Kicking it Old School: Double Dragon Neon

80s nostalgia is pretty funky at times, with some games endlessly referenced as glorious masterpieces and others often forgotten. Castlevania for example comes up a lot, and I'd be the first to admit I've brought it up, but hilariously I think it might actually be well known not because Castlevania itself is a classic (which it is, but) however because the second game was so bad and the series kept going for quite a few years until I think recently fizzling out. Perceptions of what is "enduring" often seems to rotate around how the series continued into not longer being marketable.

I'd really like an Altered Beast indie game, on that note. Can someone get on that? Simple platforming, measured methodical pace, turn into a dragon? You'd think with the rise of furry games on Steam this would have a built in market. Maybe one of the modes could be, I don't know, a unicorn? Bam. Dollars.

Regardless, Double Dragon is remembered but I think it might be remembered due to being referenced or being in movies or other general things. (You got fifty thousand on Double Dragon??)  It's strange, it's like nostalgia only sort of works nowadays if people keep bringing it back up. Feels like I live in a generation where people are real eager to go 'so do you remember...' Double Dragon: Neon, however, is basically the 80s revival you want for every franchise you ever loved even if you never thought about Double Dragon. Like Altered Beast. And Sonic the Hedgehog.

I went there.

Neon is beautifully referential and direly tongue in cheek but quite concerned with being a fun game, which adds far more to the actual validity of the game for me than all the nostalgia in the world. It does use the fact it is homaging to punch a woman in the gut in the opening, but I guess if there's a way to justify brawling through legions of dudes, it's the fact they punched your girlfriend in the gut?

I honestly could have done without that, reference or not.


I had played the original Double Dragon - or maybe the two player one, sequels are a bit murky back in the NES day (seriously if you don't know Mega man very well, pick out a random level from 2, 4 and 6 and see if anyone can tell you which game they're from) a fair bit as a youngster. I do remember it being hard, but then, everything was various degrees of hard back then. It was also, much like Golden Axe, super satisfying just for repeatedly punching dudes in the face in a repetitive, hateful manner.

DD:N is just as satisfying, though there's a bit of finagling to get the controls down. The hardest time I had with the game was seriously the first twenty odd minutes, as there's a couple systems it doesn't explain very well and the game actually uses some of the original moveset. How's THAT for nostalgia! Legitimately feeling like the old game!

To explain why this is interesting, for those who don't know or don't remember, the original NES has four directional inputs, two menu related buttons and two actionable buttons. As such, the original DD games used a lot of inputs that feel very strange to modern hands. It took me a couple levels to figure out you hit a downed enemy by pressing light attack + down (on the directional), and there's several moves I don't even reliably remember to do as well. If you do heavy attack + up during a combo, you'll launch into the distinctive roundhouse kick. I think? You can actually swap between chains, and the game has a lot of layers to its inputs. You can juggle enemies, and bounce them off the wall, and I think you can recover from knockdowns with button presses but I never got the timing right.

Combat is mostly very satisfying, though it's hard to figure out exactly how or why certain things work the way they do. It feels like the game is giving you tells, but I just don't seem to notice them, or they're just pure timing or something. I'm not too certain, but I can't reliably dodge certain attacks and the game just isn't doing enough to make me want to keep replaying to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong. A lot of the stuff in the game feels like it should have, in all honesty, been padded out to try to convey more of the mechanics.

But when combat is good, it's very good. When it is going well and the game isn't drowning you in gimmicks, it just feels and looks fantastic. Doink, doink, another William down.

The game's audio is almost to the point I'd call it exceptional. All of the enemies have quips, and other than the stupid rocket pack girls that shouldn't be in the game, they're all really funny to just listen to. Well, okay, the whip wielding Lindas with their jiggling breasts and sexually provocative lines aren't really an attempt at humor, but the voice acting is definitely good nonetheless. 'On your knees, Lees!' is probably about their only funny line, but they're all delivered well and in a threatening if slightly insane tone, so it works. It's like poetry. It rhymes. Most of the enemies taunt and whine as they're winning or losing, with special lines if an enemy lands a death blow. The main villain of the game has excellent dialogue, and while he doesn't show up that often in person, he'll talk through display panels or give commands over the radio to his minions.

The actual hitting and doinking sounds as enemies are bashed on, yell when they bash you back and get hit with lead pipes is very satisfying stuff. The music tracks are a little hit or miss - some of them are fantastic retro tracks that honestly sound like they came straight out of the 80s, but others are a bit dull or repetitive. But, as with the musician's other work I've reviewed recently, I feel like those are demands put on the production, and he's amazingly talented. The vocalist who voices Mango Tango, who I believe works with Kaufman often, is also really good. All of the tapes and special moves have short songs of their own in the menu screen, which is a nice little touch. Basically the game's sound is just consistently great stuff and you can just sit back, enjoying the listening process during the brief moments of downtime or while doinking Williams in the head.

