Double Dragon

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Double Dragon is a "kick and punch everything that moves" style game, in which you take control of Billy Lee or Jimmy Lee, two young brothers that sport high martial arts skills. The Lee brothers were born and raised in a very dangerous city that's now swarmed by gangs that pummel the neighborhoods and jeopardize peace. The story starts when some members of a gang called "Black Warriors" punch and kidnap Billy's love interest, Marian. Furious by the incident, Billy sets off to find them, kick their heads off, eliminate their leader and finally save his beautiful girlfriend. But his journey is very tough, since Billy (and Jimmy) must beat up multiple enemies of various sizes and strengths, depending strongly on his fighting skills plus some weapons he gathers by eliminating armed foes (like knives, baseball bats and more). Billy must also confront big bosses and avoid traps that can instantly kill him.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The Sinclair ZX conversion offers nice graphics for its hardware, with several details, but limited to the machine's 8-color palette. The sprites might move smoothly but the overall action is quite slow. Note that, technically, the ZX conversion looks like the (good) CPC's released by Virgin Mastertronics (see the CPC review) but limited to the Spectrum's hardware. The game's sound features the original intro tune (only on the 128k machines) while there are a few "weak" in-game sound effects (and no music at all).