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 Atari ST version offers up to 16 colors on screen (while the Amiga counterpart shows more than 20 and up to 32). The sprites move rather slowly but the animation is quite decent and a bit faster than the PC DOS version. Each level is greatly designed with the basic arcade details present. Soundwise, Double Dragon features a wonderful intro music (taken from the original arcade) plus some in-game sampled sound effects (similar to the Amiga version). Unfortunately, those sound effects are not so "beat 'em up" realistic and also there is no in-game music, which could push things a little more. Double Dragon is one of the most popular old-school beat 'em up games and its success lead to two more sequels and stood as the basis for other software game houses to create their own beat 'em up games.