Hey, look, we found it!

I put this off until I was ready to be mad about video games on our website again. I suppose now’s a good enough time; I have a minor but very painful sinus infection, it’s making it hard to get good sleep, and the HV/AC ducts in my part of the house are completely out to lunch, leaving me congested, sleep-deprived, in pain, and boiling alive in what equates to a sauna full of antique electronics and D&D books.

Fuck it, let’s slap around Double Dragon 3. While we’re at it, let’s call up its cousin, Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team.

The first two Double Dragon installments, aside from the fact that the arcade versions are virtually alike minus window dressing, kick righteous ass. One of the true milestones in beat-em-up history, the original DD set the pace for a blossoming game-type that became one of video gaming’s staple arrangements – walk, beat the dribbling shit out of anyone who stops you walking, keep walking ,rinse, repeat. On a very much related note, I also have a soft spot in my heart for the ‘Toads, having poured hours and tears into the NES, Genesis, and arcade offerings bearing their name. It’s hard to imagine the Double Dragon franchise shitting the bed, and no one really wants to hate Battletoads. Right?

Double Dragon shit the bed the second it pulled the comforter up towards its neck, and while I don’t hate Battletoads, I do plan on trying, just for their part in this.

Double Dragon III/3: the Rosetta Stone (the Sacred Stones)

East Technology, 1990 (every version but the NES one) Technos Japan, 1991 (The NES one)

“Omae wa mou shindeiru.”
                                                                                       I couldn’t help my self. Look at him.

There are two distinct, separate third installments of Double Dragon III. The arcade game got released first, and it’s actually not dogshit-terrible, which is hilarious to me, considering how Technos didn’t actually make it.They contracted a smaller crew called East Technology to develop the third installment of one of their flagship franchises; the end result is weird as hell and fairly difficult but only slightly inferior to the first two games overall. This version of the game got ported to all the usual suspects in the early home computer lineup, as well as the Sega Genesis. This is how I encountered it. If you’re like me and the first thing you do after turning on the power is screw around in the options menu, you’ll notice something interesting about the Genesis port: You can swap around “starting men” and be some other characters from the “Extra Guys” aspect of the game. I particularly like to be the karate dudes with the 1950s duck-ass hairdos.

Always a lot going on. A lot to take in, and a lot                 to dish out, if you can manage it.

The story begins in the USA, after a quick audiovisual/text intro that tells you Billy and Jimmy are just home from training. They meet a really gross-looking but altruistic soothsayer named Hiruko. She feels like she just found the lock for a key she’s been carrying arpund, and tells them some sketchy shit about finding three Rosetta Stones and then heading to Egypt to fight “the strongest possible foe.” She keeps the same impassive grin on her face as she drops one last nugget – no one’s tried this and lived.

“Just run of the mill stuff, you know. Nothing worth I don’t know, opening you eyes the whole way or not smiling or something.”

So I guess we could call the Lee brothers either adrenaline junkies or oblivion-seeking masochists, because they don’t even wanna settle in and maybe nap off the jetlag before marching out into the streets to resume The Perpetual Fistfight With Destiny and find those fuckin’ stones.

The big positive for me was that I could play as more than one type of dude. I could be a fat Mandarin dude or a big human wall in a tank top. The big con is (and I can’t speak for the arcade one, only the Genesis one) how merciless and goddamned unforgiving the enemy hitboxes and AI are. Right out of the game, you get dogpiled and they run a train on you.

In that regard, and also for having a slightly lazier version of the same plot, the NES version is faithful to its forebear. This one was actually made by Technos, and it comes off as a much more difficult and annoying take on the prior NES installments. I have revisited it more than once, just to see if I was wrong about it being an exercise in futility for those who don’t obsessively play hard games out of a desire to “defeat” them. I’m not bad at video games overall, and there have been times in the NES DD3 that I’ve been unable to even leave the dojo (the first screen of the game) alive.

