Technos' NES swan song wasn't the type of parting shot we were expecting.
"This is all wrong," I thought to myself. "This isn't how things are supposed to go down!"
It just didn't make any sense to me.
Still, though, I was interested in the game, and I was looking forward to reading more about it (that "flipping throw" move did sound cool, after all!).
But that didn't happen, either. In the months that followed, coverage of the game was virtually nonexistent.
So there's a certain phenomenon that can occur when you play a new video game. There are times when you're able to tell, right away, that something isn't right. You sense it as you observe the splash- or title-screen animations or whatever comes into view the moment the action starts. The vibes or emanations emitted by these scenes communicate to you, in a heart-sinking manner, that the game's quality might not be up to par.
We had some fun mocking the dying Brett's weird arm positioning and jerky animation (and insofar established our first tradition), but our doing so distracted us only momentarily. Soon we were right back to criticizing the developers' design choices.
We were happy to admit, though, that the fighting system was more evolved than we originally determined. The brothers' new attack combos had more depth to them, and their finishing strikes packed more oomph and would satisfyingly launch enemies across the screen. There were a larger number of grab-and-strike moves. The flipping-jump move increased the amount of aerial options. And the returning-favorite spinning jumpkick now had wider range and was thus more effective.
And that, we observed, was the biggest difference with Sacred Stones: its considerable boost in difficulty. The game was almost twice as difficult as either of its predecessors!
At the time, though, we had no other new games to play. We were stuck with Sacred Stones. So we did what we had always done in such situations: seek to derive entertainment from the game in other ways. And that's how we engaged with the game in the weeks and months that followed.
And we would laugh the entire time!
Our silly antics and "witty" banter helped us to overlook some of the game's shortcomings. They made our play-throughs feel spirited, and they motivated us to push through to the end.
Now, I did manage to beat the game on my own a few years later, but I was only able to do so because I discovered that you could trap Cleo in a loop by pinning her against a wall and timing it so that your attacks connect with her the instant she gets up to her knees. But still, it was victory all the same. (Since then, I've beaten the game in a more-legitimate fashion.)
So that's how it went: Sacred Stones disappointed us in every possible way, and all we could do was attempt to salvage it.
At the time, we were too naive to know what a cash-in was or understand that developers weren't always incentivized to make the best products. We believed that companies like Technos prided themselves on putting a ton of passion and effort into the creation of entries in their most prized franchises. And that's why we were so confused by Sacred Stones' middling quality. The entire situation was so weirdly anomalous.
Then there's the arcade version of Double Dragon III, which I learned about in the early 2000s. Up until that point, I didn't know that an arcade version existed. I never once heard or read about it, and I never saw it in arcades. So I came to assume that Double Dragon III had been created exclusively for the NES.
And now that I've played multiple versions of Double Dragon III, it's become apparent to me that the Technos of 1991 lacked either the will or the ability to create a worthy sequel to the outstanding Double Dragon II: The Revenge, and in desperation, it sought to instead profit off of its popular franchise through the use of unscrupulous tactics.
And that's just wrong. Double Dragon III deserved better. It should have been the next-level follow-up to one of the action genre's all-time-best games. It should have been the sequel that elevated the Double Dragon franchise to new heights. And it should have been a highly refined, amazingly evolutionary action game that had the power to keep us coming back for decades in following.
I mean, for as long as I'd been gaming, it had always been the case that the atmosphere surrounding the release of a series' upcoming third installment was frenzied and celebratory and that the resulting excitement was breeding expectations that the game in question was going to blow us away and establish itself as (a) the ultimate expression of its developers' creative ambition and (b) the grand culmination of what the series' previous entries had been building toward.
Games like Mega Man 3, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse had planted an idea in my head. They made me believe that the capper to any beloved NES trilogy was guaranteed to be bigger and better than the two games that preceded it. It was safe to assume, I thought, that its graphics would be prettier, its music would be more inspiring, its controls would be more refined, and its depth of content would be much greater.
But then there was the case of Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones.
The first sign of trouble was that gaming magazines weren't pushing Sacred Stones as enthusiastically as they pushed Double Dragon II: The Revenge. The latter had received a substantial amount of coverage in the months leading up to its release. During that period, magazines were constantly talking about it and hyping it up. They were pumping out one glowing preview after the next. And consequently they were making its release feel like a huge deal.
But for whatever reason, Sacred Stones simply wasn't getting the same type of treatment. It was, in comparison, registering as nothing more than a blip on the gaming press' radar.
