From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Reflections: "Double Dragon" (Game Boy)

In most of my Game Boy-focused Memory Bank pieces, I spent time talking about a period in my life when I didn't regard the Game Boy as a serious gaming platform. Back in those days, I considered it to be an inferior system that was only good for simple arcade-style platformers and puzzle games, and I felt that it had no business playing host to NES-level action games and particularly entries in big-name series.

So whenever a game from the latter group appeared on the Game Boy, I promptly disregarded it and vowed never to buy it. I also made sure to refrain from reading about it and allowing it to occupy any space in my mind.

That's how much I objected to the idea of console-level games on the Game Boy.

Of course, my attitude changed over time, and my experiences with certain games (like Metroid II: Return of Samus, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge) helped me to see that the Game Boy absolutely had what it took to be a viable platform for console-level games and even entries in my favorite big-name series.

But even then, I maintained what I called a "residual aversion" to some of the big-name games that I read about during my early months as a Game Boy-owner. I'd viewed them as lesser products for so long that I simply wasn't able to suppress my deep-seated negative feelings for them and provide them the fair assessment that they deserved.

One of those games was Double Dragon, which I came across as I was flipping through Nintendo Power Volume 14 (my very first issue). As soon as I saw it, I immediately disregarded it, and I did so for three reasons: its visuals were too cramped-looking, its action appeared to be dumbed down, and it lacked color, which a game absolutely needed, I felt, if it wanted to fit into the category of "true video game." (These became my usual reasons for dismissing NES-to-Game Boy sequels.)

"This game could never be worthy of carrying the 'Double Dragon' name!" I passionately declared before quickly moving on to the magazine's next article.

And even after my attitude changed, I couldn't fully suppress those feelings and bring myself to a place in which I could seriously consider buying the game.

But in the decades that followed, I never forgot Double Dragon, and I kept telling myself that one day, if or when my residual aversion finally subsided, I'd get around to playing the game and judging it objectively.

I reached that point a couple of years ago, when I gained an interest in the game after reading about it in some retrospectives, but I just never got around to actually obtaining a copy of it and playing it. Because it wasn't conveniently available to me, and I didn't want to emulate it. The fact was that I preferred to play games on console, and I was sure that Double Dragon was going to become digitally available on the Nintendo Switch at some point.

But after two or three years passed, I realized that the game wasn't going to become commercially available anytime soon and that I was only wasting time in waiting. So I decided to take the emulation route and finally initiate my first ever play-through of Game Boy Double Dragon.

I was looking forward to playing it primarily because my opinion on NES Double Dragon had recently changed (I was now a pretty big fan of it and considered it to be the best version of Double Dragon), and I desired to experience the latter in a new way. "Surely this reworked port will allow me to extract additional enjoyment from the NES Double Dragon-style action that I enjoy so much!" I thought.

But then something unfortunate happened: I became hesitant to seek out the game after I watched Twitch streamer Mister Yeti play through it. My impression was that some of its action sequences looked really rough, and consequently I was no longer excited to play it. So I decided to put off the play-through for a while and instead turn my attention other series games that I was looking forward to discovering and playing (games like Double Dragon Advance and the PC Engine version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge).

I finally got around to Game Boy Double Dragon a couple of months ago when my "Games to Play" list dried up and I was desperate to find games to fill the void (there are still multiple games on my list, but I'm refraining from playing them because I have reason to believe that they'll become commercially available sometime in the future). And now I want to do what I meant to do back then (before I got distracted by the things that I mentioned in my recent blog update) and talk about my experience with the game and tell you whether or not it's worthy of carrying the "Double Dragon" name.

During this piece, I'm going to be frequently comparing this version of Double Dragon to the game on which it's based: NES Double Dragon, with which most of you are likely highly familiar. For that reason, the latter will serve as a strong frame of reference, and your knowledge of it will help you to gain an immediate understanding of my comments, observations and critiques.

So kindly spare me some of your time and allow me to tell you how I feel about Game Boy Double Dragon!

