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Double Dragon
Another 'very long' review from Noise320ia...
Double Dragon on Neo isn't side scrolling beat 'em up like all the other old versions of game. Instead it's a standard one-on-one fighter like the KOF and FF series. There are 10 different characters to choose from, complete with special moves and power (desperation) attacks.
Graphics
This game has some well drawn sprites and colorful backgrounds. The character animation is up to par with KOF95 -not bad at all. The game uses the Neo's popular background scaling effect which works in well. There's a mix of excellent backgrounds and some dull ones, but nearly all of them have some nice animation going on (like the "firehouse"). The graphics look a bit more like Anime than the KOF series -still I prefer the graphics in KOF much more. The intro has some FMV going on but it looks pretty grainy , but its still cool on Neo Geo. [that FMV sequence is out of the Double Dragon movie released around the same time, it has a great shot of Robert Patrick (T2; X-Files). -Ed.]
Sound
What I can say? The music in the game is as average as average gets. It has some decent tunes and some lousy ones and you forget them right away as soon as you stop playing. The highlight is a guitar tune in one stage, but that's it. The sound effects are even worse. They're poor and soft, so you barely even hear when I hit the enemy (sometime not); its really low point. There are some digital samples in game and they are very clear. All in all sound could've been much better -it interferes with playability thanks to the sound effects.
Playability
The controls aren't as tight as some other well known fighters, but they're good enough. There are enough moves to learn and some of the specials looks great. The game uses all 4 buttons (like nearly all other Neo fighting games); one different point is the double-jump (which is easy to do; just pull joystick up again mid-air), but this feature can turn the game into jumping masters competition, so I don't like it. The difficulty level is fair and you can beat it quite with practice.
Misc:
I play this game on an MVS cabinet and I bought it at 35$ which is good price for this game. I've seen the AES game get rather expensive and game isn't worth that kind of asking price -So save you money something else. There are many better fighting games on the Neo Geo.
Graphics 8
Sound 7
Playability 7
Overall 7
noise320ia is a native of Finland.
Bobak! is somewhere in America.