The Double Dragon series is the granddaddy of arcade brawlers, establishing the genre in the 80's. As cousins of fighting games, beat'em ups were entryways for streetwise fisticuffs to find their way into homes, as games like Bad Dudes, Renegade, and The Ninja Warriors upped the ante and interest. Double Dragon started to quickly show its age once Capcom's Final Fight showed up, and Sega's Streets of Rage and Golden Axe improved in gameplay and graphics. Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone and its NES port The Sacred Stones were about as impressive as using acetone for toothpaste, so the franchise was becoming irrelevant as the 90's hit. Could Technos Japan inject some new life into the brand with a sequel? Well, it had promise, but kinda flopped.

Developed by Technos Japan in 1992 and built exclusively for the Super Nintendo, Double Dragon 4, or as many games on the console were branded, SUPER Double Dragon (which was the style at the time) was packed with ambition, but was ultimately a product that ended up very rushed to development. Muneki Ebinuma, the lead producer on the game, had plans for a full, elaborate story, cut scenes, and pre-battle dialog between boss fights. Due to major time constraints, these ideas were never able to come to fruition, and all that remains are a ton of unused sprites that were unable to make it into the final product. So in the end, what players have is a Double Dragon game that's devoid of any kind of prologue, set-up, or purpose. It has no identity.

Starting with the graphics, Super Double Dragon looks pretty good. The sprites are still smaller than Final Fight and Streets of Rage 2, but they boast some good colors and there's a lot of animations for some. Parker, the dual sword wielding thug, is either missing frames or wasn't programmed with them, as he's the only enemy in the game that can't be grabbed. Billy and Jimmy aren't just palette swaps of each other, some of their animations are unique. Jimmy is a Southpaw and has a different combo finisher. There's no difference in the damage dealt between the two, but it's a nice touch.

Then there's the issue of the muddy pace. Super Double Dragon may boast some very good visuals, but it's not a fast game at all and there isn't a lot of flare to it. Despite leaping to the 16-bit platform, once you get past the solid detail, you're left with a game that feels very subdued compared to its predecessors or other games in the genre. Zero returning enemies from past games, like Linda Lash, Abobo, and Will (I know, the Shadow Clan is defeated by this point) just leave Super Double Dragon feeling lifeless. Granted, a lot of this is tied to much of the game's lore being left on the cutting room floor to establish this new threat from Duke and his gang. At least Steve, the martial artist in the business suit, is a pretty slick idea. That's something right out of late 80's, early 90's action flicks, and I dig it.

The controls are the deepest the franchise has dabbled into by this point. There's a lot available in your arsenal of attacks. A new Dragon Meter, a chargeable energy bar that launches some knockdown haymakers, or if charged halfway unleashes Billy and Jimmy's signature Tornado Kick. You can block and counter, perform quick succeeding kicks to break an enemies' defense, and two different types of throws.

The question I've found myself asking as the years went on; is this too much? There's not much differentiation in power with these attacks (the strike and throw combination seems to do the most damage), nor is there any real penalty, trade-off, or consequences for spamming them. So these techniques come off mostly as style points rather than a battle plan you have to lay out. Countering gets pretty monotonous, and the baddies just keep getting back up. It might be GETTING monotonous, but that's the story of Super Double Dragon, it's just lacking identity.

The music does sound pretty great. If I were to coin a term, it sounds very "SNESy", and hearing the signature Double Dragon themes blaring from the 16-bit beast is certainly a treat. Punches and kicks sound pretty meaty, but the grunts all get redundant after a while. 

Overall, Super Double Dragon really ends up being a real "what if..." when I read about what the ambitious plans were for this entry. I don't know if it's something that would have boxed with the juggernauts of the brawler genre at the time, like Konami's Batman Returns and TMNT: Turtles In Time, and the greatly overlooked Punisher beat'em up by Capcom, but I remain fascinated by the dream laid out for it. The Lee Brothers' star was pretty faded by this point, and Super Double Dragon just feels like merely an above average game in a series that had run out of influence.