Double Dragon is is a legendary series spanning multiple games and iterations of itself. The game is known for being one of the first ‘Belt Scrollers’ or ‘Beat Em Ups’ and defined the genre.
The first Double Dragon came out in 1987, with Double Dragon II following directly in 1988.
However Double Dragon 3 was released in America in 1990 a full two years after Double Dragon II, and three years later in 1991 for Japan.
Double Dragon I & II were created by Yoshihisa Kishimoto and team at Technos Japan.
Do you know who ‘East Technology’ is? I sure as hell didn’t know about them and these guys are the assholes that made Double Dragon 3.
I wanna be real clear here, these guys are assholes. In general I am pretty forgiving of Double Dragon 3 but ‘East Technology’ created the FIRST micro-transaction game….in an Arcade where you already pay per minute with your token.
Somehow, someway ‘East Technologies’ was tapped to develop Double Dragon 3 and what they made is kinda fuckin insane. Right from the get go the art style is so fundamentally changed that the game doesn’t even resemble Double Dragon I & II if you squinted.
Furthermore, what the fuck….. three players?!? Not sure how popular the cabinet was in general however there are two iterations of the DD3 cabinet, a two player and three player version.
Two Player Cabinet
Three Player Cabinet
The game is titled ‘Double Dragon’, what the fuck. The game is about two twin martial arts practitioners. Double Dragon 3 comes along and says nah, there’s actually a THIIIIIRD Lee brother…..Sonny Lee.
On top of a third Lee brother that fundamentally would change the title to “Triple Dragons”, there were also 3 (technically 9 if you count the player 2 & 3 iterations) characters you could play of outside of the Lee brothers. These characters being the Urquidez brothers (ユキーデ兄弟?) (mixed martial arts champions), the Chin brothers (陳兄弟?) (tai chi experts) and the Oyama brothers (大山兄弟?) (karate master),
Billy, Jimmy, and Sonny
Seime, Taime, and Sinme
Roney, Sunny, and Jonny
Masao, Kunio, and Akira
Look at that fucking mess of characters above! Nooooobody who likes Double Dragon was asking for more characters, let alone a third player and third Lee brother.
What is the worst part about all these characters, and this is what makes ‘East Technology’ a bunch of assholes, is that you can only access these characters by going into a ‘Shop’ where you are able to purchase ‘Extra Guys, Tricks, Energy, Power Up, and Weapon’.
If you didn’t catch it I wouldn’t blame you but EXTRA GUYS is how you get access to the characters. When you die as a Lee brother and IF you have purchased an EXTRA GUY then instead of coming back as a Lee brother you are replaced by the Stages respective character. The 1st level (America) is the Urqidez brothers, 2nd level (China) is the Chin brothers, and the 3rd level (Japan) is the Oyama brothers. There is also one other shop in the game located in level 5 (Egypt) halfway through where you can get any number of character.
What is worse than the characters though is that weapons and moves are actually locked away behind the token paywall via ‘Tricks’ and ‘Weapons’.
If you wanted THE Double Dragon 3 experience you would pay $0.25 just to start the game, and let’s assume best case everything at the store cost a token, so that would be 4 x $0.25. However you can actually pay for energy and extra guys more than once.
At a best case you’re paying $1.25 AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME for THE Double Dragon 3 experience.
FUCK EAST TECHNOLOGY!
Look at this bullshit, all of these options cost you $0.25.
To add insult to injury the game sees the Lee brothers and friends go on a quest to get Rosetta Stones so they can battle the most powerful person in the world who, spoilers, is fucking Cleopatra?!? Like alright, I guess they want to test their So-Setsu-Ken martial arts but Cleopatra?
I mean…..sure, Cleopatra is the most powerful fighter in the world? She just flying around and blastin tho?
This could be a cool setup but all the levels are so out of place for Double Dragon that it really makes you wonder where ‘East Technology’ was getting direction from, if any from Technos Japan.
Take a look a the picture below, it is LITERALLY the entirety of Double Dragon 3. The players go through America, China, Japan, Italy, and Egypt in search of the Rosetta Stones and EVERY level feels so out of place compared to Double Dragon I & II. ESPECIALLY the 4th level, Italy, with it’s Roman Coliseum looking enemies.
I have to be very clear here, the Japanese release of the game removed the micro-transaction features completely and allows you to select a character at the beginning and during your playthrough.
None of this fuckin matters though because the game is still inherently flawed. There are only two weapons in the game, the nun-chucks and the sword, and you can only get them in Level 1 (America) and Level 3 (Japan).
The real cherry on-top is that the games animations all look like ass, like there is something so dissonant with the animations they chose to use.
So what the hell happened to Double Dragon 3? I do not know, I do not understand how this product even got made.
Going forward Double Dragon 3 marked the decline of Double Dragon for years until other releases came along. It is so bizarre how a series that was so powerful on it’s initial release that spawned arranged soundtracks, toys, a cartoon series, and catapulted a cacophony of ‘Double Dragon’ clones that it faded from annual releases of yearly iterative titles.
(1987) Double Dragon (arcade and multi-console release)
(1988) Double Dragon II (arcade and multi-console release)
(1990) Double Dragon 3 (arcade and multi-console release)
(1992) Super Double Dragon / Return of Double Dragon (Super Nintendo)
(1994) Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls (multi-console release)
(2003) Double Dragon Advance (Gameboy Advance)
(2012) Double Dragon Neon (PC and multi-console release)
(2017) Double Dragon 4 (PC and multi-console release)
I love Double Dragon, but FUCK the American Double Dragon 3 Arcade release.