The heart-racing music playing as you repeatedly punch a random street thug wearing purple pants in the face. The boss battle where you kick a hulking, orange, bare-chested brute of a man named Abobo off a conveyor belt. These are the things in life that will never grow stale, staying as awesome today as they were back in 1988. Double Dragon, a quintessential NES masterpiece, will forever cement Technos as the king of the beat 'em up genre in my eyes.

Double Dragon II improved upon the formula of its predecessor with better graphics, more weapons, and more intuitive controls.

The less said about the third game, the better, as Double Dragon III saw a huge increase in difficulty and a big drop in everything else.

Though the first game remains a true classic, its sequel is heralded by many (myself included) as the best of the series and, so, I bought a prototype of the Game Boy Double Dragon II blindly without ever having played that particular version before. This was the first time I had ever done something so rashly, but the NES Double Dragon II was so good, and this portable game was also developed by Technos, what could go wrong?

Apparently, a lot. A whole lot.

This Double Dragon II is not a handheld port of the NES game in the way that the first Game Boy Double Dragon was. In fact, it's based on an entirely different game in another series all together: a Kunio-kun (think: River City Ransom) installment called Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun: Bangai Rantouhen.

 

Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-Kun (JP)	Double Dragon II (US)

For Double Dragon II, Technos dropped the Asian setting of its earlier game in order to make levels look more like urban America. They also swapped the cutesy Kunio-kun characters with Billy, Jimmy, and grittier-looking tough guys to better fit the Double Dragon universe. It's kind of like what Scorsese did with Hong Kong's Infernal Affairs to make The Departed, but worse. And less Irish.

While busy remaking Bangai Rantouhen to pass for a Double Dragon game, Technos missed entirely what makes the series so exciting to play in the first place. Among other things, there's no jump kick—actually, no jumping at all (B + A is used to crouch)—and zero weapons to pick up. The boring levels repeat over and over. There aren't any platform sections or ladders to climb. Abobo? No Abobo. How is this Double Dragon? Oh, right. It's not.

Technos tried to make up for the rush job by including some additional cutscenes to break up the mundane fighting. The story goes that Billy and Jimmy Lee have become teachers at a martial arts training hall but a jealous member there named Anderson kills someone called Wright and frames the Lee brothers for murder. Murder! The dojo bros now have to deal with some very perturbed martial artist friends of the victim on their way to the training hall.

Interesting plot, but then the rest of the game throws that concept away by having Billy and Jimmy Lee choose to take on these unfounded allegations by punching and kicking to death anyone who dares question their innocence. I'm no martial arts teacher, but the best way to clear your name of murder is to kill everyone you meet on the streets and subways? By the time they arrive at the hall, most of their students would've died at their hands anyway, and even if they did survive, who wants to train with the guy who threw you off a subway platform? Maybe I'm overthinking this. I just think it's time to find another training hall, fellas.

About the most intriguing part of an otherwise lackluster waste of an hour or so is a couple of the wacky bosses, leftovers from the Kunio-kun game that Technos didn't quite tone down enough during the transition. My personal favorites are the chainsaw-swinging Jason Voorhees and a fat guy who looks like he's from Jersey and whose only move is to sit on top of you. To be more precise, he doesn't just land on your body—he sort of twists his whole physique mid-air to plant himself perfectly in the reverse cowboy position. Some nerve you got there, Jersey.

The last level of Double Dragon II has the player battle all of the game's bosses in succession again. (Don't you love it when games do that?) Hope you're up for seconds, Billy! Jersey's coming in for a big landing!

Not the most breathtaking game, but that's Acclaim for you. Fortunately, Game Boy prototypes are some of the cheapest I've seen of any game system, and so I'm not out much. Most Game Boy protos plateau at $50 with some ending as low as $20 on auction sites. This one fell somewhere between those two estimates, if I remember correctly.

Double Dragon II came to me from a collector in the Netherlands.

Other than natural aging, I don't know what could have caused the disgusting browning of the paper, and my germaphobia really doesn't care to dig any further into the issue.

I believe this to be a review copy of the game. For one, there's a return label on the game that's standard for reviews. What's more, someone took the time to write in marker "TM" to trademark the game's title. They wanted whoever played to know that it's trademarked, presumably to be attached to the title when referring to the game in print.

For lack of space or whatever other reason, the trademark symbol is omitted from both the title and splash screens, so adding "TM" to the cart makes reviewers aware that a trademark is in place.

The game's retail box does show the trademark, but most likely wasn't ready to be shown at the time that this prototype was made. Speaking of which, the retail cover that was eventually used is art lifted directly from the NES Double Dragon III box. Laziness through and through, Technos and Acclaim. Laziness through and through.

For comparison, here's the title screen of the NES version. The TM trademark is prominently displayed in white against the black background with plenty of space to spare.

 

 

 

That I'm spending this much time talking about trademarks on boxes should give you a firm answer to, "Is the prototype any different from retail?" I made a back-up of Double Dragon II, and after comparing the prototype file with the retail, it is byte for byte identical.

Jimmy Lee, I just died in your arms tonight. It must have been something you said. Either that, or playing your Game Boy game is like taking a hyper uppercut punch to the groin. BARF! (Oops, wrong game. Or is it?)