An iconic scene from the NES version. It’s the Joke Dojo, where you can straight up                                             die seconds into the game. I know it well.

What disappoints me about both is the prohibitive difficulty presented by heaps of enemies who operate with an aggressive swarm mentality. Not to mention, the further you go in the arcade game, the goofier it gets. Ah hell, I’ll spill it: you fight a mummy at the end.

Way to phone it in, East Technology.

Battletoads & Double Dragon: the Ultimate Team

Rare, 1993

Looks promising, right?

The NES version of Battletoads is a pretty stiff tincture to swallow, right? It can be done, but it’s an undertaking, and you’d better have your shit together. You’d better have your shit so well together that it looks like Ikea shit. The Genesis version is just a smoother, sharper take on the original (yes, the console games existed first, in a rare reversal of process) and I appreciate them leaving the meat of it unchanged. The arcade game is a visual masterpiece and, at least for me, way more approachable for a casual hour or two of play.

B&DD may seem on the surface to be a noble, even sublime endeavor; it combines two very hot franchises from that snapshot of gaming history, and on paper they go together like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and crying softly about the abundance of human cruelty in the world (or is that only me).

Well guess what:

Yeop.

I will say the strong points out loud, in a kind tone. First off, the music is solid, right on the level with what Rare had done with other Battletoads shit. Some of it (including the first level theme) is pretty easy-listening for a beat em up. It’s also clear that developing the arcade game gave Rare’s team a taste for visual finery; there’s a ton of detail and some of it (example: character and enemy bios) is intricate. It’s just a shit-show in terms of difficulty and the curve thereof, and it’s just these things mashed together. These two martial artists and these three TMNT pastiches. I won’t even say this one’s as hard as the NES Battletoads, but the enemy cheap-shot and box-in count is always tremendously high. The introductory little space suit people have a move set just about as good as yours, plus they don’t need to constantly guess a safe distance to punch you in the head from.

Okay RetroFiends, I’m done bitching. I’m going to go irrigate my poor sinuses, drink something hot, and settle in with some pseudoephedrine and a good book. I’m not going to drop number ratings on either of these games, both because I hate them like I do and because I know many others love them. I guess I’m not as salty about either one as I suggested up at the top of the article talking shit. I’m just tired, sick, and tired of being sick.

Stay Retro, and stay out of trouble. We’ll meet up again soon.

As loyal readers may remember from previous articles (namely the Console Graveyard series and the Hudson Soft article), I have a wistful side to my nostalgia and sometimes seek to honor the entities from VG history that have come and gone. Many left only faint ripples in the fabric of our hobby, but some were veritable giants; it can seem surprising that they are gone and not simply sleeping, dreaming of wonders to show us in the future.

The original idea-farm that brought us River City Ransom and Double Dragon… you’d think they were still running strong, right? You’d think, “anyone who made games like that back then has surely found a foothold in modern gaming.” Sadly, you’d be wrong… but like Hudson and other brands that met similar fates, the worlds they crafted are still alive and vibrant.

Not unlike so many of its contemporaries in Japan at the dawn of the 1980s, Technos began out of a humble one-room apartment in 1981. Founded by N. Tomiyama and two other staff members of the already-established Data East, Technos released their first title in 1982, titled Minky Monkey, but also weathered a lawsuit from Data East claiming they had taken data from one of the company’s games in order to produce bootlegs. I was unable to find out details of how this case was settled, but it’s evident that the two companies made up and shook hands, because Data East published two Technos arcade games – the early hits Tag Team Wrestling and Karate Champ. In the beginning, Technos primarily used other companies for publishing and distribution; they simply lacked the capital to make this happen on their own until later.

They made plenty of stuff for a primarily domestic market in the 1980s. This charming booger monster is from Bogey Manor (1985), a sort of puzzle-action platformer where you smash orbs in a haunted house, apparently to un-haunt it. Here’s a YouTube video.

