When you talk about side scrolling beat-em up games. Their can be only one that comes to my mind? And that's Double Dragon on the Nintendo NES home console. Well, maybe TMNT,(Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), too. But that's another story.
Double Dragon on the Nintendo NES is your basic side scrolling beat-em up game. Where you play as Billy Lee, one half of the Lee brothers. Your mission is to rescue Billy's girlfriend from the evil Shadow Warriors and their leader the mysterious Shadow Boss.
In the beginning of the game you start of in the city streets. Fighting the Shadow Bosses thugs that are blocking your way. From the city streets, your journey takes you to an abandon construction site were you must do battle with an mysterious martial artist who awaits you at the top of the construction building.
From their your journey takes you deeper into a mysterious forest were more Shadow Warriors await you. This time theirs twice more enemy's than the previous two levels. And as you progress through out the game, more challenges await you.
Game overview
In the early stages of the game. You gain experience points by defeating enemy's. Each time you gain experience, you get a heart underneath your life bar, which symbolizes that you have learn a new technique. Each technique can be utilize by pressing B or A button on the controller. Theirs the back elbow move were you position yourself by facing the opposite direction. By pressing the A button you perform a back elbow that sometimes literally kills enemy opponents.
One of my favorite move is the ground and pound attack that you learn later on in the game. Where you can ground an enemy and pound away at them.
These moves can help you out, if your in a tight spot in the game. And sometimes can come back to haunt you. Especially later on in the game when the enemy AI's will learn to dodge two of your move's. But not all can be avoided if you time them correctly.
As you progress deeper into the Shadow Warriors stronghold. Your skills will be put to the test as you perform insane jumps to get to were you want to go. Besides performing jumps, you have to fight a gauntlet of enemy's in order to advance to your final destination and confront the Shadow Boss.
Overall, the game plays and looks similar to it's other counter parts. However, since this is the NES port of the game. It loses the joint two player mode were you play as both Billy and Jimmy Lee. But the game does have several features. As mention earlier, as you progress throughout the game you gain experience points which unlocks new moves to use on enemy's.
The game also comes with a two player VS mode were you and a friend can go head to head against each other.
To conclude, this is a decent game for a side scrolling beat-em up. It's one that I enjoyed playing in my early child hood. A good game to play on the Nintendo NES or Clone Console.
