It pains me to do this but since I’ve been reviewing all the Double Dragon games on the same day I had to do this one. Once this one is done I’ve covered all 5 NES and SNES Double Dragon games. This game was not made by the makers of the other 4 Double Dragon games but by a subsidiary of Tradewest called Leland Interactive Media. For some reason this company decided that instead of another beat em up style game they would make a 1 on 1 fighting game like Street Fighter. That might have been smart if the game they had made was on par, or nearly so, with Street Fighter. This game pales in comparison to that game in basically every way.

Graphics 5/10 – for a fighting game these graphics are bad. The animations look more like the character is in one position and then instantly are in the final part of their move and then back again. It’s like there was no in between animation to get them to and from the attack position. The characters themselves are pretty weak. I believe the sprites were based off a cartoon that was being run at the same time as the game but that didn’t help the design of these characters at all.

One thing I will give this game is that the level designs are nice. Lots of options for places to fight and each level is fleshed out with lots of detail. It’s like the backgrounds got as much attention in this game as the main characters did in Street Fighter. The backgrounds are so nice and then you’ve got these sloppy looking fighters running around and they just don’t fit.

Sound 5/10 – the soundtrack for this game is bland. It tries really hard to be good but it doesn’t manage it. The soundtracks for Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter blow this one out of the water. It’s not very fair to compare the music for this game to those but they set the bar and to be good in this era you had to be as good as those games. Double Dragon 5 just doesn’t cut it.

Even the sound for the attacks feels thrown together. It’s like they make 1 try and getting sounds for the characters and figured no one would notice how bad they were.

Addictiveness 1/10 – I actually played a few matches of this game just to remember how the gameplay felt and what the music was like and that was all I could stand. I tried to give this game a fair chance by playing different characters and trying different levels but it all felt too clunky to me. I wouldn’t recommend playing this game nor would I play it again myself.

Story 1/10 – there is no story to this game that I can figure out. There is no explanation given as to why these characters are fighting each other. It’s like the developers just decided to make a fighting game and picked Double Dragon as the source for the characters. There is no thought to it beyond that. They could have used the cartoon as some sort of source for the story but there is no indication that there is any connection beyond wanting the cartoon and video game to look similar.

Depth 4/10 – there are 10 playable characters in this game and 2 “bosses” to beat. I’ve never been able to play long enough to figure out how many matches you need to win in order to beat the game but I imagine it is similar in format to the Street Fight or Mortal Kombat games. There is also a versus mode where 2 people can play each other like most other fighting games. There is a quest mode that might be interesting if the game wasn’t so badly made where you can be one of the Lee brothers that is trying to stop the Shadow Warriors from starting a plague or as one of the Shadow Warriors trying to replace the Shadow Master. A fourth “mode” (I use that term loosely) is called Watch mode and it is a computer vs computer mode where you don’t play but you watch the computer play. Digging for something here maybe? Seems like a waste of developer’s time that would have been better spent improving the gameplay.
Difficulty 5/10 – I don’t rate this game a 5 because it was hard to beat my opponent but because the moves and controls were so clunky to use. I had a really hard time timing anything. The special moves rarely worked for me and I’m a veteran of both Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter games. Even regular moves didn’t seem to work very well. The whole combat system was poorly made and hard to enjoy.

Overall 3.5/10 – This game is terrible. The graphics were worse than the beat em up game made a few years earlier and the music was brutal. The gameplay itself was so awful and clunky that doing anything properly was nearly impossible. The game lacked a story and even if you could look past that it was pretty limited in anything else it offered. The quest mode might have been a slightly redeeming quality if it had been the main part of the game rather than a side thing. Make a good beat em up style game and then add a 1 on 1 fighting game on afterwards. That might have saved this game from being a failure.

A sad end to such a great franchise...

You're awfully generous to give any rating for this game anything higher than a 3...

Vanelan : the only reason it wasn't worse was because of some of the level designs and music. If those were worse it would have gotten a 3 or worse overall.

Still, I was generous in those 2 categories for sure.

I agree Double Dragon 3 was the beginning of the end of the franchise. DD4 was a glorious comeback and DD5 threw the franchise in the toilet. But I think it was almost law back then that any franchise had to have a SF type game,(and most sucked). They had to fix what was not broken.

Sorry for commenting on all of your reviews tonight, but I'm a big Double Dragon fan.

I couldn't agree more on this game. I still remember renting this one and being so excited about it...until I got it home and saw that it was a tournament fighter. Few games have disappointed me that much.

I commend you and anyone else for finding many redeeming qualities in this one. The manual was my favorite part. Lol

RIP: Bimmy and Jimmy

There are great underrated fighters out there. Like the Jojo tie-in's, Pokken, Sonic Battle...But not this. This is a trash fighter. Go join the Wii TMNT fighter in the trash can.

This is an awful end to an otherwise okay series. It's a shame that it ended this way, but I think it's for the best that this series stays dead...But with E3 coming soon, who knows, we might get a new Worst Double Dragon game.

A user of this :
Just thought I'd point out to you and geeo how right you may be with your joke. http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/02/26/double-dragon-ii-the-revenge-launches-today-on-ps4/

They said they're actually planning on making new Double Dragon games. Bim and Jim may be coming back after all these years. Hopefully that ends up being a good thing.

Yeah, even people who like the series tend to really dislike this one. Nice review, it does a great job of explaining exactly why you feel the way you do about the game, and I honestly can't find anything wrong with it.

I haven't played all that much Double Dragon, but I've heard a bit about Double Dragon 5, and it looked terrible from what I'd seen. Now I know that it's just as terrible as it looks.