I learned about Double Dragon on the Sega Master System and saw several people say that they prefer it over the NES version. This made me curious about it so I gave it a try.

 

 

Let’s talk about the game today!

 

Game Basics

The version of Double Dragon that was released on the Sega Master System is a port of an arcade game that was developed by Sega themselves. The Sega Master System is a side scrolling beat ’em up like the arcade game. Unlike the NES version of Double Dragon, this version can be played in single player mode or in co-operative mode with a second player. In this game, players take on the role of Billy Lee (second player plays as Jimmy) as he attempts to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend from the Black Warriors. I don’t have the capability to play co-op so I only played single player in my playthrough.

 

 

The game has a health system, and each player gets three lives and unlimited continues except in the final mission. When you run out of health, you lose a life. The game doesn’t have items that can replenish your health, but you start each section at full health. When you die, you respawn right where you died, even when using a continue. In the final mission, there’s an easy to do cheat that will give you unlimited continues up until you get to the final boss. While this makes the game accessible and very beatable, I found that it removed all stakes for me.

 

Moves and Abilities

For an early 8-bit beat ’em up game, I was surprised at how many moves you could do in Double Dragon. Button 2 is for punching and Button 1 is for kicking. Unlike other Double Dragon games, your normal punch seems to have the farthest range and your kick doesn’t reach very far. Punching became my primary method of attack while playing this.

 

 

I read that you can do roundhouse kicks and uppercuts if you chain your kicks and punches, but I was never able to do this in the game as I found it quite difficult to chain attacks for some reason.

 

 

You can also do a headbutt and a backwards elbow to hit enemies behind you. But they even have much shorter reach, so I barely used these two moves.

 

 

Pressing the 1 and 2 Button together will do a jumping attack. On their own, you’ll do a jumping backwards kick which doesn’t come out immediately and still has a short range. Pressing either Left or Right on the directional buttons will let you do the reliable jump kick.

 

 

Finally, you can do headlocks to grab enemies, then continue to attack them with knee bashes to the head or a shoulder throw. I couldn’t do this reliably so I wasn’t able to get screen grabs. Because of reasons I’ll talk about in the next section, I mostly used punches and jump kicks for my entire playthrough of this game.

 

Designed for Difficulty

I had trouble with Double Dragon during my playthrough because enemies can attack you quickly. I mentioned not being able to chain punches and kicks, and that’s because enemies can counter-attack in the middle of your punch/kick sequence and break your chain. They can also do jump kicks out of nowhere. It is so tough to avoid taking damage.

 

 

Another issue that I had is how knockdowns seem to work. Rather than letting your attacks do knockdowns, it seems that knockdowns happen when you deal a certain amount of damage to an enemy. Normally, jump kicks can knock normal enemies down. Starting in Mission 3, a jump kick won’t knock down enemies with full health. Similarly, a single punch can be enough to knock an enemy down if they’ve already taken enough damage. In my opinion, this makes the game unnecessarily more complicated as you’ll need to keep track of how many times you’ve attacked an enemy.

 

A Handful of Enemies

Similar to the NES port of Double Dragon, the Master System version only has a few enemies. I was fine with it with the NES version because the game builds up to when bosses are introduced. For example, Abobo is the boss of Mission 1 and you won’t meet him until the end of that mission. But in the Master System version, Abobo appears in both the middle and the end of the level.

 

 

The Mission 2 boss, Jeff, doesn’t appear until the end of that level. But he doesn’t look like a boss at all. He looks like a regular enemy, so the battle with him didn’t feel remarkable. You’ll just fight palette swaps of the three regular enemies (Will, Rowper, Linda), Abobo, and Jeff, for the entire game.

 

 

The last boss is Willy, who is at least very distinct from normal enemies. He’s a little bigger (not as big as Abobo) and he carries a gun with him so he’s definitely memorable. One positive thing about this game’s enemy types is that different kinds of enemies can appear onscreen at the same time. Bosses are even accompanied by regular enemies.

 

Visuals, Sound, and Presentation

The Master System version of Double Dragon looks great for an 8-bit game developed in the late eighties. Character sprites are much larger and is a lot more colorful compared to the NES counterpart. Unfortunately, this version suffers from really bad pixel flicker which happens when you have too many sprites onscreen. This happens often and for long enough periods of time that you’ll really notice when it happens. If you play via emulation, there are some emulators that have fixes for this issue.

 

 

As for sound design, this version has the classic Double Dragon tunes. I guess I really don’t like the audio capabilities of the Master System because I wasn’t impressed, but I’ll blame the console for that and not the game.

 

 

In terms of presentation, this game does alright. It has an opening and ending cutscene that establishes your goal in the game really well. The HUD is clear with your health bar. No major issues, but there’s nothing special to note either.

 

Final Thoughts

After reading so many positive opinions about the Master System version of Double Dragon, my expectations were high. And I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed, because I was. The game is flawed, but it is solid. Compared to other games in the Master System game library, I think Double Dragon does stand out as a good game.

But I’ve played other Double Dragon games and those are much better. I think people prefer this version over the NES release because of two player co-op and bigger sprites. Normally I’d welcome having unlimited continues, but it makes this game too easy. The last time I played this game before writing this, I was actually falling asleep because there weren’t any stakes – I could get killed over and over and the game will just go on.

If you’re looking for a good beat ’em up experience on the Sega Master System, Double Dragon will give you a decent and entertaining enough experience. But if you’re not restricted to the Master System game library, there are better beat ’em up games out there. I would even tell Double Dragon fans to skip this one unless they’re really curious about it.

 

Click here to read about all the Double Dragon games that I’ve played. And check out the other Master System games that I played and wrote about here!