Combatribes for SNES

Image: MobyGames

Combatribes

Crappy Double Dragon

Genre: action - beat em up

Publisher: Technos

Year: 1992

System: SNES

Gameplay Score: 1

Gameplay Notes:

Two buttons - punch and kick. No jump! No special moves, no weapons to pick up, no environmental obstacles. Very shallow gameplay. Not sure how to grab and throw enemies. Sometimes it happens but it feels random. You can jump on and attack enemies on the ground, but why would you do this? There are always so many enemies that this just makes you vulnerable. Enemies swarm and mercilessly attack so it's critical to get them to gather in front of you together. Enemies take a ton of hits and have no energy bars so you can't tell when they're going to go down. 20% draw distance. Very slow movement. The first few levels have enemies that match your speed but once you get to later levels they get so fast that it's basically an unfair fight, like a snail trying to outflank a cat. At that point the game becomes unplayable.

Level Design Score: 1

Level Design Notes:

Levels are unbelievably short. They are generally only two screens wide. Most include only one or two waves of enemies and then the boss. There are 1v1 fighting games with larger levels. Also, you can't interact with any elements like you can in most brawlers. There are no barrels to break to get points or health. In fact, I don't think there are any health pickups period.

Theme Score: 2

Theme Notes:

There's a heavy focus on the story, with a screen of dialogue before and after every boss fight. It's an extremely generic story though, so it's both the highlight and the lowlight of the game. The setting is a bit hard to pin down. It kind of looks like the neon-soaked 1980's punk scene in London or Tokyo, with lots of pink hair and pocketed vests going around.

Art Style Score: 3

Art Style Notes:

The artwork is detailed, but ugly at the same time. The neon color scheme hasn't aged well. Overall it's a nice effort but again, isn't nice to look at for long stretches. As a side note, the sprites are very small but the player select screen says that the three selectable characters are each about 7 feet tall. These guys should tower over everyone and everything but most enemies are the same size or even bigger. Pretty weird that this was included in the lore. It's a world of giants

Audio Score: 3

Audio Notes:

Decent soundtrack. Some fun tracks and good sounds.

Overall Score: 29

Review ID: 118