pic of 2 pcbs he found under the stairs. It was Hammerin Harry and Double Dragon. They'd been there around 30 years! I knew I wasn't going mad.

I'm usually rubbish at remembering details like this from back in the day but I'm pretty sure it was in a big Silver BAS cab.

 

[Pooky78]

First saw it many years ago as a kid at the local fair. Low trailer with a tent over the top, slap dash but no arcades near us so it was cool to see machines at all.

I remember not lasting very long but the graphics and gameplay blew my tiny mind. I spent more time on bubble bobble next to it from memory (The music loop on that game is hammered into my brain)

 

[John Bennett]

I don't recall it in any of our local arcades, surprisingly.

We had a copy of the MSDOS version though.

It was alright - enough fun had elbowing and throwing people off screen.
We also had the 2600 version, but that was nightmarish.

Double Dragon 2 did seem to always be on the ferries we went on (alongside Shadow Dancer). I think we finished it once as there was a glitch so you got 9 credits every time you pulled the plug and switched it back on. I found the controls a little odd though, with the left/right attack buttons.
We got a Double Dragon 3 with our first arcade machine. Toss. Sold it on quickly.

Revisiting the original arcade PCB in the last few years, I appreciate the history and I should play it again, but it does move like they're wading through treacle, sadly.

 

[Funhouse71]

I remember playing this, it wasn't in any particular dedicated but seemed installed in the Electrocoin Goliath cab.

Back in the 80's in my local town (now city) of Southend one of the biggest arcades called Mr B's had literally rows and rows of these type of cabs with all the latest games that came out.

 

[Bods]

I think it may have been Electrocoin I played it in, or at least had EC Marquee because I seem to remember there were instructions for the buttons and telling you the elbow move

Yeah double dragon 2 was pretty much same game just different scenes and characters but that change of controls was very confusing and hard to get used to quickly, it was more like controls on Renegade. they did have DD2 in the Krystal Amusements end of 80's, It's amazing how good they managed to do DD2 on the Amiga though compared to DD1 what a shame they hadn't got original that good on it

I have to say when we were at Butlin's adult weekend in the mid 1990's I was playing Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter quite a bit, we walked down to skeggy center in afternoon and I popped in the arcades, they still had rows of Goliath cabs with all the games then, Golden Axe and Double Dragon so had to go on it and first thought was this isn't as good as I remember but you have to get back into it and appreciate them for when they were released and what was about at the time, now it's just like I remember it being

The biggest surprise about playing it on the Emulator for first time was the Slowdown, considering how much I played it in the arcades, more than any other game although Ninja Warriors was close 2nd I do not remember it slowing down at all, such a mystery that is and assumed it was just Emulator thing until it's same on original PCB

 

[Stokers]

Although I made several trips on the SeaLink ferry as a younger man (via the now defunct Folkstone > Boulogne route) I never saw a Double Dragon cabinet. In fact SeaLink head office obviously preferred SNK's P.O.W as there was a cab on nearly every trip I made. Of course it was surrounded by a toxic cloud of cigarette smoke but you just had to put up with it.

Anyway, I had to wait until Double Dragon was ported to the Megadrive - which was a total mess. The game speed was off, there was only a few frames of annimation and the characters slid around like everything was an ice level. This really tarnished my impression of the game until eventually an arcade perfect port (minus the slowdown) came out on xbox live arcade. I think it was an unlicensed port as it came in a cardboard box:

The arcade version is much more fun for sure, but it never felt satisfying to me. It was annoyingly difficult without the elbow and comically easy with it. The controls were still a bit slidy in the arcade as well, combine that with swining axes and holes in the ground - it was quite frustrating.

 

[pooman2084]

I was groundbreaking at the time and still fun for a play through, especially with a mate.

Great soundtrack too.

 

[TheDaddy]

Yeh like most this was me and my mates goto game the second we entered an arcade.

Very fond memories of this , In particular the time we noticed the control panel was lose , turned out if was not fastened so we got inside and gave ourselves free credits ! good times lol.

Dave.

 

[K1ngarth3r]

I missed out on playing it in the arcade, I remember playing Double Dragon II The Revenge at the American Adventure theme park though.
I used to play the original on the Sinclair Spectrum and then later on the Sega Master System though and really enjoyed it. (Al played Double Dragon II The Revenge on the NES, It was amazing wasn't it!)

 

[Del Griffith]

Absolutely love it. As others have said, It was the game to play with your mates and nothing else compared at the time. For all its faults i'll always have a spot for it.

The console/computer conversions were unfortunately all shit. Megadrive was rough but the best of a bad bunch. I had the ST & Speccy versions and always tried to convince myself they were ok. Bloody terrible. The Amiga version must have been an ST port and should have been so much better. Nes is pretty good choosing a different take.

 

[_Matt_]

I missed out on playing it in the arcade, I remember playing Double Dragon II The Revenge at the American Adventure theme park though.
I used to play the original on the Sinclair Spectrum and then later on the Sega Master System though and really enjoyed it. (Al played Double Dragon II The Revenge on the NES, It was amazing wasn't it!)

