The Beat’em Up Genre Tribute: Double Dragon II: The Revenge (1988)
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Double Dragon II: The Revenge started with a unusual gritty story for a video game. In the prequel, the two main protagonists Billy and Jimmy Lee rescued Marian from the Shadow Warriors gang, just to see her being shot to death by the leader of the Black Warriors at the start of Double Dragon II. The two brothers go to fight the gang to revenge Marian. No wonder they are really pissed and start decimating the whole gang. ~ Double Dragon II was released in 1988 by Technōs Japan for the arcades and a direct sequel to Double Dragon which was released released in 1987. It got ported to around 10 different platorms including the NES, the Mega Drive, the Amiga and the C64 among others.
– You can enlarge most of the images here by clicking on them – |
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Double Dragon II is divided into four missions which includes a heliport stage which was illustrated for our tribute, a lumber storehouse, a wheat field, and the new hideout of the boss of the Shadow Warriors. The most enemies are just makeovers of the ones from the original Doublke Dragon, some have new attacks however which enriches the variation of tactics needed to defeat them. A big change in DDII were the controls actually. Instead of the Punch and Kick buttons, they were changed to left and right attacks. Like in the prequel too, the gameplay was not limited to a plain 2d background like in other early beat’em ups. The characters can walk to the left and right but also up and down which gave the games a basically the third dimension already. This concept was used by almost all later sprite based beat’em ups like Final Fight, TMNT, Battletoads and many more until “real” 3D graphics were possible which allowed again a deeper control and movement of the characters in beat’em ups like Fighting Force and years later like in Dynasty Warriors with much bigger 3D based stages. The NES version of DDII offered not only new stages but also a few new moves and illustrated cut-scenes, as well as a new final boss and a new ending. The Gameboy version from 1991 is not a port, but a different game (Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun: Bangai Rantouhen), with changed sprites and a different storyline to fit as a Double Dragon game Double Dragon II got a remake in 2013 released on the XB360 which got very low ratings and has almost nothing in common with the original. |
About our illustration of Double Dragon II: The Revenge and the artist behind it
The artist about his submission:
“This picture illustrates how i remember the third level – just throw all of a thugs out of helicopter – maybe this will teach them to check doors condition before flight.
Game wasn’t hard (kill all of your enemies with “supersonic knee” and be carefull with jumps in last levels), level’s bosses were little bit bland (why this helmet-guy even try to dissapear if he not able to fight by being invisible?) but music, enemies’s design, beating’em up animation and level’s backgrounds were awesome, so i have a lot of nostalgic memories about Double Dragon II”
Our Double Dragon II illustration was drawn by ValentrisRRock from Russia who participated in multiple Game-Art-HQ.com art activities now with Stryker from Mortal Kombat 3 for the MK Tribute and a House of Dead submission to our Sega Art Contest in January 2013 which won the competition! In his gallery on deviantART you can find a lot video game related art, mostly about fighting games.
Screenshot Gallery of Double Dragon II: The Revenge
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Title Screen |
2P Co-Op Mode |
Fighting with Punks |
Ending |
The other Beat’em Up Genre Tribute articles:
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