 So the first thing that's important to know about Game Boy Double Dragon is the nature of its existence. It's pretty much like every other arcade-to-Game Boy conversion that was produced within the 80s- and early-90s-era Nintendo ecosystem, which is to say that it wasn't designed to be faithful to the arcade original, no, but was instead styled after the NES reimagining of the property.

It's based on NES Double Dragon, but it's not a simple port of it. Rather, it's a restructured version that presents NES Double Dragon's action and level design in a slightly new way.

Not surprisingly, it recycles NES Double Dragon's revised version of the story: Billy Lee's girlfriend, Marian, has been kidnapped by a savage street gang called the Black Warriors whose leader, the Shadow Boss, is shrouded in mystery. Billy must pursue the gang if he hopes to discover the leader's location and identity and rescue Marian.

But once again, the big twist isn't even kept a secret. The game's manual, like the NES version's, just comes out and tells you, in the same sentence in which it introduces the Shadow Boss, that the character in question is in fact Billy's brother, Jimmy! Thus there's no mystery involved and no "secret identity" for Billy to discover.

In the end, though, this entire storyline detail winds up meaning nothing. I'll tell you why in a bit.

So Double Dragon, like the game on which it's based, has two modes: Mode A and Mode B. Mode A is the standard action campaign, and likewise it offers only a single-player experience. This is disappointing, yes, but we expect it to be the case because we understand that the Game Boy's technology is severely limited and thus there's no way that a game of this type would have been able to render and process more than three characters at a time without crashing or suffering severe slowdown. (To make multiplayer action work, Technos would have had to design it to where Billy and Jimmy could only fight one enemy at a time, and that, obviously, would have been a silly thing to do.)

Mode B, expectedly, is a versus mode, and you need a link cable (or an emulator function that simulates linked play) to access it. But this versus mode is notably different from NES Double Dragon's because it's much smaller in scope. Whereas the latter's has six characters available for play, this one is limited to only two: Billy and Jimmy. And you can't choose between them. Player 1 is automatically assigned Billy, and Player 2 gets Jimmy (this doesn't really matter much considering that the brothers have identical move-sets).

I feel safe in thinking that none of us actually care about this particular game mode, so I'm not going to bother explaining it in detail. I'll just say that it's a lesser version of NES Double Dragon's versus mode, which is already considered a pointless extra.

 The goal in Double Dragon is to clear four missions, each of which culminates in a boss encounter. In the case of the first three missions, I use the term "boss" loosely because the enemies in question (Abobo and Chin) are, as they were in NES Double Dragon, basically advanced minor enemies. They're the type that are just as apt to show up in stages' standard action segments.

The only final enemy that feels like a "boss" and has a distinctive presence is Mission 4's. And, well, he's not who you expect him to be if you're coming in from the NES version of the game.

I'll just flat out say it: It's Machine Gun Willy and not Jimmy Lee, as the game's manual would have you believe. In fact, Jimmy Lee doesn't appear in this game at all! Somehow they forgot to include him!

Or it could be the case that he was purposely omitted from the game and that the development team simply never informed the localizers of his absence, so they assumed that he was in the game and thus felt safe in copying and pasting the NES version's story into this version's manual.

Either way, his absence is inexplicable, and it makes you wonder if Technos lost sight of what made the series so popular in the first place. It wasn't right that he was cast as a boss in the NES version, no, but at least he was in the game. This time, he doesn't appear at all! Thus the "Double" part of the game's title means absolutely nothing!

Technos should have just called the game "Single Dragon." Because that's what it really is!

But I digress.

The game's four missions are based on the ones through which you played in NES Double Dragon, yes, though most of its stage sections have significant structural changes. These changes are worth noting because, as you'll discover, they go a long way toward helping the game to establish its own identity and challenge you in unique ways.

The game's action is powered by Technos' classic beat-'em-up fighting engine, and thus its action plays out in an expected way: As you traverse stages, enemies will constantly attempt to sandwich you and rapidly drain your health with double-team attacks. But because this game uses the NES Double Dragon's adapted, more-simplified version of the engine, you won't have to be worried about being overwhelmed by enemy hordes. You'll never encounter more than two enemies at a time, and in every instance, the enemy set will be uniform (which is to say that there's never any mixing of different enemy types).

