One day I knew I would eventually be reviewing this game! I always knew I would have to eventually, if anything just to put some ghosts of the past to rest. Also possibly to reiterate pretty much the same thing as everybody else who played this around about it's actual release time. Needless to say underwhelming is an understatement.
OK so here we go you're the pilot of the Starship Blind Optimism, and you've just crash landed hard in the Insufferable Shite Sector of Planet Disappointment!!!
There are no survivors of this mass tragedy including yourself!
So Double Dragon on the Speccy, yeah it's not good, it's not good at all. But I will be 100% honest my 10 year old self bugged the living shit out of my mother to buy it for me, and I actually got it pretty much at release time, and I'll also be honest upon loading it up I wasn't totally devastated at the first moment. I already knew what I was looking at, and what I was playing was piss weak compared to the arcade game I'd been shoving coins into for years before now, but I persevered, as it was Double Dragon! I finally had fucking Double Dragon at home, something everybody wanted, and never thought would happen, but here it was. Sadness unfortunately started to set in quite quickly. Playing the first level when I first loaded it up I was like OK it's not completely terrible, the enemies sort of look like they're supposed to, the graphics are serviceable, and the moves all seem to be there...….What could go wrong?
Everything that's what! Everything!!! EVERYTHING!!!!!!!
So I throw punches at the first guy its a nice-ish clicky smack noise, nowhere near the impact of the 80's movie style smack, smack, smack of the arcade, but it's OK....Split seconds later as Williams flies up in the air, flips onto his back and lands with the weirdest farty indigestion burpy type noise ever, I'm like....erm? I continue playing til' I get to Linda, she comes out the doors, but she looks like a cross between 80's Kim Wylde, and Bjork. I knock her down and hear the mouse squeak....Oh dear. So by now I've taken down a few thugs and I'm swinging the Turkey Leg like crazy....Oops I mean baseball bat. So I know Bolo is coming next, so I'm ready for the big man to come busting through the wall, and he kind of does in a rather subdued and none-dramatic kind of way. Oh my instead of the intimidating musclebound monster from the arcade I'm greeted with a middle aged queen complete with gay bar moustache, and a giant bubble head, who seems to face sideways at all times. The only thing missing from this ridiculous "Gary the Greatest" stunt double is either a string vest, and a pair of booty shorts, or a leopard skin leotard, and a barbell with 2 round weights on either side of it that each have "1 Tonne" written on them, and a barrel of oil to drown himself in from head to toe. So I carry on to the end of the level and by now I'm a little sad, as I've noticed that most of the graphics from the preview screenshots in the magazines at the time hadn't made it into the finished game, and this is just level one. I beat Abobo at the end of the level, and accidentally restart the level instead of hitting the button to load the next level. So I slog through level one again, and make sure I don't make the same mistake again. I'm curious as to why they gave you the option to replay the level again, instead of just saying "Press Play on Tape" like most multi-load games? I'll be honest I think this is the only game I've seen do this back then?
OK what makes this worse is to cut a long story short I finish the game pretty much on my second or third go. I was not too happy, but I'll not lie I did get some slightly subdued fun from this game. After all I had to it was a full price release I'd actually managed to get right at release, and I don't think it was my birthday, Easter, Christmas, or anything like that, so I had to enjoy it, even if I didn't enjoy it, because I wasn't getting another full price game for a long while.
Anyway let's give some kind of actual verdict instead of the retrospective shattering of a 10 year old's expectations of a shit conversion of one of his favourite arcade games of all time...…
OK I'll be honest the level graphics are actually servicable, level one seems like it had some effort put in there, level two however is lacking a lot of details, level three is OK, pretty much all there in it's own way, level four is OK as well, level five is lacking a lot of detail, but it works. The enemy placement seems quite accurate, and even though they look kind of shit, they're all pretty much where they're supposed to be. The only truly unique enemy Sprite in the game is Willy the final boss, and he's way too big, and looks ridiculous, much like all the enemies in the game his head is just way too big for his body.
One thing that bothers me is that the game has no music during gameplay in 128k mode, and it's still multi-load...No improvements between the 2 machines at all. Level 3 is split into mission 3A, 3B, and Mission 4, these 3 levels are 1 level on the arcade, and Mission 5 even though a short level is Split into 2 loads as well. This could have been handled way better, especially back in 1989 using a 128k machine. I was playing using a 48k+ at the time, so I had already accepted the obligatory shortcomings of my Speccy, but taking my copy of Double Dragon to my friends house to play 2 player yielded the exact same experience with absolutely no sign of any improvement over the systems. This annoyed me ever so slightly. Also playing 2 player, why did the programmers just pallette swap the second players sprite, they could have quite easily made the 2 brothers at least half look similar!
OK so you know I was disappointed, you know I was let down, you know the story in general, I'm not the only one affected by this situation, but here comes the interesting part! After all these years I'm probably willing to say the Speccy version of Double Dragon probably wasn't the worst home conversion at the time. The 16 bit machines could have recreated the arcade experience way closer than the Speccy ever could, yet they didn't at all not even close, and, were equally as shit. Look at the Amiga version, and the ST version, the level graphics are simplified, and the characters all look like Playmobil men, the "IMB PC" version at the time was just a port of these 2 shit fests, but slower running and even worse, the Amstrad CPC version was really, really bad, slow unresponsive, and bordering on inducing seizures with it's grubby pixelated attempt at full colour.........last but not least the most comical version the C64! That version was so shit it had to be done twice.....and both versions were absolutely terrible.
So the Speccy version is a bad game, and a bad conversion, but looking back maybe it wasn't the worst afterall. It's still shite, and could've been much better, along with all the other versions as well....Well actually no I think the Commode version was a complete lost cause, if you can't get it right after 2 attempts you need to quit HAHAHAHA!!!!!
But as it stands this was one of my biggest game disappointments throughout my whole life, I knew it wasnt going to be perfect, but I also hoped for a better version than what we got, and it annoys me that I know it was completely possible. Sad to dust off the old typical comparison, but Target Renegade came a year before this, and was pretty much 100% better than it.
I was toying with the idea of giving this game a 3, but no it's a 2, maybe high end of 2 leaning towards a 3, but it's still a 2. I'm not spiteful enough to give it a 1 even though I really toyed with the idea, but I think after all these years even though it's total crap, it's not a 1/5 game.
