Double Dragon - What Happened?

let's see [Music] [Applause] [Music] before we get to the punk bashing fun of Double Dragon I'd like to give a shout out to the beat bashing fun of this episode's sponsor the Divine new release God of rock this unique Fusion of both a rhythm and fighting game comes locked and loaded with 48 songs 8 stages and 12 playable characters which you can then use to battle your foes in Dynamic music based combat you can either work your way through the arcade ladder until you reach the eponymous God of rock or go toe-to-toe either locally and online against a friend be a full cross-platform matchmaking you can also play or make custom songs via exclusive Steam Workshop support or wait for upcoming tracks that'll be added in free content updates God of rock just exploded onto the PC and all major console formats so you have no excuse to start shredding check the link in the description for more and thanks again to modus games for sponsoring today's video and without further Ado let's keep keep on rolling baby [Music] welcome back to another hair grabbing knife stabbing pompadour household of what happened Ultra media to find and perhaps knock out the roughest and toughest development stories unlike most episodes this week I'm turning my hardened gaze and not just one project in particular but an entire franchise one that's been around for 36 years even Double Dragon was one of the most important and influential action games in the arcade scene in the late 80s and saw a similar success in the Home console scene by popularizing the beat em up in the Years following their breakout success despite a uh less than ideal feature film adaptation and an even worse cartoon adaptation Billy and Jimmy Lee were actually seeing their relevancy slide further and further downward while rival franchises like final fight and Streets of Rage only grew in Renown things continued to get rockier throughout the 90s and early 2000s as attempts at other genres reboots and remakes all failed to reinvigorate fan interest but how did this occur how did the arguable grandfather of an entire genre in a once dominant arcade Blockbuster fall so far from the Limelight well grabbed the nearest baseball bat and slip on your reddest or bluest vest as I answer the question what happened to Double Dragon now just FYI I've spent the better part of the past three months engrossed in all things Double Dragon which you can see the results of in this 10 hour long video where a play and rate every version of every game in the series ever made and I would greatly appreciate it if you could check that video out too if you're interested now what I came to learn from experiencing the decade spanning often confusing quest of the Lee Brothers is that it all starts with their creator yoshihisa Kishimoto he started at Data East directing the arcade titles Cobra command and Road Avenger the latter of which use the always relevant and enduring technology that is the mighty laserdesk he then received a call from a talent Headhunter over at rival technos saying they were impressed by his work on road Avenger and wanted to meet with him about directing something similar if he jumped ship Kishimoto never someone to [ __ ] with took the meeting with technos but proceeded to pitch them a game with no laser disc functionality whatsoever he wanted to make a game where you brawled through the streets with the coolest haircut imaginable despite this being not what they had wanted at all technos thankfully agreed and in 1986 the very first entry in the long-standing kunio Kun series miketsu kohakunyokun was released in Japanese game centers the thing with banjo culture or Japanese schoolyard delinquents though especially in the 1980s is that very few people outside of Japan had the ability to even understand what it was so to sell the game internationally technos and Kishimoto localized it into the more generic Renegade which for all intents and purposes was one of if not the first Bean mop to see widespread success around the globe with a head already under his belt the young director initially wanted to make a direct sequel to it but technos Bean counters took umbrage with the fact that extra time and money had been spent redrawing Sprites for Renegade and thus his bosses asked for this next game to be ready to appeal to International audiences from the get-go as for what this new project was going to be called well to player functionality had been requested as it could theoretically double the game's profits and Bruce Lee movies were one of kishimoto's biggest Inspirations so uh Double Dragon it was the team at technos were able to put together Billy and Jimmy's first game very quickly with the only real snag being bouts of slowdown due to how the game handle levels which was in one constant scrolling background with no breaks this wasn't something they could solve before the game was scheduled to release but digital Foundry wasn't around back then and so it didn't hamper double dragon's popularity one bet the inclusion of two-player Co-op the challenging pace of combat and the brutal attacks both Lee Brothers could perform LED Double Dragon to become the third biggest arcade earner in Japan the year of its release and the first in both the UK and the United States so it was safe to say that the brothers Lee had arrived the NES version was ported very quickly to capitalize on this success perhaps a bit too quickly as a lot of things need to be cut and altered to fit it on a cartridge including completely axing the co-op now while I couldn't find any direct confirmation for the reasoning behind this cut most people believed it to be a technical limitation team just couldn't solve this was only technos's second NES came after all the fact though that only two enemies can appear on screen at once and they had to share the same Sprite to boot does lend some Credence to the theory that the team lacked experience programming for the NES funnily enough dropping the co-op also had some ramifications when it came to the story and final boss which helped contribute to the franchise's long-standing legacy of continuity errors and confusion which will absolutely be getting to later regardless of