The combat mechanics are a little cleaner than NES Double Dragon's (and all other Technos beat-'em-ups', for that matter), and the result is that enemies are less likely to sneak in potshots as you execute your combo attacks and succeed in draining bits of your health here and there (in Technos' other games, the enemies' sneaking in quick jabs is how they wear you down without you really noticing). Though, they do have the same propensity to continuously crouch to avoid your attacks and even tank through them (Chins, in particular, are able to do this in moments when their hitboxes randomly become inactive), so you'll always have to be prepared to quickly abandon your offense and enter into evasion mode to avoid a likely counterattack.

And the rest of what you experience is the classic formula that was established by the series' arcade progenitor: In each stage, you traverse a number of side-scrolling areas and fight your way to the endpoint in which the boss (or bosses) awaits. At certain points, the screen locks in place and forces you to battle one or multiple enemy sets, and you can't move on until you defeat all of the enemies that are thrown at you.

Some enemies have weapons (bats, whips, barrels, boxes, rocks and swords) that become available to you after you take out those who wield them. Unlike in NES Double Dragon, you can, in some instances, retain a weapon after you eliminate the enemy set to which it's tied and use it against the next set of enemies.

You have two lives and no continues, so you have to clear the game in one go. Thankfully, though, the game is kind enough to replenish your health every time you enter a new stage area.

The game has a points system, and it's meaningful because it awards you an extra life when you reach the 20,000-point mark (and this is important because you're definitely going to need the extra life!).

Each new stage area represents a checkpoint, but there are no checkpoints within the stage areas, themselves. You have to clear them in one go. This is a problem because stage areas (especially those traversed in later stages) tend to be really long and packed with enemy encounters. At certain points in the game, you'll have to endure for extended periods of time and try as hard as you can to make it to the boss or bosses with an adequate amount of health (at least four life bars, I'd say), lest you'll be taken out quickly and put in a position in which you have to repeat the entire stage area.

The good news, though, is that there's no time limit in this version, so you never have to rush.

But the biggest difference is that this game completely abandons NES Double Dragon's experience system and sets it to where Billy can use all of his fighting moves right from the start.

He has two basic attacks: a punch and a kick, which are mapped to the A and B buttons respectively. You can cause an enemy to enter into a vulnerable state by hitting him or her with either three straight punches or a single kick, and after you do this, you can then deliver a finishing blow: an uppercut or a spin kick.

You can otherwise grab a stunned enemy simply by walking toward it (this method of grabbing is way easier to execute than the one in NES Double Dragon, in which you can only grab enemies after kicking them from a very specific distance), and when you do so, you have two options: You can deliver a knee strike (up to three of them) or you can throw the enemy over your shoulder.

You can throw a jump kick by simultaneously pressing the A and B buttons. This move functions as both an attack and your means for platforming. Alternatively you can execute a jump kick by holding down the A button and then pressing B. (I correctly guessed that you could execute jump kicks using the latter input method because I knew that it was possible to execute the move that way in the NES version. Honestly, my mind was blown when I discovered that there was an alternate way to jump in that game. I was shocked that I somehow went 24 years without knowing that it was possible.)

And you can otherwise execute an elbow strike by pressing the A button when you're facing away from an enemy. Note that Billy won't throw the elbow unless an enemy is really close in proximity to him.

The headbutt, high kick and seated-punch attacks have been removed, which does, unfortunately, make Billy's repertoire feel more limited. And it probably won't do much to alter your sense that you're playing a lesser version of NES Double Dragon.

I will say, though, that's it's just as well that the seated punch is removed because strikes in this game send enemies far back, and they recover so quickly that you simply don't have enough time to walk over to them and initiate the attack. The upside is that enemies fly so far when they're struck that it becomes easier to knock them into death pits! And it's always satisfying to do that!

 "So what's the best way to approach the game's action?" you ask with a curious look on your face. "And what other types of improvements and downgrades have been made to it?"

