Double Dragon Review
Tradewest
Release: 1988
Review: Sept. 19th, 2002

Much as Sag Harbor is a poor name choice for a line of women's clothing, so is Double Dragon a poor name for a NES arcade conversion that emphasizes hot single player action! That's right, the game you remember fondly from the arcade, duking it out on the mean streets with a friend, oohing at the amazing graphics, and aahing at the fantastic sound, can now be recreated in YOUR living room, only without the great music, sound, or the friend part.

   
 
Hey! Lay off my girfriend's crotch.
I personally don't have anything against albinos; I'm sure that the vast majority of them are decent people with regular-people goals and dreams. However, in Nintendo land, they all seem keen on one thing and one thing only; cracking your head in by any means necessary, be it bat, barrel, whip, knife, or other object frequently found in the streets.

In this case, however, these aforementioned albinos have taken it upon themselves to attack my girlfriend! In a manly fashion, the leader albino punches her in the upper thigh and then throws her over his shoulder. I became suspicious of the squeal she made when she was punched, so I decided to do a little "covert spy action" (using the hard-to-find X-10 spy camera . Check the awesomely magnified shot below.

 
  I don't know about you, but that flesh-colored line of pixels on his leg extending nearly to his knee looks suspiciously like a ... well, let's just say that perhaps that squeal from the girl , which I initially mistook for terror and/or pain, might have been a squeal of delighted anticipation. I decided not to dwell on that too much, though, and headed off to recapture my love.

 
 

The streets can do funny things to a man. Here you see me bravely presenting my forearm for this albino street hood to sniff.
 
  What the hell is going on here?  
 

My usual luck with women continues even within Nintendo games. Here I asked this buxom young lass if she'd care to have a cup of coffee with me, and she transformed into a shrieking hell-demon and knocked me to the ground with her retractable venomed hair spikes. Bummer.  
  I decided that I'd engaged in enough tomfoolery, and that it was time to get down to business. I continued down the street, eager to wreak vengeance on the savage memebers who kidnapped my sweetheart. Instead of a roving gang of street-seasoned fighters, I found a collection of mentally retarded individuals with severe skin disorders who enjoyed standing on live dynamite... just for the fun of it!

 
  Not only does Double Dragon let you take the fight to the streets, it lets you take the fight above the streets! Here I am seen falling from a ladder built for aliens, into the ravenous clutches of the venomous she-demons. Notice that I make use of my last few precious seconds of life to take a quick whiff of my rancorous armpits.  
  Continuing on, I found little evidence of my girlfriend. I had to resort to some rough and tumble interrogation techniques to find the answers.  
  Unfortunately, dear readers, my quest to rescue my girlfriend ended here. The mutant with the blunt icicle rudely shoved me into the pond. Despite the fact that I'd survived being stabbed, beaten, and hit with barrels, the lukewarm grip of the pond water proved too much, and I was sucked under, dreams of a reunion with my girlfriend left unrequited.