Return to the cold, tough streets of the city this month in Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, a revival of the classic nineties franchise.
Arcade-style, side-scrolling beat-em-ups have been seeing a resurgence in recent years, fueled by the likes of Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game, River City Girls, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. The success of these titles has paved the way for one of the genre’s foremost pioneers to return this summer in Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, which we were invited to check out ahead of its July 27th release.
Building upon a classic beat-‘em-up foundation, developer Secret Base has found a bevy of ways to put a twist on the familiar formula. Players pick a tag team of characters and take on the four gangs vying for control of a post-nuclear apocalypse (yet still mid-90s) New York City. The initial roster includes the Dragons themselves, brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee, as well as Billy’s girlfriend Marian, and their Uncle Matin, a new character.
Instead of a straight gauntlet of side-scrolling levels like the arcade and NES originals, Double Dragon Gaiden allows players to choose the order in which they take on the four gangs. Once the first leader goes down, the remaining gangs grow stronger and their stages get longer.
Within our preview of the early hours, the effect of this system was immediately apparent, making level selection more tactical—do you want to take on the Egyptian-themed cult first, or leave them for last and see if their leader truly manifests supernatural powers? I was left curious to see how drastically each gang would escalate if I completely changed up the order I fought them in.
Once in the levels themselves, Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons feels simultaneously nostalgic and modern. I was transported back to the feeling of mashing the buttons on my childhood NES, while also delighted with the detailed 2D environments and animations. The new designs are recognizably Double Dragon with a Scott Pilgrim level of expression.
The gameplay itself is suitably modernized as well. Double Dragon Gaiden has all the standard beat-‘em-up repertoire of punches, kicks, combos, usable weapons, and specials attacks, with the added bonus of tag moves to swap with the partner character. In single-player mode, juggling your characters is paramount for survival as the gangs’ threat escalates.
Juggling enemies is also incentivized, if not downright required. Players are encouraged to employ “Crowd Control,” also known as defeating multiple baddies with a single special move. These combos produce healing items depending on how many enemies are felled—a hot dog for three, or a thanksgiving turkey for five, for example. Spending special energy quickly became a key tactical consideration in the back of my mind while going through the motions of attack combos.
Another system that seems promising is Double Dragon Gaiden’s ability to tweak settings for each story mode run. At the onset, players can tweak various variables such as the amount of health characters have, how much it costs to revive, how aggressive the enemies are, and so on. Raise the difficulty with these factors, and you stand to gain more rewards; lower them, and you’ll have an easier time in the levels, but earn fewer rewards.
Cash gained in-game can be spent on upgrades at the end of each stage on perks for each character, used to revive if things go awry, or converted into tokens. These tokens can then be spent on more playable characters, or artwork and music for the gallery. This arrangement seems like both a comprehensive handicap system and a way to keep the game fresh on extended streams or multiplayer sessions.
So far, I’m intrigued to see what else Secret Base has hidden up its sleeves on this nostalgic revival (or would have hidden up its sleeves, if the Lee brothers wore them). You can join the fray for yourself on July 27, when Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons presses start on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.