the cuts and changes Double Dragon on the NES was another big success for technos but its sequel appropriately titled Double Dragon 2 The Revenge is often seen as the Pinnacle of the franchise but it's also where things go slightly as skew the Genesis of this sequel starts with kishimoto's initial plan which was to Simply create an upgrade kit for arcade operators to apply to their existing Double Dragon cabinets these weren't too unusual for Blockbuster titles as it would be an opportunity to patch and upgrade what was already a proven hit while keeping overall costs low at some point it was decided this effort would actually transition into a full-on sequel owing to its Origins as an improved version of the original and the short turnaround time they weren't able to make an elaborate of a follow-up as one might expect so while Double Dragon 2's arcade version is widely regarded as a better game than the original it isn't a massive leap in terms of gameplay or presentation for the NES Port technos knew it had to offer more which meant new cutscenes completely new levels original set pieces that relied more on platforming and the previously absent two-player Co-op so you can see how the home and arcade versions began to be seen as rather distinct from one another offering different challenges levels and their own unique story differences but nothing would compare to the inconsistencies that were going to be seen in the next entry Double Dragon 3. yeah with two successful franchises under their umbrella technos were kicking into high and they tasked a team with creating a third Mega hit action game which wound up being 1990s the combat tribes I would introduce more Innovations in its combat system than what was offered in Double Dragon 2. unfortunately by 1990 there were a lot and I mean a lot of other Brawlers all vine for arcade domination with pretty much every major company releasing one of their own technos most likely foreseen this made sure they had another Double Dragon on the way not wanting to put all their eggs in the combat tribes basket Kishimoto and his team were at that point working on the SNES version of combat tribe so given that patience was clearly not technos leadership strong point they scrambled to find someone else who could develop Double Dragon 3. well the best people for the job of course complete newcomers with absolutely no experience making action games East technology were hired by technos to develop Double Dragon 3 the Rosetta Stone which is often viewed as one of the more maligned ones mainly to do with the fact that East technology had little I.E zero experience making beat-em-ups they had put out only two other titles prior to this a shmup called jagendes in a soccer game named last Striker which might help explain why the Rosetta Stone is uh quite different from kishimoto's earlier work aside from the very obvious change in art style Double Dragon 3 introduced a previously unknown Lee Brother by the name of Sunny not to be confused with another character also called sunny as well as three player simultaneous Co-op a feature one would assume was requested by technos if two players would double the profits surely three would at least triple them right nothing however exemplifies arcade era greed better than double dragon 3's Infamous in-game store appearing in several levels this capitalist loving shopkeeper offered extra lives speed power-ups new moves and even additional characters to play as but this wasn't a charity you had to pay literally players were required to plunk in more quarters if they wanted any of these goodies making this one of if not the very first appearance of in-game micro transactions feedback from American players was so negative that technos had East Corporation completely remove this functionality for the Japanese version in time for its release a few months later even with this change though it didn't mask the fact that Double Dragon 3 wasn't quite up to Snuff featuring jittery animation lackluster level design forgettable music and unsatisfying combat it was still a hit for technos though and getting ahead of the curve this time they had commissioned an NES version in parallel with the arcade one with a completely different in-house team at the helm this the slightly differently titled Double Dragon 3 The Sacred Stones Now featuring Roman numerals followed a similar scenario but for all intents and purposes it was again a wholly unique experience the caveat to this though was that maybe in an attempt to promote sales over rentals the difficulty was increased to absolutely punishing level given the player zero continues and only a single life until you manage to defeat certain Boss characters who would join your party aside from that it's a fine game and introduces several new mechanics but the sudden uptick in challenge surprised many fans and when you die once that's it your brown bread you're not coming back you can't [ __ ] around with this game and it's Commercial Success lag behind that of the revenge on the NES what made the situation worse regardless of the version we're talking about was the timing dd3 needed to compete with the likes of much better looking arcade Brawlers like final fight and over on the Genesis fans are already eating well with Streets of Rage so the slightly improved Jenny Port of the arcade game wasn't gonna sway anyone it did have that rocking cover though wait who are these guys they don't look anything like these guys bit Billy and Jim Wait no that's Spike and Hammer ah see this leads us to one of the main issues with double dragon as a brand which was the massive lack of consistency marketing and quality between all the various sequels spin-offs and the like when it came to Ports technos would license the franchise to any Rando company who would ask and seek to expand the franchise with no centralized creative oversight which resulted in a variety of ports filled with dizzying highs terrifying lows and creamy metals well mostly just the terrifying lows [Applause] for every decent NES or Game Boy adaptation there was a Commodore or Spectrum Port that was pretty much unplayable and almost every single one had their own unique interpretation of what Billy