Together Retro: Beat-'Em-Ups

[Sarge]

If you play the arcade games, also play Double Dragon Advance! I started a play last night, but it was a bit too late for me to go all the way through again.

[NotLuke]

I will definitely try this strat the next time I play through. I'm sure it'll happen this month.

How'd it go?

Played through both Vigilante, sms, and Renegade, nes. The humping animation vigilante has (that's his given name) still gives me the giggles. Both games have a certain calle libre charm to them, so it doesn't bother me too much that the controls are garbage.

[noiseredux]

Renegade is straight classic.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Is Ninja Gaiden arcade a different thing than the NES game?

Some of the aesthetics, namely the hockey mask-wearing enemies, from the arcade game bled into the first NES game, and the protagonist in both games is a ninja. Otherwise, they’re completely different. I suggest taking a look at a playthrough so you can see exactly how different.

[Nemoide]

So life has been keeping me busy this month and I haven't been playing as much as I thought I would.
But today I sat down with Double Dragon on SMS until I got a game over screen, which happened at roughly the same point as every time I play the game: the final stage in which you can no longer continue.
I've only played the SMS and arcade versions of Double Dragon and the arcade version of DD II, but I'm not really a fan of the series. To me they feel clunky and awkward, lacking the level of refinement that Streets of Rage or Final Fight have. But I've owned the SMS DD since I was in high school and would really like to actually beat it!

And actually, I just checked GameFAQs and see that there's a cheat to allow unlimited continues. LOOKS LIKE I MIGHT BEAT THIS GAME AT LONG LAST!

On a side-note, even though I'm not a big fan of the games I LOVE the movie from the 90s. It's so cheesy and crazy, it deserves at least the same amount of love the first Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter movies get. I actually imported the region-free German blu-ray. Maybe I'll watch it tonight if I beat the game...

[Sarge]

I'm not a fan of the SMS version at all. There's very little hit-stun with enemies, which means you're going to get popped trying to combo them in any way.

[Xeogred]

I just looked Ninja Gaiden arcade up and yeah wow, it looks... different.

Beat down two more:

Double Dragon - Finally diving in and dang... it's rough! haha but I can easily see how this set the blueprints. I was pretty terrible at it and the enemies got me in a lot of repeated locks knocking me down. Didn't realize Tradewest made this, so that explains the Battletoads connection. Was the Double Dragon Tradewest also Rare too though? I know Battletoads was Tradewest / Rare... it definitely seems a bit confusing.

Final Fight - Bonafide classic. Double Dragon set the blueprints and Final Fight set the bar ultra high for the rest to follow. I don't like the two SNES sequels at all but the original does everything right. I'd call this playthrough revenge as well... last year I finally tried out the Sega CD version which is pretty accurate to the arcade original, but you don't have the liberty of feeding it coins. I think you only get 2 continues for the entire game and thaat's brutal. I played it casually for a week or two and got to the final stage a few times but couldn't finish it out. I could beat the SNES version back in the day, but it's not easy either! Final Fight is TOUGH! Poison is awesome in the uncensored versions and I don't just mean that for her suggestive outfit, she's just an awesome female baddie with a cool moveset. Andre is a favorite too and pretty iconic. The knife guys are the worst though and it's always brutal when they throw dozens of them at you in a huge group. I'm not a huge fan of the arcade/Sega CD extra stage Industrial Zone, the factory with the fire floors and the grenade chucking boss on the elevator. I love all the characters, while I think Guy is obviously the fastest it still kind of feels like when Cody's combos connect they string together even quicker, but it's hard to tell. I like Guy's longer reach and look anyways. But Haggar is a beast and I just love how you can powerbomb enemies. Overall one of the best in the genre.

[Sarge]

I will definitely try this strat the next time I play through. I'm sure it'll happen this month.

How'd it go?

I haven't rolled around to it yet, funnily enough. I got distracted by the pain that is Urban Reign, and it temporarily burned me out until last night, when I did that partial run of DD Advance.

[Xeogred]

That's the one I'm excited for. I might just lean more into the 16bit refined era of the genre (even though I grew up on Konami's NES TMNT's and Batman).

I sampled...

Double Dragon II - the arcade/Mame setup has it so the buttons change depending on the direction you're facing... this is going to be rough on a controller haha.

Double Dragon III - holy lack of animation frames! The walking is awkward as heck but otherwise the graphics look awesome and it seems kind of cool.

[lordb0rb4]

Pro tip on the Double Dragon cheat, i was on the same spot as you, owned the game for a long time and always ended up failing at the last level but not anymore:

For some reason fusion did not recorded my screenshots of the ending because it was on fullscreen.
Master System's Double Dragon is a ok game and a bad beat'em up, enemies do recover mid-combo and some of them are infernal punch-sponge.