Well, it'll become clear to you early on, like it does when you play NES Double Dragon, that kicks are clearly superior to all other attacks and worth using almost exclusively. They induce stun-states immediately, and thus they allow you to promptly execute finishing blows and grabs.

In regard to grab moves: Knees are the better option when you simply want to inflict maximum damage on high-HP enemies, and throws are best when death pits are present and you desire to get quick kills by tossing enemies into them (which you should always do because of how much fun it is!).

The elbow isn't as overpowered as it is in past series games, but it still has high priority and will allow you to go untouched in most fighting scenarios.

Generally, though, you'll want to deliver kicking combos whenever you can, because they finish off enemies the fastest, and use elbow strikes to regain control over encounters in which enemies are aggressively sandwiching you. Because in a game whose stages are often long and grueling, you'll want to make it a point to eliminate enemies as quickly as possible.

 The game's enemy cast is pretty much identical to NES Double Dragon's. It, likewise, includes all of the series' most iconic characters: Williams, Linda, Roper, Chin, Abobo and Machine Gun Willy. (The only omission, inexplicably, is Jimmy Lee, who is, as we've been told, supposed to be the Black Warriors' boss!)

They are, of course, largely similar to their NES incarnations in how they behave and operate.

Two of them, however, now have some new maneuvers: Abobo has a powerful grab-and-strike move, and Chin can, when standing at a distances, execute a rolling charge into a jump kick. Both characters, in addition, have increased resilience and can no longer be knocked down by jump kicks. And Chin, in particular, is able to tech out of throws and thus prevent himself from taking damage from them.

I won't tell you that the changes that have been made to Abobo and Chin are mold-shattering, no, but they do definitely go a long way toward helping Game Boy Double Dragon to differentiate itself. They absolutely add a new dimension to the game's action (but not always in the best way, as I'll explain later on).

 This game, like NES Double Dragon, contains both multi- and single-plane stage environments, and likewise its stages are comprised of straight action scenes and platforming segments, most of which are expectedly tricky.

Honestly, the platforming segments are good or bad depending upon how you feel about platforming challenges in beat-'em-ups. I personally like them because I feel that they add good variety to the action (and I recognize that I might be the only one who likes the NES Double Dragon games' platforming challenges), but I admit that they can be really rough and that they can wind up costing you everything if you don't know how to handle them correctly.

The latter is especially true in this game. The platforming challenges that you face within in its stages are just plain harrowing. They require near-pixel-perfect precision and very specific timing and placement, and any one them can completely wipe out all of your stock.

I'll talk more about these platforming segments in this piece's difficulty-ranking section.

From a technical perspective, the game is what you expect: Its action moves more slowly than NES Double Dragon's, and its doing so is obviously a deliberate design choice that was made to compensate for the Game Boy's processing limitations.

That's just the reality of Game Boy games: They're simply not able to render large numbers of sprites, objects and animations without suffering severe slowdown. So I can't fault the designers for their decision.

Still, the game isn't really that much slower than NES Double Dragon, and it manages to run at what I'd say is a perfectly adequate pace.

 Even back in 1990, I couldn't deny that Double Dragon was, according to what I'd seen in screenshots, an impressive-looking portable game. It, along with Gargoyle's Quest, showed me that Game Boy games were indeed capable of having NES-quality visuals.

And after finally seeing the game in action, I can say that those old screenshots weren't lying to me: Game Boy Double Dragon really does look a lot like the NES version. It's comprised technically, of course, and it has a much lower resolution (160x144 compared to 256x224) and a vibrancy-lacking monochrome display, but still it manages to look strikingly similar to NES Double Dragon. I'll even go as far to say that it's sharper- and cleaner-looking because of how well its darker color-scheme does to create highlighting and make textures' small details stand out.

It's a nice-looking game.

To its designers' credit, they don't take the safe and easy route and simply recycle the NES version's sprite-work. Rather, they redraw almost all of the characters and consequently create one of the game's most distinguishing qualities.