and Jimmy looked like like who were these guys supposed to be technos apparently didn't care if these ports were bad or even if they went totally off the rails making one Wonder just who was in charge of saying yes to these things the best example of this was the first and only Game Gear version which was simply called Double Dragon in North America but in Europe was more concerningly dubbed Double Dragon the Revenge of Billy Lee which starts with Jimmy getting murked off screen with his brother swearing Vengeance and using the only tools he needs his fist a gun yeah this one had Billy just slowly stalking the city just it's freaking buckwise wild all of this let's call it artistic license is something Kishimoto always regretted and cites as a reason why the franchise failed to maintain its momentum saying to polygon in 2013 many different people worked on double dragon's Graphics over the years and technos often Outsource the game design to external companies so there's no consistency to The Branding or the quality I personally find it unfortunate but that's the way technos handled its titles this is something Capcom did very well with final fight and is one of the reasons why it succeeded in taking the Baton from Double Dragon Capcom had better hardware and Technology there was a technical limit to what I was able to do at technos and from my understanding Capcom put a lot of money and effort into properly branding its title it's around this time where Kishimoto slipped into more of a supervisory role as the Reigns were handed off to younger staff at technos who then produced 1999 choose super Double Dragon slash return of Double Dragon which is seen as somewhat of a soft reset to the series although that doesn't really come across when playing it this was because it contained precisely zero cutscenes not even an ending to explain what the hell was going on and why Billy and Jimmy were fighting once again the game's co-director muneki ibanuma set in a 2004 Japanese blog post that super Double Dragon was originally planned to have an elaborate story including boss dialogue but its aggressive development schedule forced the team to cut all of it before it could be completed there were also plans for additional levels another end boss and even Marion was set to make an appearance but again ibanuma and his team weren't given enough time to fit it all in what they did have time to squeeze in were a few key improvements in the Japanese return of Double Dragon as it was released months after the Super Nintendo version it included tweaks to the combat rearranged OST more difficulty options and a few extra rooms in the final level despite its improved quality exciting new attacks and some incredible music super Double Dragon success is hard to gauge since there was no arcade version and I can't find any evidence of it selling particularly well on the SNES on the super famicom though it did move under 24 000 units which was a bit low for Home console techno's titles at the time and certainly a huge step down from what earlier releases in the series were making across both console and arcade its release also ushered in the North American publishing rights transitioning from a claim to trade West which then made way for a variety of other things that in the long term didn't help raise the franchise's standing very much the 91 Marvel comic book series only made it up to six issues the cartoon show which took a lot of liberties with the source material lasted only two bollocks-filled seasons and the 1994 movie continued the video game film curse that still continues to this day oh wait that's that's over now apparently oh anyway the Double Dragon film was such a disaster that yep that's the one that I made a whole video about it and like all other media spin-offs technos reportedly wasn't too bothered about the content and Kishimoto wasn't allowed to supervise it either which is so very par for the course however this film adaptation is reviled as it was was still too big of a marketing opportunity for technos to pass up on so to further stir up the Waters of confusion I guess techno screenlet a Neo Geo fighting game led by ibanuma simply called Double Dragon in 1995 which was Loosely Loosely based on the events of the film own it brought in Robert Patrick shuko the film's nightmare inducing version of a bobo a bunch of random new characters that weren't from anything and even the final boss from Super Double Dragon also many confused this with double dragon 5 the shadow Falls another fighting game released the year before and was greenlit by trade West but instead of being based on the movie it was based on the cartoon this was truly a wild time for the franchise I have yet to meet a bully who made me regret anything that wildness was just about to Peak though as Billy and Jimmy fell right into a team-up game with the green fighting machines that are the battle toads a total Trade West Power move well not a bad game per se battle toads and Double Dragon the ultimate team was clearly a Toad's Adventure first and foremost with the leaves simply going along for the ride this was no surprise since it was developed internally at rare as one of their last remaining bits of contract work before being brought under Nintendo's Wing but also for another reason in an interview between retro video gamer and rare staffer Paul makachek who worked on the Game Boy Port Paul unsurprisingly said I don't recall getting too much direction or feedback from the ddip holders which you didn't need to tell me because it was pretty evident from rare mistakenly jumbling up the designs and names of Roper burnoff machine gun Willy and the shadow Boss by this point Kishimoto had had enough and decided to leave the company that had been his home for almost a decade saying to polygon that kuniokun and Double Dragon became franchises after their initial success technos wanted to continue them because both franchises made money and as a result I wasn't able to create many other original projects while working there I got tired of making games for the same friend franchises also over the years the company made a lot of money and started spending it on real estate and even bought a racing