Here’s a fun thought experiment.
If I were to walk into a random Dave & Busters or other arcade nostalgia pump station, and if I were to subsequently ask 100 people if they knew what “Double Dragon” was, how many people do you think would be able to answer the question in the affirmative?
10-20?
35?
Less than half?
Definitely less than half, right?
(I’m almost certainly not finding a functioning cabinet in said hypothetical establishment, either.)
As I scroll back through the first 36 entries in this retro gaming essentials list, I see about four or five other games I could probably say the same thing for: that the average person in an arcade, today, wouldn’t know anything about it.
But those other games are all genuine oddball weirdo games. They were never super popular to begin with. They were outcasts in an industry that perhaps never gave them their just due.
Games like “Air Zonk” and “Katamari Damacy” are relatively obscure treasures that I will go to the mat to in defending their honor – while also acknowledging that they were never especially popular or important to the industry at large, even at first release.
“Castlevania: Rondo of Blood” is a highmark achievement in platforming that everyone should get to experience, and yet it wasn’t released in this country.
Those games, put simply, are personal indulgences.
Double Dragon is … not that.
Released in 1987, Double Dragon was a side-scrolling beat ‘em up (or “brawler” as I prefer to call the genre) that set arcades on fire, going on to earn the distinction of being the highest grossing arcade game in the United States in both 1988 and 1989. It was eventually even made into a cartoon television series and a live-action movie, and its (many) ports to various home platforms (NES, Atari 2600, Master System, etc.) were all hugely popular as well.
If you were even moderately interested in video games at the time, you knew about Double Dragon. It was a certified blockbuster, among the most celebrated games in the industry.
But more than that, the game is also justifiably credited with popularizing the beat ‘em up genre, sparking a slew of sequels, copycats, and competitors who all wanted a taste of that delicious blood-soaked pocket change.
As such, it remains influential today – every time you see a new brawler get released, that Double Dragon DNA is likely in there somewhere.
Yet modern audiences rarely even give it a second thought.
So … what the hell happened?
Why isn’t Double Dragon talked about in glowing terms today as one of the all-time great video game properties?
Continue reading Double Dragon — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 37)Double Dragon at a glance:
Genre: Brawler
Released: 1987
Platform: Arcade
Highest-grossing arcade video game of 1988-89