Billy is redesigned to look more like a greaser (and closer to his forebear: Renegade's Mr. K). Williams is made to look taller and meaner. Roper is now seen mostly in profile view and resultantly has the appearance of Frankenstein's monster. Linda has pigtails and dons more feminine-looking attire (a schoolgirl's outfit, basically). Abobo is a little shorter than you remember him, but he now looks bulkier and and more menacing than ever before. And Chin, though his appearance has changed significantly, now has additional animations thanks to his adding more moves to his repertoire.

Overall the game's sprite-work is really well done.

And its animation is on the same level as NES Double Dragon's: Characters' walk-cycles are comprised of three animation frames, and their attacks range anywhere from one to three frames. The only difference, as I've already explained, is that characters move more slowly for the obvious reason.

 Honestly, we expect the game to look really nice. We're not surprised that 1990s-era Technos delivered one of the Game Boy's most visually striking games.

But as fans of the series, we know that what really defines a Double Dragon game is the power of its background images. "Do they catch the eye?" we ask ourselves as we examine them. "And do they stir the imagination?"

The answer to both of those questions, I'm happy to say, is "Yes, they certainly do!"

This game is packed with interesting background visuals that do as well as NES Double Dragon's to steal your attention and inspire you to wonder. It displays city- and mountainscapes that stretch much farther than the latter's and have more detail to them, and thus it gives you more time and opportunity to take in the sights and enjoy the evocative atmospheric qualities with which they imbue stage environments. Also, it has all types of fun-to-look-at building and fortress exteriors!

In NES Double Dragon, there were only pockets of such displays. In this version, environment-defining backgrounds are more numerous, and they, too, do a lot to distinguish the game from its NES inspiration and make it feel like more than just a port.

And because the game's visuals are sharper in appearance, objects like fences, barrels, boxes, trees and logs pop out more and have a more-impactful presence. They provide more character to the environments that they populate.

I want to complain about the game's lacking an equivalent to the NES version's appetite-whetting pre-mission monochrome intro screens and its introducing stages with just simple text on a single-color screen, but then I realize that it wouldn't make sense to have monochrome intro screens in a game whose visuals are monochrome by default! There's be nothing distinct about them.

Still, it would have been nice for the intro screens to at least have a little jingle attached to them. Because all you get is silence, which feels cheap.

But on the whole, it's a very good-looking game. I'd argue that it's one of the Game Boy's most visually impressive games. And if it were colorized, it would, I'm not afraid to say, likely be even better-looking than NES Double Dragon! (I prefer the latter, graphics-wise, simply because it has color and thus it's more vivid and able to display more distinguished-looking environments.)

 The other measure of a Double Dragon game's worthiness is the quality and general appeal of its music.

So how does it do in this area?

Well, I'm happy to report that it does very well.

It's soundtrack will be familiar to anyone who has played NES Double Dragon because it's comprised entirely of partly reworked versions of that game's tunes. The Game Boy's sound hardware has a wavetable channel that's more versatile than the NES' corresponding triangle channel, and the composers have taken advantage of its strengths. So now some of the tunes have note strings that are richer and more pronounced than those that you hear in the NES version's tunes.

This type of advanced wave synthesis results in tunes whose notes (a) have pleasing vibration to them and (b) are sustained in a vigorous and thus gripping way. There are even a few tunes that go wild and use different (and sometimes-weirder-sounding) instruments for certain note strings. The best example is Mission 3-1's musical theme, whose bridge is now curiously cosmic-sounding rather than intensely metal.

The biggest difference, though, is that the game's tunes are slower in tempo, and they were likely crafted in this manner because their composers wanted them to be more a match for the game's slower-paced action.

The result is a soundtrack that's a little different from the NES version's in form and character but still very close to it in quality. So it's indeed very much worthy of being in a Double Dragon game. And it certainly helps that its tunes have that powerfully nostalgic Game Boy sound quality to them.

I feel that the NES version's music is better because its higher tempo makes it sound jumpier and more energetic (complex strains, like those heard in Mission 2's musical theme, simply sound better and are more inspiriting when they progress rapidly), but that's not at all a knock on Game Boy Double Dragon's music, which is still pretty great. It's fun to listen to, and it does a nice job of driving the action and keeping you invigorated and emotionally engaged.