The writing - what little writing there is - is witty where it counts. It's not Shovel Knight level where it does a lot with a little bit of sace, but it's in the same vein of feeling closer to an 80s or 90s game while still conveying more than those games did. I like the little quips and taglines, it's a cheerfully done game. "Face a new foe! Williams!"

High point of all of this is, to be honest, the art assets in the game are just fantastic. The enemies all move so smoothly and all the designs are fantastic updates or new creations that fit nicely into the world. I'm not up to date on my Double Dragon lore, so it's possible stuff like the ninja femmes aren't new, but they work well. Basic "skeletons" are repeated with different skins throughout the game, but that works just fine for me and there's tons of cute little touches, like hats on Abobos or completely different outfits on the ninja femmes. I admit that the game does have what we'll call a proclivity towards bouncing breasts and the enemies adorned with such, but it's not quite so that it starts to bother me. It looks very eighties anyway, but I guess a fair warning that it is very sexualized is worth making. But like, eighties sexualized. So there's like ... big hair. And racism.

One low point for the game is the boss fights don't really convey themselves well and you end up with a lot of stumbling around, rather baffled at how the fight is structured. I'm aware that older era gaming is built around less tells and more pattern recognition, and in this regar
d perhaps there is an intentional homage - but it still feels jarring played through modern lenses. You can spend a lot of fights wondering when you're supposed to be attacking or even how you're supposed to avoid incoming damage. Dodge into Gleam (Glean? Not sure) is at its worst on boss fights, since the timing on dodging is at least for me really finicky and I don't think you're meant to dodge everything or dodge into damage bonuses as often as you'd think.

It's not really a question of difficulty on your first or second playthrough, but rather becoming impatient and at times trying to force the fight to just end out of boredom. As I've said a million times, the game becoming essentially unresponsive as you "wait" for an opportunity is a type of "Difficulty" I have limited interest in, and the tension of a difficult to respond to situation quickly overstays its welcome before ascending to the glorious status of tedium. This is especially true of games where you have a limited, unhealing health bar, since you're always aware that you will eventually falter and waiting for 'another chance' becoming extremely frustrating. The game is generally great on the ground, but a lot of the boss fights feel too flighty and not enough fighty for them to be as enjoyable as I'd like.

There is a spectrum between shmup style constant incoming action and reaction, and waiting on your hands style mmorpg phase change gaming. Most of the time DD:N is very good at hitting the right mark, so don't get me saying it isn't, but some of the boss fights (which I don't want to spoil, they're totally wild when you first encounter them) I have very specific complaints about.

As for other flaws, one big mediocre point for the game is just how stupidly pointless the stances mixtapes can feel on both ends of their systems. When you have lateral upgrades like this, I really don't understand the point of having a bunch of useless junk - most of them offer you so little health that you need to play on such a razor's edge it makes the game more tedious than enjoyable, and as I said, the boss fights have so much health and can be so frustratingly hard to pin down you really do not want to play with other stances than training wheels/balanced until you're really, REALLY good at knowing when you're supposed to attack. Getting killed in two or three hits makes the game really unfun.

The big issue here is the game is a little mediocre when it comes to not overcrowding or requiring you play too many moves in advantage. A lot of the later enemies have punisher mechanics in play, for example, the ninja women will do a 'flip up' out of knockdown that basically always punishes you for being near them when they're knocked down. This can make it really hard to manage them, especially since they come out of stun and do a chain of super moves. Yes, it's a challenge, but it gets really frustrating to knock one down by mistake and then get juggled into helicopter blades or some other nonsense that, when you're using one of the high damage low defense tapes, just kills you instantly.

Also the fact the tapes are drops is more aggravating than its worth. It feels like they should just consistently level as the game goes, with the tapesmith and shop allowing you to favor some. Drops in general are kinda dumb in DD:N, a lot of stuff falls off ledges and while the game does have some mechanics to correct for this, I just don't see why enemies don't net an average amount of cash and xp upon dying. I get that every game on the planet "needs" ARPG elements but by that I mean I'm just sick of it. Getting a new tape is actually pretty irritating, since they're not easy to level unless you happen to get more drops, and in a lot of cases this is just a waste of time.

I do get the impression from reading online that people "fix" this issue by going back and re-playing the earlier levels repeatedly. Uh, that sounds like not a good ... Anything, at all, ever... What I ended up doing was just using "Balanced", because you can vendor purchase that, so it's like level 35 when my Absorb or Successive strikes are like, level 12. That's not a good system in action. You're just so much weaker than the special powers don't do anything.

