The former only shows a tiny strip of the area and thus feels really claustrophobic. The ZX Spectrum has two versions of the game, one for the standard 48K models and an enhanced port for machines sporting 128K of RAM. Two players can easily create a barrage of shovels where no enemy can break through. The Amstrad CPC version looks almost astonishingly good, but the gameplay feels a bit stiff while the hit detection is rather loose, which surprisingly makes the game really easy. However, the Amiga version justifies its existence thanks to the great tracker chiptune music alone, even if it’s only one melody playing the entire game. Unfortunately the one-button problem is still a major inhibition for enjoying any of them, and with the new move set this is somehow even worse than before. The Amiga version even uses a nice high resolution that shows more of the playing field even than the arcade original, while the Atari ST and IBM PC versions are rather cramped with thick black borders. The 16-bit computer ports by Binary Design look a lot more like the real deal this time. The more rugged look suits the setting well, and the music is as great as ever – the “Easy Lover” ripoff in the first stage notwithstanding. Overall, Double Dragon II is a worthy successor, if a little bit too similar to the original, and the one big innovation with the controls is the part that’s most off-putting about it.

At the height of their jumps, Billy and Jimmy can perform a spinning kick in the air, which henceforth became one of their trademark moves in the series.

Despite the weird controls, the available moves are mostly the same, with two notable exceptions: The headbutt is gone, but replaced by a much more impressive attack. The whole affair is more confusing than anything, and even if you thing you’ve mastered it, you might still get thrown off your game when things get crowded. The standard forward attack is always a punch and the standard backward attack a kick, so if you want to kick an enemy in front of your character, you first have to turn around. This may sound intuitive at first, but to anyone who’s played a beat-em-up before (and probably most anyone else, too) it’s really hard to get used to. So the left button always attacks left, the right button always right. The new input scheme doesn’t assign attacks to buttons in a fixed manner, but relative to the direction the player is facing. Unfortunately, the area they chose to experiment in was one that really didn’t need fixing: the controls. Even though there still wasn’t much competition on the market – Final Fight was yet a full year in the future – the guys at Technōs apparently felt a need to innovate at least in some way.

Double dragon 2 nes cover