There's one thing that I can't go without mentioning: Though the monochrome mission-intro screens have been removed, the ditty that accompanies them is very much included in the game. It's reserved for Mission 4's opening area, and this time you finally get to hear it in full (what you heard in NES Double Dragon, if you didn't know, was an abbreviated version of it)!

It's a cool theme that has, surprisingly, a lot of emotional energy to it and a culminative quality that helps it to fit in quite nicely in the game's final phase. "You're almost there!" it tells you in a rousing manner. "So go get 'em!"

Too bad it was cut from the NES version! It would have been a great fit for Mission 4's opening area (the infamous jutting-block section).

There isn't much variety to the game's sound effects. The library of attack sounds is comprised of basic thwacks and snaps, and otherwise you get the basic buzzing sound that accompanies door-opening animations.

That's about it.

Honestly, though, this is an observation that I made months after completing the game. In my early play-throughs, the sound effects didn't register with me at all or affect how I felt about the game. So I don't give them much importance. All I'll say is that they're OK for what they are and that their having a generic, largely unimpactful character to them doesn't affect the game's quality in any notable way.

 Double Dragon's difficulty is generally tamer than the NES version's. As it is in the latter game, the first two and a half stages are a breeze (save for one segment that I'm going to talk about in a moment), and then the difficulty increases significantly. This happens because Chin and Abobo have been given huge strength boosts and also because the platforming segments are tricky as hell and none of the individual stage areas have checkpoints.

As a result, the final 40% of the game is basically a stressful endurance challenge.

What works in your favor is that the enemies aren't particularly intelligent. A lot of the time, they're apt to simply walk forward, stand there, and wait for you to attack. Sometimes they'll even mindlessly walk off platforms, to their deaths, as they attempt to maneuver their way around you and position themselves on your rear side.

But in truth, the game's entire difficulty can be boiled down to two particular elements: Abobo and a pair of awful stage segments.

Abobo is a huge obstacle in this game. At first, in fact, he seems to be unassailable. And he mostly is.

He's way tougher than any other incarnation of the character: He can't be knocked down with a jump kick (repeatedly striking him with which was an effective way of cheaply taking him out in the NES version). His punch combo and his grab-and-strike move have insane priority and can't be canceled, and the latter inflicts heavy damage. And if he's able to corner you, he can use his priority to preempt your movements and string together series of unpreventable attacks.

He has the power to destroy you quickly and cleanly.

If you hope to stand a chance against an Abobo, you have to engage him using cheap tactics. The only semi-reliable strategy, I've found, is to get within range of him and then begin to move diagonally downward and forward while spamming punches. This can, if you're lucky, prevent him from firmly positioning himself and executing moves.

When you encounter him in a single-plane environment, though, forget it. Movement manipulation is off the table, and you're in a position in which you have to get extremely lucky to land shots and knock him down. There's only one single-plane Abobo encounter, thankfully, but it takes place in a room whose floor starts to slowly disappear the moment you enter into it, which makes the situation even more dire (for this encounter, I recommend baiting him over to the left and subsequently delivering a rightward-traveling horizontal jump kick and then some quick elbows, which will, if they connect, knock him down into the spike pit)!

Then there are the two highly troublesome stage segments.

The first is a platforming segment in Mission 3's second half. In this segment, you have to jump from one horizontally moving platform to the next and clear a pit of boiling lava. This proves to be very difficult because the platforms lack clear bounding boxes and you're likely to fall through them if you don't land precisely on their middle portions.

And what's worse is that the game's jumping physics change depending upon when you jump: If you jump from a platform when it's moving leftward or at a stop, the jump will lack its usual momentum and execute as if it were being met by fierce winds, and resultantly you'll miss the next platform by a large margin and fall into the lava. There are even times when, for reasons I can't explain, a jump will lack momentum even when you execute it as the platform is moving rightward! And when that starts to happen, you can't be blamed for thinking that the entire process is random.

