Double Dragon II: The Revenge

The Good
Absolutely nothing. I actually bought this game when it came out way back in 92 through a mail order company thinking it was going to be as good as the Arcade. WRONG. $50 pi**ed away. All that allowance up in smoke.

Its two player, but that just means you can annoy two players simultaneously. Crap.

The Bad
The graphics are some of the worst on the Genesis ever. It does not look like a 16 bit game. It looks like a Master System game. Seriously, the graphics are THAT bad. The NES version of Double Dragon 2 has better graphics than this.

The Genesis could have handled a good translation of this as evidenced by the conversion of Double Dragon and Double Dragon 3. The Streets of Rage series proves the Genesis can do Double Dragon style games. Streets of Rage 2, in particular, puts this sorry cart to shame.

This game was obviously rushed through production so that it would be ready to go so that Sega would have more arcade ports to compete with the Super Nintendo which had just come out in 1991. Not only are the graphics terrible, but it was obviously never tested by game players.

To be frank, this game should NEVER have been released. Its a joke and not worth of its namesake. Double Dragon 2 was a decent arcade game and did not deserve this disgraceful translation.

This game also has slow-down problems.

The Bottom Line
The NES version is better. I'd recommend Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage 2, and Final Fight CD over this.

The Good
Sincerely… nothing.

The Bad
Double Dragon is one of my all-time favourites, not only as Action game, but as game in general. In fact, I still play it sometimes. The Double Dragon series are somewhat like a rollercoaster: the first part upwards, and the second part suddenly goes downwards.

Double Dragon II, apart from some new enemies and moves, is a bad copy of the I. If you pay attention at the map, you’ll find that, despite efforts to hide the truth, it’s nearly the same. The main botch, however, are the recycled movements: depending on the direction you’re facing, you execute one move or another; the result is an awful and confusing gameplay. They wanted to do something different (and the intention is not bad), but they did something different and BAD. And for graphics and sound, nothing better than Double Dragon I.

The Bottom Line
Although very similar to the first part, DD II doesn’t live up the illustrious name of its big brother. A bad copy worth only playing until you finish it one time; then better left away as a curiosity.

The Good
It mostly has everything that the arcade version has to offer.

It has the 2 player co-op mode!

There is simultaneous music and sound effects during gameplay, plus some digitized sound samples happen occasionally.

The Bad
One button Atari-style joystick controls. Not very comfortable, but manageable.

It's a bit slow, it feels like you are walking in mud all the time.

The graphics looks ugly, in that dirty/crusty way that rushed C64 ports often look. But it works, and the gameplay is surprisingly intact!

The Bottom Line
Unlike the port of Golden Axe, this is an excellent beat-em-up to have on the C64.