The series that ushered in the golden age of the brawler genre, Double Dragon came far before the likes of games such as Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and Final Fight. The first installment went straight to the arcades in 1987, and it was an absolute hit with audiences. So much so that the game found itself later ported to nearly every home console available at the time. Not to mention, the arcade version was ported to Xbox Live Arcade in 2007, while the NES version found its way to the Wii Virtual Console in 2008. There's no doubt that Double Dragon is a series that will not fall into the abyss of time without a fight.
This trilogy collection includes the first three Double Dragon titles, in their original arcade format; do not expect any NES ports here. The main menu layout is much akin to that of the Golden Axe and Streets of Rage collections, although not as spiffy, where you move your left thumbstick either left or right to select the game that you want to play. Each of the three games have both their respective story and arcade modes, and you can choose between three difficulties; easy, original, and expert. DotEmu have also included both the original 8-bit soundtrack and a new remastered soundtrack for each title.
The differences between each difficulty mode is that the enemies hit you harder, and also take more hits themselves to kill. The original difficulty of Double Dragon is no laughing matter, the game is deemed as one of the hardest of all time; expert mode does prove to be a real challenge, especially under the constraints of the ever lingering time limit. While all of these demands that put our gaming skills to the test are welcomed, there are far too many flaws holding back the Double Dragon Trilogy that end up causing it to be a tiring and unpleasant experience.
First, let's start off with the hit detection; it's utterly abhorrent. Combine the poor hit detection with a nasty input delay, and you have yourself an old school, hard ♥♥♥ beat 'em up that is no longer challenging to ones skills, but downright unfair. Now before I get comments jumping all over me for these complaints, trust me... they're completely valid. When taking a look at the Streets of Rage collection that hit the Xbox Live marketplace in 2012, it did extremely well; there was no input lag, or poor hit detection. It functioned amazingly, and it didn't even feel like a conglomeration of ports at all. Double Dragon Trilogy on the other hand, is just a dwarfed brutalization of three epic arcade releases.
The next major flaw here is that once you've expended your lives, it really is game over for you. There's absolutely no way to continue, other than to restart entirely. Even in the arcade you were able to dump in quarters to pick up where you died at, so why is there no free play implemented here? This is the first arcade-to-PC port that I've played that has left out continued free play; whether it be a limited amount of continues, or infinite. So what we've got is some of the hardest brawler games of all time, with staggering input lag, shoddy hit detection, and no way of continuing once you've expended your lives. It really sounds like a great time, don't you think?
Simply put, due to its flaws Double Dragon Trilogy just isn't fun at all. It comes off as more of a chore than anything else. Sure, the price is great at $6.49 CAD, that's just over two bucks a game. Not to mention these are the arcade releases, and not the NES ones; this is also the first time all three Double Dragon arcade games are available together. I scooped this up at launch due to sheer nostalgic excitement, I spent some time here and there with it, but just recently got around to sitting down and sinking my teeth in to it. What I was left with was a bad taste in my mouth, and no will to even finish Double Dragon II and III due to the aforementioned down points. You're better off keeping your nostalgic memories untarnished.
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