The other segment is a nasty action scene in which you have to fight three enemy sets in a narrow room whose three background doors continuously open up, one at a time, and use suction to try to pull you into the spiky interiors that are seen beyond their frames. The doors open randomly, so you can't plan your movements, and they suck you in even as you're executing moves. And if you get knocked down while a door is open, you're likely screwed; unless you're far away from said door, you won't be able to recover before it pulls in Billy's horizontally lying, prone body.

This segment, more than any of the game's other highly challenging segments, will be the stopping point for most players. It's a real terror, and there's a good chance that it'll drive you away from the game. (It's so bad, in fact, that it made me consider walking away from the game, and that means something because I'm the type who almost never quits games!)

And if you somehow make it past this mess of a segment, you'll have to clear another potentially-stock-depleting segment: the infamous jutting-block sequence, which is worse in this game because you have to engage in platform as you traverse parts of it!

So overall, the game, despite its being rather easy for two-and-a-half stages, ends up being highly challenging and dispiriting in how it wipes you out and then bluntly dumps you back on the title screen.

If you're planning on playing this game, all I can do is wish you good luck. Because you're definitely going to need it.

 In the end, though, there's only one question that really matters: "Is this game fun to play?"

The answer, unfortunately, is "only for a short time."

When the game plays fair, as it does in its first two-and-half stages, it's engaging and fun, and it offers some satisfying beat-'em-up action. But when it decides to ramp up the difficulty, it does so to an absurd degree and gets really abusive for long periods of time.

It has some serious rough parts, and all of them stand among the roughest in video-game history. Any one of them can mercilessly end your game and break your spirit. As I've said: You need some serious luck to secure victory. A lot has to go right for you.

And that's the story with Game Boy Double Dragon: It's a game that's just too frustrating to be fun. It's just too punishing at times.

For that reason, it's simply not as good as NES Double Dragon or any of the Game Boy's other big-name action games.

Closing Thoughts

 I'm honestly conflicted on this version of the game. I'm fond of its visuals, its music, and the nostalgic atmosphere that it generates, and I appreciate how it takes chances with its level design (even if I don't like all of the results), but at the same time, I have a serious problem with how it handles its difficulty. Some of its challenges are ridiculous and borderline unreasonable, and resultantly they make the experience extremely unpleasant, and they instill the type of fear and stress that can drive you away from the game.

After you fall to its roughest challenges a bunch of times, you wind up in a position in which you have to ask yourself if it's worth trying again. In that moment, you ask yourself, "Do I really want to keep spending 8-10 minutes breezing through the same stages that I've completed a dozen times just so I can get wiped out by a single segment in the third stage?"

At some point, you'll likely conclude that no--it's not worth the effort. And if you do decide to make subsequent attempts, you'll probably be doing so with the understanding that your only realistic option is to basically tank your way through the game and hope for a run in which everything happens to go right and the game is nice enough to give you the 10-12 favorable patterns that you need to make it to the end and defeat Willy.

These challenges only serve to ruin the fun and drive you to anger, which is probably not what you want to be feeling when you're playing a video game. And that's too bad because the other 80% of the game is pretty good, and it offers some genuinely engaging portable action.

Game Boy Double Dragon could have been one of those short-but-satisfying, highly replayable appetizer-type games, like Super Mario Land and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, but because its designers sadly decided to adhere to the early-90s philosophy of "make the game unfairly difficult toward the end so that players can't beat it in one sitting," it instead turns out to be a game that's too cruelly designed and anger-inducing to be worth your time.

I recommend that you sample it just to get a sense of its visuals and music, both of which are very good, but otherwise avoid trying to play through it. Because I care for your mental health and don't want you to suffer as I have.

 I don't want to end this piece on a down note, so I'll close it out by mentioning that I've had a much better time with some of the other big-name Game Boy games that I've played recently. I greatly enjoyed my play-throughs of Ninja Gaiden Shadow, Operation C, Disney's DuckTales 2, and the first two Adventure Islands, all of which, I'm happy to say, provide further proof that the Game Boy is very capable of producing NES-level action games.

Do me a favor and check them out, if you haven't already. They're all high-quality video games and definitely worth your time.