Technos’s next notable release came in 1986, and while it is perhaps less of a household name than Double Dragon, most of us with a passion for retro gaming will know it well. The original title is Nekketsu Koha Kunio-Kun, but it was released for arcades and the NES in the West as Renegade. Now, let’s talk about that name. Keep an eye out for the words “Nekketsu” (which translates closely enough as “hot-blooded”) and “Kunio” (a name). You’ll hear them later, because Kunio is a recurring character – but us Yanks and Europeans will know him by a Westernized name. Renegade was a recognized hit for the console market, and paved the way for the jewel in Technos’s crown…

A comparison between the domestic Japanese (top) and Western (bottom) versions of Renegade for arcades.

Double Dragon was released thirty years ago, in 1987 (’88 in North America) and became the go-to standard example of the beat ’em up format for long afterward. It spawned a trilogy as an arcade title and a long franchise dynasty as a console game. Double Dragon also helped solidify Technos’s foothold in the West due to its rampant popularity; as the eighties gave way to the nineties, there was even a live action film and a cartoon series based on the franchise.

It wasn’t long after the release of Double Dragon that Technos formed an American branch in California. American Technos Inc. served primarily as part of something the main company had lacked earlier on: a means of publishing and distribution for its games in the West. At first, the firm partnered with Tradewest for many titles, but eventually operated more independently… until it closed down along with the main entity in the late 90s.

Some rather bizarre art for the 7800 port of Double Dragon… The Lee brothers are represented as sullen, thick-skulled man-apes, seemingly indifferent to the suffering and indignation of Marian in the background. Hell, that may not even be Marian, and those may not even be Billy and Jimmy. Maybe this is just what awaits you in the Italian shock-cinema flavor of Technos’s arcade classic. I shudder to think.

Meanwhile, Kunio-kun made the leap over the Pacific as well… and adopted a Western name, Alex. Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, which US players will know as River City Ransom and Europeans will know as Street Gangs, made a lesser impact than Double Dragon but still did very well as a console title. Other chroniclers of retro VG throw around the term “cult classic,” but I don’t see it that way; River City Ransom was fairly common in most NES libraries (despite its initial lukewarm reception in the West) and was far from unknown. It remains perhaps my favorite title from Technos, standing out in my mind for its then-novel combination of ball-busting beat em up mayhem and loose RPG elements. River City Ransom certainly aged well, building in popularity over time and seeing re-releases in astounding frequency. In fact, systems as recent as the GBA have released updated versions, and the original is available on the Wii and 3DS.

What most of us think of when we remember RCR, and rightly so.

Sequels and continuations of Kunio-kun’s exploits continued to do well back home in Japan, and Technos made modest impacts with SNES sequels to their popular franchises in the early 90s, but the unfortunate truth is that by 1996 Technos was closing its doors. Like Hudson Soft, this was not a sudden plummet or a shameful collapse; it was a quiet and somewhat dignified end for a company that had enjoyed success worth being proud of but had also seen the writing on the wall.

After its closure, Technos’s intellectual properties were acquired by a holding company called Million, who held onto these lauded names until 2015. It was this company that produced/licensed the Game Boy Advance titles bearing the names of classic Technos properties like Double Dragon and River City Ransom and the re-releases of originals for Wii’s Virtual Console. In 2015, Million sold the whole bundle to Arc System Works, who retain them to this day.

Nothing brutal, no scissor-and-stitch work. Just a gentle addition to the space beneath the brand-name. Respectful enough, I suppose.

While not everyone who has put hand to joystick will know Technos by name, gamers with a passion for the history of the art form will tell you: Technos is worth remembering, not only for the fantastic work they put out, but as an example of how stars rose and fell in that golden cutthroat era of the 1980s-1990s, when the soil was fertile and the blood was hot.

Stay tough, Kunio-kun.

