Good call on Final Fight 2 and 3. I totally agree with you, and I hope to get both games represented on RVGFanatic before the year is out, hell, maybe even before the summer is out. We’ll see. It’s nice to see all the love part 3 has received in the past 10 years or so. It was not well received back in 1996, but time has been very kind to it as now many retro gamers consider it to actually be a fine example of the genre.

I also prefer Brawl Brothers (I have a guilty pleasure for its cheesy American namesake) the most out of the Rushing Beat trilogy. Yes, it is like a comic book come to life in many ways. Jaleco got it right with that one. I hope to have the trilogy on RVGFanatic sometime this year as well, but especially Brawl Brothers. Until next time, cheers!

Honestly, it’s a shame that this game had a rushed production, and it shows due to the lack of in-game plot and point to it all; it doesn’t really matter whether the American version was finished first or not, the localized version is on Tradewest for scheduling it so early that Technōs Japan Corp. didn’t have time to put everything that was meant to be there at the start (like the fight against Duke’s shadow, the appearance of Marian, cutscenes, more obstacles, and a proper ending). =( It’s essentially an unfinished game, one that never saw a rerelease even to this day while the other Nintendo 16-bit Double Dragon venues (neither of which I played) were released on more than one system despite Technōs Japan Corp. not directly being involved in either of them.

And yet, despite its incomplete status, I actually found Return of Double Dragon to be a bit of fun when I played it several months ago. =) Yes, it is on the slow side (which I know will be a turn-off for most, and is the primary reason for this game’s lopsided reception) but the myriad of moves Billy and/or Jimmy can dish out more than makes up for that and there is a point to its slow pacing (the enemies are also slow walkers, and there’s a bit of rubber band AI to them which you can take advantage of while charging your gauge), despite there not being a health replenishing item anywhere here. The gameplay is versatile (I can’t think of many beat’em ups at the time that credited fight choreography, but I can see why that was the case: the moves look fluidly authentic), Kazunaka Yamane’s score is great (even that one song that was never used in-game but luckily can be listened to in the sound test; Robert C. Ashworth’s sound effects, on the other hand, are a mixed bag–that’s not a how a knife sounds like when it bounces off the floor, to name one example, but luckily the actual fight moves sound just right), and the game is equal times colorful and equal times detailed (the casino is a good way of starting the game in terms of eye candy, the airport stage is surreal especially when fighting in the runway below the plane, and there is a wonderful foreshadowing décor in the opening segment of the final stage). It’s just too bad that the game doesn’t end but it stops before the credits roll; not exactly a wholesome game without an in-game plot to support it, which may be another reason it’s getting a more mixed reception nowadays.

What could have been… Still, to me this game is a 7.5 kind of beat’em up for what it is (I do like playing them once in awhile but my go-to genres will always be platformers, RPGs, and puzzlers, and if it’s a hybrid then all the better) and it’s one of the better human-starring ones on the Nintendo 16-bit in my opinion alongside Capcom’s Final Fight 3 (even though, in hindsight, it’s a lot better than it has any right to be; it’s not a lazy rehash of the first Final Fight like Final Fight 2 was which automatically makes the threequel better, but that’s neither here nor there) and Jaleco’s Rushing Beat Ran — Fukusei Toshi (which I actually prefer out of all of these if only for its fast pacing, comic book-style starburst effects which give it a sense of identity, replay value stemming from which of the three bosses you fight and in which order depending on who you selected at the beginning of the game, and its catchy and riveting score).