team so it was spending less and less on game development ultimately I got fed up with the way it was handling its finances shortly after kishimoto's departure in 1996 technos filed for bankruptcy and promptly shut down which is precisely where this story goes completely off the rails or even more off the rails some of techno's franchises like Double Dragon cunio and his Associated Sports titles were then picked up by a licensing company called million or million I'm not sure who would contract out these IPS to literally whoever the hell wanted a shot at them this resulted in the likes of the Rock Solid Double Dragon Advance with ibnuma returning as director and two early cell phone games but ultimately culminated in what some or ever everyone would say is the franchise's lowest point Double Dragon 2 The Wander of dragons this HD uh reimagining of Double Dragon 2 was published by I I'm not sure it's like it's like three different companies and developed by a South Korean team by the name of Barron's son creative and well with all due respect to them it's absolute dog [ __ ] now as far as my research goes there's nothing really to explain why that is other than perhaps an experience because prior to this baronson had only made a handful of DS and PSP games that I and you have never heard of long boring drawn out levels wonky controls terrible music unresponsive attacks ugly character designs and unstable frame rate and an insane requirement to get the good ending meant Wonder of dragons got absolutely Savaged in reviews and deservedly so this was made all worse by the fact that this was intended to be the big reboot meant to reintroduce Double Dragon to a new generation but it only buried it deeper it was perhaps this vitriolic backlash which caused Kishimoto to then approach million or million with an offer to allow him to act as a middleman for any future projects involving Double Dragon essentially becoming an extra set of eyes to maintain consistency to which million accepted as double dragon's 25th anniversary Drew closer somehow still in business majesco and friend of the show wave forward reached out to million and Kishimoto on the possibility of collaboration which eventually turned into Double Dragon Neon Kishimoto worked closely with wave fort on character design and elements of the gameplay which reportedly took a good deal of back and forth But ultimately ensured a solid authentic Foundation That Way Forward built upon with their own sense of humor when it was released in 2012 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 is a digital owning title it was considered a bit divisive propelled even further by IGN's godhan-esque review of it but has since garnered quite a cult following over the years after a little while fans started expecting some type of follow-up but those expectations were then shattered when it was announced just two years later in 2015 that Arc system works purchased the rights to Double Dragon cunio and pretty much the entire technosverse this eventually ushered in a new round of re-releases remakes as well as peaking the interest of many fans because it presented the possibility of arxus developing their own brawler in the vein of the well-regarded hardcore Uprising but it didn't exactly shake out that way arxus instead contracted way forward to develop the River City girls spin-off series hey yo what up Bannon well the green line to develop a new Double Dragon was given to yoshihisa Kishimoto he and his very small four-person team some of which were veteran technos developers then released 2017's Double Dragon 4 disowning Double Dragon 5 as it was in Canon and was also awful as well as super Double Dragon which was seen as a reboot so four was continuing from where the NES version of three left off kinda there were a lot of localization errors including one famous one and story differences between the arcade and home versions where in some Marion is dead and others she was resurrected and in others still she was completely fine it doesn't really matter because in Double Dragon 4 she's just there and guess what she's been kidnapped again truth be told Double Dragon 4 was even more divisive than neon sticking rigidly close to the 8-Bit design of the NES entries going so far as to just reuse the revenge's Sprites and not really doing anything new or inventive with the formula and even had some weird screen tearing issues on the PS4 of all things so it came and went without much fanfare but with some pretty harsh reviews that was six years ago and aside from arxus given the okay to include Billy and Jimmy with appropriately grumpy voice acting as NPC shopkeepers in River City girls Marion eventually becoming playable and the semi-recent Double Dragon and kunio collection fans are still waiting for a new Standalone Lee Brothers adventure to me it is absolutely amazing almost unbelievable that despite so much brand confusion dips and quality long lulls and releases and getting scuttled around to different Publishers that double dragon is still technically kicking it's unclear if we're ever going to get a new Mainline entry in the franchise anytime soon but as long as arxus manages to hold on to it it's certainly possible like how it was possible in the 1993 PC engine remake of Double Dragon 2 yes there was another Double Dragon 2 remake that despite hurtling towards a deadly pit of spikes with absolutely no way out baby me and Jimmy just managed to punch their way out somehow never mind I know way too much about this series now anyway I hope that explains how Double Dragon Peter doff came back and then petered off again and if you know of any other games franchises or other media that has had more than their fair share of bumps in their respective roads let me know in the comments below or take an elevator ride into the secret hideout that is my Twitter see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 281,704

Keywords: matt mcmuscles, double dragon, what happened?, wha happun, video game documentaries, Double Dragon franchise, beat 'em ups, history of double dragon, brawlers, Bimmy, Billy and Jimmy Lee

Id: KFBgp2EZ_FQ

Length: 28min 23sec (1703 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023