The arcade… dark, weird lighting. Gnarly carpeting. An omnipresent riot of sound and color as you walked in and wrapped yourself in the electronic arms of sweet, sweet diversion. For many of us RetroFans, it’s a golden, soft-glow set of memories we keep well-polished and stored within our minds’ more secure vaults. Some of us were around in the late 70s and early 80s, when titles like Space Invaders and Donkey Kong were waving the banner of arcade gaming’s golden age. More of us remember the era when arcades saw some shrinkage; my own formative exposure to the format was in the smaller realms tucked into the side areas of bowling alleys and the nooks of theme restaurants. The early 90s saw the Neo Geo and a host of other innovative releases, breathing some life into the old arcade room… but nonetheless, the sad truth is that the phenomenon has continued to deflate over time (except in Japan, where it’s kept vigorously alive).

I consider myself lucky to have been an awe-struck young man in my pre-pubescent years when the early 90s brought us a small revival of the arcade. My venues were still within the greater confines of bowling alleys and Chuck E Cheeses, but the games we were playing in those places made it feel like its own circus… its own arena. Everyone can think of a couple off the top of their heads, and while I’ve already had the honor of discussing the gems like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II, I hope a few of you will recall the games I’ll highlight in this article. Many are both bizarre and wonderful, like our first childhood crush or that recurring dream we had about MC Hammer growing to Godzilla size and destroying our hometown with his brutal dance moves (was that just me?), but it didn’t stop us from throwing quarters or tokens in to give them a shot.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Developer: Midway

Released: October 31, 1991

Everyone just about lost their shit when the Terminator sequel came out. At least that’s what I remember. It had a good-guy Terminator, an even worse bad guy Terminator, and more catastrophic violence than a train wreck giving birth to a nuclear detonation with no epidural. Even though it was way rated R, we all did what we had to do to see it, and whoa… it was nuts. It even sort of made Guns n Roses cool (who am I kidding, a lot of us misguidedly loved them anyway). On Halloween of ’91, we got to live the whole thing out in one of the better shooter-style arcade games of its time. The demo sequence claimed that the game was also rated R, for Righteous. No shit.

No need to label what specific type of weapons are in the crates. You’ll find out when you blast them open with all your gunpower. The enemy T-800 has gone so far as to ignore the hated humans behind it to focus on you, who are known as Machine Judas. SkyNet wept.

T2‘s difficulty was harsh, but it was still a blast to see how long you could last on the battlefields of 2029 against your loyalist robot kin and the massive death machines they served. Some of us even got really sharp and made it back to John Connor’s 1995… but I never did. Not even with 2 players. No matter what, the game’s graphics were super-crisp and it had a ton of really fun digitized voice clips in it. I for one couldn’t help but get into it.

Captain America and the Avengers

Developers: Data East, Realtime Associates

Released: 1991

This is one I dutifully played the absolute shit out of. I was huge into superheroes as a kid, both Marvel and DC (but a little more Marvel, and I’ve never been able to fully articulate why), and I was thrilled to see The Avengers when it first arrived at the smoky bowling alley my family frequented. They wanted to bowl? That’s fine, suckers are born every minute. I wanted to stop the fucking Red Skull.

Vision and Hawkeye stand fascinated as Mandarin shows them his special squat thrusts for keeping his glutes “mandariffic.” Captain America, always the histrionic one, shows off his vertical leap. Iron Man stares at nothing, thinking about his offshore accounts.

While the ports of the game got mixed reception, the arcade version itself is often praised as a classic beat ’em up. I liked it because four of us disinterested junior bowlers could play at a time, and I could play as Vision, whom I found fascinating as a superhero. The team plows through an army of generic robots and lesser villains to chase after the Red Skull, even making a foray into space and some other bizarre places in the Marvel Universe. Each character has melee and ranged options, and you can even hoist a motherfucker and throw him into another motherfucker. That was my go-to move. The graphics were great, fitting the comic book source material wonderfully; the sound and music was almost honest-to-god inspiring. “AMERICA STILL NEEDS YOUR HELP!” Well shit, I’d better pop some more tokens in.