Nintendo Power's first preview of the game, for instance, was nothing more than a standard-sized blurb that tepidly explained the game's plot (the Lee brothers' love interest, Marion, had gone missing, and if they hoped to locate and rescue her, they'd need to obtain several mystical stones) and mentioned the addition of only a single new fighting move: a flipping throw. And the available information was so sparse that the author had to include details of Smash T.V., one of Acclaim's other projects, to completely fill up the allocated space!
And this was disappointing to me because I'd been hoping for a Double Dragon II follow-up, and I was certain that the announcement of such a game would be met with great excitement. But that didn't happen.
Still, though, I was interested in the game, and I was looking forward to reading more about it (that "flipping throw" move did sound cool, after all!).
I was, admittedly, concerned by the lack of information and the fact that the preview's accompanying screenshots didn't look all that hot, but I refused to let either issue diminish my interest the game. I convinced myself, rather, that neither was truly indicative of what the final product was going to be.
"The next preview will have better screenshots and more information!" I believed.
And I was certain, too, that magazines' future coverage of the game would be far larger in scale and much more enthusiastic in tone.
Nintendo Power, in particular, had nothing for me--no follow-up previews, no map illustrations, and none in the way of hype-generating promotional material like posters, artwork or comics. It continued to remain silent. And the whole time, all I could do was wonder why the game was being ignored.
Nintendo Power Volume 23's "Now Playing" header even admitted to the fact that the publication had failed to adequately cover Sacred Stones. The game "didn't quite score feature coverage," the text said.
"Well, no kidding!" I said in an exasperated manner. "This is only the second time you've mentioned this game!"
I was baffled by the situation. It was the complete opposite of what I was expecting. I'd convinced myself that Nintendo Power's coverage of Sacred Stones would become more expansive as the game inched closer to release and that the magazine's staff would become increasingly enthused about the release of an NES-exclusive entry in a big-name franchise (at the time, I didn't know that there was an arcade version of Double Dragon III; I hadn't seen it, and the magazine never mentioned it).
"Surely the game's exclusivity is a big enough deal on its own," I imagined, "and certainly something that Nintendo would want to brag about."
And Sacred Stones wasn't going to be just any old sequel, no. It was going to be the follow-up to friggin' Double Dragon II: The Revenge--an incredibly awesome action game that won the hearts and minds of kids everywhere and earned itself itself a top spot on the list of all-time-great NES games!
"Isn't that reason enough to shine a big spotlight on it and celebrate its arrival?" I felt compelled to ask.
I mean, my friends and I considered Double Dragon II to be gaming royalty. It was one of our all-time-favorite multiplayer games. It was a game that we'd been playing on a consistent basis for years (or what felt like years). We absolutely adored it. And I was certain that all other kids' thoughts and experiences mirrored ours.
"So where, then, is the hype for its follow-up?" I wondered in a puzzled manner.
Nowhere, as far as I could tell. It wasn't present in the schoolyard, in the playground, in the local stores, at the park, or anyplace else I went. No one was talking about Sacred Stones. There was no anticipation for it anywhere.
And that just didn't make sense to me.
But still, I had no intention of letting the lack of excitement get me down. I was going to buy Sacred Stones, regardless, and have a great time with what was sure to be a spectacular capper to the NES Double Dragon series!
Because we were still living in an era in which there were never any solid release dates, my friend Dominick and I had no choice but to rely on our customary search tactic. We had to spend the after-schools hour hitting up every local electronics store and pestering clerks with inquiries, and we had to hope that today would be the day that Sacred Stones was finally in stock.
And when that magic day arrived, we eagerly grabbed ourselves a copy of the game and then performed our usual ritual: We ran back to my house, headed upstairs to my room, and prepared to devote an entire to day to playing what we hoped would be the latest 8-bit masterpiece!
It was true that the lack of hype in advance of Sacred Stones' release had dampened our spirits a bit, but still we were excited about the game. We couldn't wait to start playing it and digging into its systems!
In particular, we were itching to discover the depth of its "partner" system, which would, according to Nintendo Power, allow us to recruit new allies and expand our party to four characters. We were convinced that the game contained multiple ally characters, and we eager to find out who all of them were and how they performed!
We imagined that the partner system would be just like Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse's but only much more expansive!
More personally, I was looking forward to playing around with the Lee brothers' new flipping-throw move, which appeared to be identical to the flip-throw from the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden. The flip-throw was one of my all-time-favorite action-game moves, but because Ninja Gaiden was out of arcades by that point (I hadn't seen it in years), I'd lost the opportunity to enjoy using the move. So I couldn't wait to rediscover the flip-jump and start abusing it again!
