Billy & Jimmy Lee's quest against The Black Warriors
In 1984, Kung Fu Master became the first widely popular brawler arcade game. I remember playing it at a local ice cream shop, trying to fight my way through a dojo full of karate kids to save the girl. That same year, Hollywood would also feed our martial arts side with the film the Karate Kid. Then in 1986, game producer Taito would build on the popular martial arts culture and release the game Renegade. Its format and gameplay would turn out to be the direct precursor to Double Dragon, which was released by Technos Japan a year later in 1987. Double Dragon would use elements from both of its predecessors, such as a scrolling screen and backdrops of streets and alleys. It would also add some firsts like two player coop play and the ability to use enemy weapons, such as baseball bats, whips, oil drums, and dynamite sticks. One other unique feature for two player games was after the final boss had been laid to rest, a showdown for kidnapped Marion's affection was held between Billy & Jimmy Lee to determine the true winner of the game.
Although no more arcade games were released after DD3, the franchise still released games for home consoles. Super Double Dragon was produced exclusive for SNES system in 1992 and the crossover game Battletoads & Double Dragon in 1993. Also jumping on the bandwagon that year was animation producer DiC Entertainment which released the first 13 episodes of Double Dragon the animated series. It would last 26 episodes in all over the course of 1993-94. The show was mainly associated with the arcade games by name and characters only. However, a few episodes did loosely follow the NES game plot. The main premise of the show was that the brothers, who were raised by opposing ninja masters, join forces and use their magical swords to combat the evil Shadow Master.
Holy Double Dragon Batman! You have the entire Double Dragon history here dude! The Co-Op was where it was at. There was never a home version that worked for me.
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