Yes the NES Double Dragon 2 was great. I think I had a Japanese Megadrive by then so I thought it looked crap but it played amazing.

 

[ronsplooter]

One of my favourites as it was in the chippy down the road from school so a substantial amount of my dinner money went into it. Still love playing it when I see a cab at retro shows and have considered getting one for home but have a feeling I'd get bored of it quite quickly. The music is amazing and another favourite, so much I just had to pick this up......

 

[sapporo46]

@Del Griffith sums it up perfectly for me. First saw it in Butlins in 1988, couldn't get enough of it.

Played it so much I became quite proficient and we'd often get people watching us complete it on one credit 🙂

After discovering superguns in the late 90s, I bought a bootleg PCB. I think MAME could emulate it at that point but it was amazing to play the original hardware again.

Had a few PCBs but the only ones I've kept have been my Double Dragon 1&2 originals, such a piece of history to me (I don't count the 3rd one).

My DD bootleg still works, too! Apart from a flickering raster line near the top of the screen, anyway.

Still fire them up now and then in the cab...

 

[Bods]

Anyone not seen the Movie

I've got it on Bluray and DVD I think, good to see some arcade machines in any movie but yeah it's not great

 

[LHantz]

First heard about it in High School, then realised they were playing it in the dinner hour at the back of a video shop half a mile down the road, tagged along and played it. This was just as I was getting into proper Arcades around Sheffield, and it was everywhere. The music is iconic, prob more than the gameplay for me. It was also one of the first PCB's I got along with Robocop from an old Brent Leisure unit. DD is one of the most iconic belt scrollers which started a popular genre as a result. Played the sequel more on the Amiga which was not too bad, I like how they went to buttons for directional attacking, PCB cost me about £10 back in the day, still have both though.

 

[69er]

The mid 1980s was video game paradise and it was difficult to keep up with the new and better games evolving quickly especially with the recent advent of the jamma interchange pcb popularity at that time
I had a couple of Konami “‘yie ar Kung fu “ cabs on site earlier and it could be seen fighting games would soon follow as jailbreak and green beret came out the graphics were better but we were restricted to generic cabs often single joystick alternating play or just single credit play on Konami wired looms so the cabs stayed with their pcb more often than swapping on site

When Vigilante and Double Dragon emerged they fitted the new jamma loom twin joystick cabs seen in every video library , youth club , arcade & leisure/ sports centres to which we supplied many with our Cheshire and Flintshire county council contracted sites for pooltables table tennis and non-gambling amusement coin op games ,

Best performing video up to them aside from the trusted old pole positions and pacmans etc was Ikari Warriors on jamma but only worked best on cabs converted to rotary 8 way dual move& shoot joysticks which kept them to their own cabinet usually too

Both Double Dragon & Vigilante were the games of that era though and took loads of coins , moreso as mars multi coin mechs also evolved on to many of the jamma cabs. Pcbs could be swapped quick and easy with maybe a marquee upgrade of whick e often just printed the game title behind clear Perspex . Wow these were royalty of the 80s game cabs and reigned top of popularity until WORLD CUP 90 and similar euro champ footy took over a few years down the line.

Double dragon was also on cart for player choice play choice 10 Nintendo cabs too

I still have an odd pc10 cart and a couple of choice cabs but don’t play them and probably have a couple of jamma pcbs to laying about? Only issue I found with some of them was on the dual pcb games working close to the coastal sea air the ribbon connectors between the pcbs often eroded a bit giving game graphics issues?

Still have a couple of the jamma boards around somewhere? and one was working well till I came to try them out to eBay about a decade ago …….
Sadly when I last tried out a couple a few years ago the fault was present and I found pins in the ribbon plugs were prone to breaking in the ribbon plastic ends and shirt of hard wiring them it was a case of box em up and forget till my patience was plentiful? Not sure that’s happening yet? Also as with many of the 40 year old boards plug in roms and othe ICs usually need reseating and risk the odd chip leg parting company as they age and erode in their sockets.

As time passed and operating video cabs in all types of locations it was commercially more sensible to buy newer stuff as it came popular twin drivers , gun games and bigger cabs took the place of the standard jamma DD style games in the end , very sad as they were great to play and paid for themselves more often than not ..

The only downer on them at the time was a few sites actually deemed them too violent for children to play and one or two youth clubs would not have them in and stayed with passive wonderboys and Pac-Man etc?

Those people had to have a change of heart if they expected to get an op wolf or terminator later on !!!!! Odeon cinema in Chester had our only Virtua Fighter dual seat super plasma screen model after rejecting vigilante a while earlier and it was there for over 2 years . Until we had a spare Daytona twin …. Oh the good times and best job being able to play these as they came available through the years ……

I loved DD but still love Phoenix and super break out too …. Sad old man … they say?
😥…… 😌😊😊😊😊😊 no … ! Happy !!!

 

[Shoryu-stu]

First saw this and played this in the early 90s (bit late i know)at an amusements in dover a few hours before crossing into france on a school trip,bloody loved it!also got me into trouble as the teachers had to come and fetch me off the machine,same thing happened on a ferry with superman but that stories for another time.loved it then and still do now,classic.