To give you an idea of how excited Dominick and I were to get started: We didn't even notice the mission intro's "Bimmy and Jimmy" typo. I mean, we scanned the text, yeah, but apparently none of it registered. And I know why: We really didn't care about what the text was saying! We were too eager to jump into the action and start enjoying what was likely to be the ultimate Double Dragon game!
What we really did, though, was miss an early warning sign.
So there's a certain phenomenon that can occur when you play a new video game. There are times when you're able to tell, right away, that something isn't right. You sense it as you observe the splash- or title-screen animations or whatever comes into view the moment the action starts. The vibes or emanations emitted by these scenes communicate to you, in a heart-sinking manner, that the game's quality might not be up to par.
Well, that's exactly what occurred when Sacred Stones' action came into view. Dominick and I took one look at the opening screen and immediately sensed that the game's quality was lacking.
Everything was off: The Lee brothers' sprite design was bland and unattractive. The action felt lethargic. The graphics and textures were flat and uninteresting. The colors were washed-out and muted. And the enemy characters were crudely rendered and lacked any type of personality.
Early on, we directed most of our criticism toward the enemy design. We agreed that the enemies were a bad combination of unidentifiable and nondescript. We couldn't tell who or what they were!
The first enemy that entered the room, for example, was almost entirely monotone in color, and he appeared to be deformed! It looked as though he had a big fold in his head (this was due to the fact that the designers made his hair and his flesh the exact same color)! And we wondered why the designers had chosen to include such a drab, lame-looking character.
We identified the second ruffian as an "Egyptian dude" because it looked as though he was sporting a Nemes-style ceremonial headdress (I realized later on that he simply had long hair). But even then, we still couldn't see him as anything but another generic enemy.
Even the series veteran Linda was largely bland- and generic-looking. And they didn't even bother to give her a whip!
It was supposed to be that a Double Dragon game's enemy cast was comprised of distinct-looking characters who had interesting little personality quirks. But that simply wasn't the case with Sacred Stones. It had no such characters. Its enemies were instead uniform in nature. And any visual difference between them was purely cosmetic.
"Why is the enemy design so uninspired?" was all we could wonder as we tangled with one bland-, generic-looking enemy after the next.
So yeah--the game didn't look too hot. It was, in multiple ways, an obvious downgrade from Double Dragon II: The Revenge.
We had some fun mocking the dying Brett's weird arm positioning and jerky animation (and insofar established our first tradition), but our doing so distracted us only momentarily. Soon we were right back to criticizing the developers' design choices.
And that's what we did for the majority of our first experience with Sacred Stones. We spent a lot of time criticizing it and making note of the its clear omissions.
"Where are the Abobos, the Williams, the Ropers and all of the other classic Double Dragon characters?" we kept wondering. "Where are the helicopter and tank battles, the fun platforming segments, and the visually striking, wonder-inducing locales?"
As far as we could tell, they didn't exist in this game.
We were happy to admit, though, that the fighting system was more evolved than we originally determined. The brothers' new attack combos had more depth to them, and their finishing strikes packed more oomph and would satisfyingly launch enemies across the screen. There were a larger number of grab-and-strike moves. The flipping-jump move increased the amount of aerial options. And the returning-favorite spinning jumpkick now had wider range and was thus more effective.
We thought it was cool that the enemies could pull off a double-team maneuver--an assist attack in which one of the enemies would leap into the arms of an ally, who would then launch his friend forward and help him or her to deliver a more-powerful flying kick. We perceived it as an "advanced move" and as further proof that Sacred Stones did indeed evolve the series in some way.
Our only complaints, then, were that (a) the action was too slow-paced and (b) some of the harder-hitting moves (like the spinning jumpkick) lacked the same type of explosive, viscerally pleasing impact that they had in Double Dragon II. The result, we felt, was that the game's action just didn't feel as spirited or as energetic as its predecessor's.
(We had some other gripes, too: We loved the flipping-jump move, yes, but we were disappointed that it didn't work on bosses or certain enemy types. And we were a bit annoyed about the fact that the hyper-knee, which was one of our favorite Double Dragon II attacks, didn't return. But the difference is that we spent only a limited amount of time dwelling on these comparatively minor issues.)
