Well, this is a very nice, late Christmas present indeed. Waking up this morning to find out that one of my favorite fight gaming creators are working on a gaming series that took up a shit ton of my quarters doing my younger gaming days. That game being Double Dragon, of course. The father of all 2D side-scrolling beat em’ ups, and now it looks like we’re getting a proper sequel.
Not Super Double Dragon and not Double Dragon Neon, both of which were fantastic games. No, I mean a real follow-up to Double Dragon III.
Yes, We’re getting a Double Dragon IV, after all, these years. For reference, Double Dragon III on the NES was released back during 1991, while Super Double Dragon was released in 1992. That’s 25 years! The title will be released for both PS4 and PC (No Xbox One) on January 20th, 2017, and will be priced under $10. According to the website, the original team that worked on the Double Dragon arcade version at the helm. Judging from the trailer, we’re getting a few extra surprises here, while graphically the styling will be similar to the Double Dragon II NES title.
Update: Seems that the 2-player mode is offline only, per the official press release.
The first thing I noticed was the 2-player mode, which is great to see, especially since the NES version of Double Dragon was single player. Another addition was the introduction of combos. In one point we see Billy Lee grab and toss a baddie, only to follow it up with a jumping kick and then flying knee. There was also when Billy tossed an enemy into Jimmy Lee, who connected it with a cyclone kick. That’s new to the series, as there was never a combo system.
There seems to be one more feature that is currently hidden, but we’ll find out about it in due time.
The website for Double Dragon IV can be seen here. There seems to be more info that will be showing up there, but as of now most of the links are not present.
Damn, and I just did my Top 10 Most Anticipated Games of 2017. This game definitely needs to be on that list, or my younger gaming self will have my head!
