We said the Double Dragon series helped set norms that informed the genre in later generations, but ironically this entry experimented a little. After all, beat 'em ups like this look cute in 8-bit but are all about punching goons in the face. It's interesting how violence in video games is thrown around as a topic nowadays, but the issue some really have is that the violence is more realistic. Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTubeĪs for the nitty gritty of the game itself, you have brothers Billy and Jimmy (no 'Bimmy and Jimmy' typos in this one) avenging a fallen loved one by going on a murderous punching and kicking spree on the streets. It's a welcome inclusion, too, as the Double Dragon games are a key part of NES history, warts and all, and helped set standards and gameplay norms that would help to define the beat 'em up genre on home consoles. With those flaws in the first and third games, The Revenge was really the only way to go for Nintendo when putting this collection together.
That's cruelty that even From Software would consider barbaric.
It's an odd game that decided to ramp up difficulty by giving you multiple playable characters but only one life for each. The third one, frankly, wouldn't be a wise inclusion. Some may also ask "why isn't the third game included?", considering the fact we have two Castlevania games on the system. The Revenge delivered two player co-op, which means it's an improvement right off the bat.
It was really Single Dragon, which is a less catchy but more accurate name. So why are we getting the second game on the Mini NES and not the first? That's simple, the first was a disappointment that failed the deliver the key feature of the beat 'em up genre in this era - two-player co-op. They shared a name, but outside of that NES players would have felt like they were playing a console title rather than an arcade port. Double Dragon II: The Revenge (by Technōs Japan) is another arcade game that made its way to the living room, but importantly the title that came to NES was in no way a simple port - it was an expanded game compared to the coin-op. So far this series of articles on the NES Mini games has mostly featured conversions of relatively simple arcade games, with Konami's Castlevania and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest bucking the trend as console-first action-oriented titles, albeit the latter flirts with more RPG elements. This time around we look at Double Dragon II: The Revenge. With the upcoming release of the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition (NA) / Nintendo Classic Mini: Nintendo Entertainment System (EU), we're going to provide short profiles of all 30 games included on the system.