WWF WrestleFest

Developer: Technos Japan

Released: 1991

“Jesus, dude, shut up about all these goddamned wrestling games!” No, though, because this one is incredible. You don’t even have to be a wrestling fan to get into it. Technos had released WWF Superstars in ’89, which did pretty well, and they took everything they learned from that in ’91 and produced an incredible mat-fighting arcade game.

Ultimate Warrior adds “slapped half-dead by a fat guy” to his resume, while Hogan and half of each featured tag team use Mr Perfect as a boat to cross an imaginary Potomac. Hogan, of course, is Washington!

The legendary Road Warriors/Legion of Doom are the “boss” characters in this one, replacing Andre the Giant and Ted DiBiase in Superstars. You can team up with a friend or go it alone in various match types, but it was easily the most fun to try for the tag team titles against Hawk and Animal (who were fucking impossible to beat unless you had a grocery bag full of change). Team-up moves, berserk tag-ins, and digitized announcing from Mike McGuirk and Gene Okerlund make this a bona fide classical-era WWF product. The graphics are a little goofy, but they’re good for the format; the action doesn’t suffer. While the actual “Sport” may be choreographed or pre-determined, WWF WrestleFest isn’t short on real entertainment.

Lethal Enforcers

Developer: Konami

Released: October 8th, 1992

This time period was also all about controversy. Lethal Enforcers didn’t become quite as notorious as games like Doom or Mortal Kombat, but it did cause quite a stir upon its release. Konami’s action-cop shooter game had photo-realistic graphics (for its time) and was somewhat intense. It didn’t matter to the self-appointed moral crusaders of the era if you were the good guy or not; they were pissed that you were shooting at an animation of an actor dressed as a stereotypical goon.

Aside form all that, the game is immersive and pulse pounding. Split second decisions must be made as you confront thugs with hostages, fleeing civilians, and lightning fast criminals. You can easily lose the game, in fact, if you’re not precisely accurate in order to avoid harming the innocent. There’s chase scenes, power-ups that give you guns the police definitely shouldn’t have, and even “training stages” that lighten things up while still maintaining the theme. Aside from the great visuals, the music kicks ass and Lethal Enforcers is another game that heavily incorporates digitized samples. I liked this one enough to get the Genesis version a couple years later, and it was pretty faithful to the source.

Virtua Fighter

Developer: Sega (Sega AM2)

Released: October 1993

You were wondering why I was studiously avoiding fighting games in this particular article… I was saving this one for last. With the dawn of Virtua Fighter, the whole playing field of the genre was changed. Virtua Fighter wasn’t just showing us 3D polygon-based graphics, which we still considered pretty far-out and futuristic; the revolutionary fighter was making an earnest (and effective) attempt at fluid realism in its characters’ moves and techniques.

The “Model 1” hardware rig used for the game was jointly developed by Sega and Lockheed Martin. Yes, Lockheed fucking Martin the aerospace firm. The people who have a knee-deep resume of building cutting edge military technology. This hardware not only handles the revolutionary 3D rendering, but also allows for stunningly realistic movement and nearly true-to-life physics. The game’s plot was minimal and loosely resembled those of its ancestors, but literally no one cared. The game has spawned a thriving franchise that has continued to break ground in its genre. I remember seeing this shit and thinking to myself, “it’s pretty cool to live in the future.”

Towards the middle of the decade, the phenomenon of the arcade took a sullen plunge once more, though it’s remained alive through the 00’s and 10’s (or at least its heart beats). Our friends in the far East keep things going, and there’s of course been a small resurgence here as the retro gaming movement has gotten wind under its wings.

Between the years that the market drank Atari, and the years of the rise of the sons of Sony… there was an age undreamed of.

Thank you for reading! See you in June! Stay Retro!