We felt that the special weapons, like the brothers' nunchakus, were a nice addition, but we were disappointed that the game simply didn't give you enough opportunity to put them to use. The designers had set a strict limit on the amount of times you were able to use them (you could only complete five strikes with the nunchakus, for instance), so it made the most sense to completely refrain from using them during stages and save them for the boss battles.
And saving them for boss battles was almost necessary because Sacred Stones' bosses were far tougher than the majority of those we'd faced in previous series games. They hit really hard, their fighting moves had an absurd amount of priority, and they were so adept at evading attacks that they turned every encounter into a painfully long battle of attrition!
And that, we observed, was the biggest difference with Sacred Stones: its considerable boost in difficulty. The game was almost twice as difficult as either of its predecessors!
What was most distressing to us was that that there was no lives system. If a hero was slain during the course of a mission, he was gone forever, and if all four of the heroes died, the game was over. And because we could never hold on to all four heroes, we'd always be in a position in which we'd have to find ways to scrap and claw our way forward with shorthanded crews.
The game did have a continue system, but inexplicably, it didn't become active until you reached Stage 4. And it only gave you one measly extra credit!
In a game this challenging, a single continue wasn't much of safety net. Realistically, it improved our odds of making it to the final boss only by a very marginal amount.
Nothing could change the fact that enduring the game's campaign was an extremely difficult task. The stages' fighting scenes were absolutely draining. They were repetitive as hell, and they dragged on endlessly. And each scene would always play out in a predictable way: The same two or three boring enemy types would appear ad nauseum and succeed in mentally exhausting us and creating the lapses necessary to sneak in strikes and deplete small portions of our health. So by the time we'd reach a boss, we'd be in terrible shape.
It took us a long time to reach the game's end portion. We had to endure several exacting, grueling play-throughs to do it. But by that point, sadly, we were no longer excited about the idea of making progress. Because by then, it had long since become dispiritingly obvious to us that Sacred Stones simply wasn't the blow-away Double Dragon sequel that we were hoping for. So we were mostly in a checked-out state.
The game failed to meet just about all of our expectations. It wasn't better than Double Dragon II in any way. Its action wasn't as engaging, its visuals and music weren't as good, its enemies and environments weren't as interesting, its level design was a step down, and it just wasn't as much fun to play. Also, its ally system disappointed us immensely. We imagined that it would allow us to recruit from a pool of dozens of ally characters and form all types of unique parties, but all it did, rather, was give us the ability to add two default characters to our roster. "What a gyp," we thought.
So it was with great sadness that we had declare Sacred Stones to be a complete letdown. Our final determination was that it was a middling NES action game and only slightly better than run-of-the-mill beat-'em-ups like Bad Dudes and Target: Renegade. And it was, in our opinion, the series' worst game by a considerable margin.
And in the end, we finally understood why the game had received so little coverage.
At the time, though, we had no other new games to play. We were stuck with Sacred Stones. So we did what we had always done in such situations: seek to derive entertainment from the game in other ways. And that's how we engaged with the game in the weeks and months that followed.
During that period, we established many goofy traditions. And the most memorable of them was the manner in which we interacted with Chin, the Mission 2 boss. It was always the highlight of our play-through.
"So what, exactly, was so special about the way you two freaks interacted with him?" you ask as you place your elbows on the computer desk and bear a guardedly curious expression.
Well, you see: We knew that Chin wouldn't emerge from the cabin's door until all of the lesser minions had been dispatched, so we were able to anticipate his appearance and set up a special greeting for him. What we'd do is clear the room of enemies and then hurry to position ourselves to the door's immediate right. Then we'd time our attacks so that they'd connect with him the moment he entered the cabin!
Our goal wasn't to inflict early damage on him, no. Rather, it was to get the drop on him before the scripted dialogue sequence had a chance to initiate and thus freeze the action. If things worked out as we intended, our ambushing spinkicks would send him flying helplessly into the air, and then, hilariously, he'd hang there for the entirety of the scripted event--a scene in which he delivered a serious, vengeful speech. And consequently we'd get the desired result: The speech, which was meant to be menacing, would be completely undercut by the image of him powerlessly hanging in a horizontal position!
And we would laugh the entire time!
Of course, since the spinning kick's input was a bit finicky, we'd often fail to execute the move and thus blow our ambush attempts. Resultantly we'd find ourselves in a position in which we were helpless to evade Chin's retaliatory palm-thrust, which he'd start to deliver right before the scripted scene initiated. Any time this would happen, we'd preemptively proclaim, "He nailed us!", sometimes synchronously. Hell--we'd say it even when Chin would refrain from retaliating and do something else, like run forward or remain idle. It was a necessary part of the tradition. And it was just fun to say!
