It'd be easier to fight these guys in real lifeDouble Dragon is best known for its NES port, though it came from an arcade game. But, how could they port the arcade game to the Atari 2600, when the Atari 2600 is so limited? The answer is, they didn't. Or, at least, they didn't make a playable port of Double Dragon. How bad/unplayable is it? Let's find out...
The graphics look quite good, for the most part. The animation is good enough, and the background is detailed for Atari. The attacks, however, aren't so hot, as they only contain one frame of animation per attack. This is part of the game and its problems...
The sound isn't bad, either. The music is there from the original game, though it is scaled down for the Atari 2600's standards, and the sound effects are exactly what you'd expect them to be. The elbow strike makes a weird noise, for some reason, though.
Enough talking about the sound and graphics, let's move on to the gameplay. It's really kinda unfair, and it makes you feel really helpless, somehow. Let's dive in and see exactly why...
The hit detection isn't too great, as there isn't really much of a sense of moving on a 3D plane - you can hit an enemy from anywhere on their body, no matter where you're standing. This means that if your sprite touches the enemy's sprite, even if, by normal standards, you would've totally missed, you'll still hit. You will have to rely on this to survive. Guess why?
The enemies are apparently all fitted with bionic implants and filled with 'roid rage, or at least that's what their fighting makes it seem like, as they're ruthless. They will keep knocking you down over and over again, due to the one-frame attack animations, and they do a massive amount of damage when they hit you - and you seem to do very little damage to them, to the point where, in a game in which the normal enemies are made so that they don't have as much health as the player characters, they seem to take as many, if not MORE, hits than your characters! This makes it incredibly hard to pass even a few screens without dying at least once. The non-existence of any health restoration items just add to the difficulty.
Because it's Atari, the game doesn't scroll, but change screens. And, to cope with the console's limitations, there's only about three or so screens per level. And, it seems as though they kept the multiple levels from the original game, though I didn't get past Mission 2. This is quite good for Atari standards, because of the fact that, hey, predefined levels and an actual ending, a way to "finish" the game!
The controls are just what you'd expect from a game with only a joystick and one button. The fire button attacks, and you can use different attacks by pressing the fire button while holding a direction on the joystick. There's a punch and a kick, both of which are totally useless, and then there's the moves that actually have some sort of effect, i.e. the jump kick and the elbow strike. You'll have to master these two moves if you hope to get past Mission 1...
Anyways, the game could've been quite nice, but the cheap AI and ruthless enemies ruined it, because they cause the difficulty to rise so high that it's almost impossible to have any fun with the game. A shame, really.
Overall Rating - C- (It was almost good, but it was held back by just a few problems)
Graphics
7 Sound
6 Addictive
1 Difficulty
10
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