There's also a mind-boggling design flaw in the priority of certain inputs. You can't always see the weapons on the ground, but grab will almost always go for weapons on the ground not the enemy stunned in front of you, so at times you'll go to do a toss and be baffled as you pick up something nearly useless like a fan, then get hit and probably killed. This really compounds how dumb some of the stances are, make one mistake you can't even see and get splattered while trying to use stunner or consecutive strikes. It's also just sort of silly that the more HP / defensive stances have more impact on some fights simply by increasing relative uptime. The middle of the game, for example, just has way way too much environmental damage that makes damage/stun stances rather poor choices. The whole helicopter bit is not nearly as funny or interesting as the designers clearly thought it was.

No, like seriously, there's a long helicopter fight with a bunch of terrible elements converging together - environmental hazards, enemies throwing weapons all over the screen, just tons of stupid crap. It is by far the worst section in the game, since it frontloads a ton of damage at the start of a level, and then the boss fight at the end is a Contra reference that feels ... A little off-base from the rest of the entire game. Though it is, well, 80s design as all get out. You can almost imagine the designer went to his kid and was like 'draw a ridiculous tank' and then yeah, there you go. That whole level I could probably do without. It's unusual to look at a game and be like "That entire section of content? Cut it, it is anti-fun" but yeah, this part kinda is. I really, really loathe the helicopter sections, they're just the worst elements of the game jammed down your throat.

Also why do loot drops like cash or tapes decay off screen, but the weapon spam in the helicopter section just stays there forever? It's really, really annoying to not realize an enemy looted a weapon from nearly off screen and then goes into invincibility frames out of nowhere. It's pretty annoying that a big chunk of the game's challenge is trying to pick out when enemies have those frames, I don't mind the enemy's basic attacks that have higher priority frames but just getting blasted for half a health bar out of nowhere is meh.

Lastly, the game has viewing depth issues, and sometimes it can be hard to visually pick out if you can hit or be hit along the perspective. This gets really bad with the flying enemies added midway through, which honestly aren't worth what they add to the game, even if they are really neat looking. They can be very difficult to snap decide as to the point on the plane where they are, which again compounds with how jumbled and busy the screen is sometimes. One of the bosses - not spoiling which - is extremely tedious when it comes to perspective and you spend a lot of time grinding your teeth as you're a pixel or two off from hitting its limbs. This just isn't very good design and kinda weirds me out.

None of these are game ending flaws or anything. The priority problem should have been beta tested out, and I don't think the hovering enemies should be in the game. I mean I love the way they look, but they're randomly difficult or not difficult at all. Tapes, as I said, probably should just level up as you play, or whatever. Grinding is just not fun to me, though, whereas some people find grinding really exciting. If nothing else, the game could just do with a little bit less in terms of weapons being all over the screen. I also really don't understand why an enemy with a knife receives invincibility frames during their attack animation. (Or at least becomes immune to stun, it's hard to figure) It makes them really, really scary and when there's weapons strewn across the screen during some fights you honestly just wish they weren't there. Enemy posture and stance doesn't change overly much when they're armed, so while a baseball bat or boomerang is easy to pick out, a knife or a weapon on one enemy in a crowd of three won't stand out. Then you're mid-strike and suddenly they're immune to your attack and stabbing you? I feel like this might be something from the original game, but it's rather obnoxious. You drop a weapon if you're so much as love-tapped, but enemies can hold onto theirs through multiple heavy attacks.

It can be a bit difficult to break up your attacks midway through. You can't cancel into other moves or dodges, which is good if you want to punish players for not planning but it does lead to these little bit seconds where you can see it coming and can't stop.

All in all I got DD:N in some $3 indiegala bundle and it was a pretty good deal. I don't even remember what else was in the bundle. The game isn't that long, and while it ostensibly has replayability it is a little bit mixed bag. They probably didn't need to develop ten stances and could have worked on balancing say, five of them, and the list of super moves feels overdone as well. The game isn't flawless, and while some of the flaws are homages to earlier game design, some of them are just little kinks or things they shouldn't have bothered with.

Like, as I said, you can vendor purchase some of the moves and stances, so you just use those. They're double the level of any of the other stances/moves. My "Balanced' in my one playthrough increases damage by more than my damage focused stances. Uh? Did they test that system at all? I guess if I keep playing over and over the other stuff catches up, but why would I?

Still, I rather liked DD:N, and some of the game's highs are quite high. If nothing else, the soundtrack and sense of humor are both excellent. I've read the game is a great deal better when played two player, but the game is hard enough that I don't think I want to ask any of my casual friends or sibling to play. I wouldn't highly recommend the game by any means, though a good half of my problems with the game are basically demonstrated in that horrible, horrible helicopter fight. You probably need a little bit of nostalgia for either the 80s or the genre to really love the game, but if you do I would definitely recommend it.