The silly banter that resulted from our ambush attempts came to represent our best memories of Sacred Stones. It what's helped the game to find longevity. Had the game not allowed for us to trigger such moments of hilarity, we would have likely dropped it every early on and never returned to it.
Our silly antics and "witty" banter helped us to overlook some of the game's shortcomings. They made our play-throughs feel spirited, and they motivated us to push through to the end.
In that time, we made the best out of what the game gave us. Most notably, we had a lot of fun playing as the ally characters: Chin and Ranzou. They became instant replacements for the Lee brothers, who were clearly underpowered in comparison. The brothers had to string together several moves to take out even the most basic of grunts, whereas Chin could eliminate more-resilient foes, like Mission 3's annoying ninjas, with single combos. And even though Ranzou had weak striking power, he was still more useful than either of the brothers because he had superior aerial ability and thus wider movement- and attack-range and higher-level evasion skills.
But none of that helped us to actually beat the game. It certainly didn't give us any advantage over the final mission's three mummy bosses, who were ridiculously overpowered and damn near unassailable. They would, as they were programmed to do, deplete most of our health and usually cost us a fighter or two. They'd counter any tactic or strategy we'd use against them and invariably wear us down.
Then we'd be easy pickings for the final boss: "Cleopatra," as we called her. She'd promptly destroy us.
Cleopatra was the very definition of an "impossible final boss." She was the kind the kind of foe who would completely wipe us out even when we managed to start the battle in great shape. She'd do a spectacular job of making us feel as though any approach we took would ultimately fail. And before long, we'd be so demoralized that we'd start to feel as though attempting to reach her domain was a pointless exercise.
We simply couldn't beat her. She had way too much health, insane attack priority, and an obnoxious penchant for dematerializing right before we had the chance to counter any of her force-throw, fireball or rising-snake attacks. And no matter how well we played, it wouldn't matter. The result would always be the same: Cleo would utterly dismantle us.
And after suffering a few months' worth of failures, we finally had enough. We gave up and abandoned the game. And we never looked back.
Now, I did manage to beat the game on my own a few years later, but I was only able to do so because I discovered that you could trap Cleo in a loop by pinning her against a wall and timing it so that your attacks connect with her the instant she gets up to her knees. But still, it was victory all the same. (Since then, I've beaten the game in a more-legitimate fashion.)
I'd like to tell you that I felt a strong sense of accomplishment in that moment, but, honestly, I don't recall feeling anything of the sort. Like most of my other memories of my Sacred Stones experiences, my recollection of that play-through is imbued only with feelings of stress, anguish and pain. The only positive emotion I felt was the happiness that came with finally being done with the game.
I'd beaten it, and now I'd never have to play it again!
So that's how it went: Sacred Stones disappointed us in every possible way, and all we could do was attempt to salvage it.
My friends and I just didn't get it. We were accustomed to trilogy cappers exhibiting serious ambition and taking their respective series to the next level, but Sacred Stones, for whatever reason, simply didn't do either of those things. It was completely pedestrian in nature. It was a sad outlier.
"How could a major entry in a big-name series fall so flat?" we wondered in puzzlement.
At the time, we were too naive to know what a cash-in was or understand that developers weren't always incentivized to make the best products. We believed that companies like Technos prided themselves on putting a ton of passion and effort into the creation of entries in their most prized franchises. And that's why we were so confused by Sacred Stones' middling quality. The entire situation was so weirdly anomalous.
(The industry's true nature became more apparent to us over time, of course, and once we understood what was really going on, we became angry about the fact that the Double Dragon series, which was so important to gaming history and so beloved by enthusiasts everywhere, had become an unfortunate casualty of corporate greed. It was a legendary series, and it didn't deserve to be treated that way.)
And to us, that was the game's legacy: It was an inexplicably mediocre Double Dragon sequel that ended the trilogy on a really sour note. And we were so desperate to like it that we resorted to extracting entertainment from it in some of the dumbest ways imaginable.
So it's not surprising, then, that my only enduring memories of Sacred Stones are not of joyfully experimenting with the playable characters, spiritedly engaging in epic battles, eagerly examining and thinking about the environmental and background visuals, or rocking out to stage tunes but rather of sucker-punching and getting "nailed" by chubby ol' Chin.
And that's kinda sad.
