Double Dragon

Copyright : Virgin Games | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

Join in deadly combat with the savage street gang on the infamous Shadow Boss. Use whatever weapons come to hand as you pursue the gang through the slums, factories, and wooded outskirts of the city to reach the Black Warrior hideout and the final confrontation with the Shadow Boss himself!

Graphics

Ahh Double Dragon, a game that was such a hit in the arcades due to some nicely drawn graphics hits our beloved CPC.

Sadly the developers didn?t put a great amount of effort into the conversion and we ended up with a colourful mess known as Double Dragon CPC. The animated character movements remain pretty much in one piece, give or take a few frames of animation to keep the game going at a reasonable speed but the colour palette! yuck. Our character (or characters if you are playing in two player mode) often get lost within the background and those enemies begin to look pretty much the same as you progress through the levels.

Some effort has been made in re-creating the arcade levels but with so much obvious slow-down, so many tedious bugs and an awful set of colours this isn?t going to win any awards.

Sound

Sound. Well we can honestly say we didn?t pay much attention to the soundtrack in the arcade and therefore cannot comment on how accurate the music is, however it?s not a bad piece and it helps to set the violent tone of the game. However it does get a little annoying over time and the distinct lack of any in-game sound effects don?t help the game itself. This is one you can afford to play with the sound off.

Gameplay

I?m sure when this game was released in the arcades it attracted a huge number of people but sadly the home computer version, and not just the CPC but many other platforms, just didn?t cut the mustard so to speak.

The idea of the game is simple, punch and kick your way from one end of a level to the other. The major downside being the now often mocked \"punch-kick\" method of going about this task and not being able to do much else. Double Dragon runs at a snails pace and is certainly nothing compared to classics such as Golden Axe by Sega.

Even die hard Double Dragon fans should re-think this game and look at it for what it realy was, a very poor conversion and a shocking waste of pocket money.