Then there's the arcade version of Double Dragon III, which I learned about in the early 2000s. Up until that point, I didn't know that an arcade version existed. I never once heard or read about it, and I never saw it in arcades. So I came to assume that Double Dragon III had been created exclusively for the NES.
And when I finally got around to sampling the arcade version in 2015, I understood why it had gone largely unnoticed. It was a completely unremarkable game, and I was so unimpressed with it that I ignored it for the next nine years.
I returned to it a few months ago with the intention of playing it to completion, and immediately I remembered why I was so quick to abandon it originally. It's pretty bad. Its movement is choppy. Its action is mundane. Its enemies are boring and weird. Its bosses have an extreme amount of attack priority and are near-unassailable. It gives you so little health that oftentimes you won't be able to last for longer than a minute. And it's just not fun to play.
Any play-through of Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone (which all of the non-NES versions are called) is basically a slog in which you continuously pump quarters into the machine and painfully and laboriously tank your way through the game. It's an exercise in pure frustration.
The game's visuals and music fare much better. They're very nice. The stage environments and backgrounds and well-rendered and interesting to look at, and the accompanying tunes (all of which you'll remember from the NES version) are high in quality and fun to listen to. Sadly, though, these elements aren't able to make the action feel more enjoyable. The best they can do, rather, is temporarily distract you from the fact that you're getting hopelessly trounced and utterly demoralized.
(What's strange is that the playable-character cast includes a never-before-seen third Lee brother named Sonny. Apparently he's a non-canonical character, and he was added specifically for the purpose of providing a third option in three-player simultaneous play. All that's different about him is that he wears a yellow shade of the classic Lee-brother garb.)
The worst part is that the Lee brothers' move-set is so limited. All they have are basic punch and kick combos, a jumpkick, and a back suplex (which they can execute on fatigued enemies). That's it. If two or more brothers are onscreen at the same time, they're able to join arms while standing back to back and deliver a dual spinkick, but that move, naturally, won't be available to you in a single-player mode, which is what you're likely to be playing.
There's an obvious reason for why the Lee brothers lack most of their traditional fighting moves and many other abilities: They're locked away in the game's newly introduced shop feature.
Technos, you see, was 20 years ahead of the game. It decided that the best way to monetize Double Dragon III was to make most of its content available via in-game transactions.
So in certain stages, you can enter a shop and use real money to purchase goods: extra energy, increased power, tricks (special moves), weapons, and extra men (ally characters), all of which are essential if you hope to survive for longer than a minute. Buying "tricks" in particular will provide your Lee brother some moves he desperately needs: the hurricane kick, which is his only effective clear-out move, and his new flipping headbutt, which hits much harder than the standard horizontal jumpkick.
The ally system functions differently from the NES version's. It allows you to purchase "extra men"--additional fighters that take over for your chosen Lee brother whenever he falls in battle. The available ally type changes in each stage. There are three of them in all: the Urquidez brothers, who are your standard big brutes; the Chin brothers, who function similarly to Chin from Sacred Stones; and the Oyama brothers, who are your stereotypical karate champions.
Honestly, I like the game's shop feature. I think it's an interesting idea, and I see the potential in it. It's just that I don't like how it's handled. It's too cynical. It makes Technos look greedy and desperate (and apparently it was). And it makes the horrible presumption that kids would be willing to spend their precious few quarters on items and abilities that they'd retain for only a short time. They wouldn't. They'd know that it'd be a waste of money.
Had Technos decided to instead allow for goods to be purchased with an in-game currency, like they could in River City Ransom, then arcade-goers might have been more receptive to the shop idea. While that approach wouldn't have helped the company to make a whole lot of money upfront, it might have provided the game some important replay value and consequently prolonged its stay in arcades. Then, over the long term, it would have made a lot more money and helped to fund better Double Dragon sequels!
And now that I've played multiple versions of Double Dragon III, it's become apparent to me that the Technos of 1991 lacked either the will or the ability to create a worthy sequel to the outstanding Double Dragon II: The Revenge, and in desperation, it sought to instead profit off of its popular franchise through the use of unscrupulous tactics.
In that sense, Double Dragon III wasn't so much a sequel as it was the sad victim of awful industry practices.
And that's just wrong. Double Dragon III deserved better. It should have been the next-level follow-up to one of the action genre's all-time-best games. It should have been the sequel that elevated the Double Dragon franchise to new heights. And it should have been a highly refined, amazingly evolutionary action game that had the power to keep us coming back for decades in following.
Tragically, it was none of those things.
All it was, rather, was a stiff kick to the face and one that I didn't see coming.
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