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Playing through the Steam version of Super Double Dragon on PC, switched to the later Japanese Super Famicom version, "Return of Double Dragon," and set to 150% speed. Default difficulty.
Port of the Technos Japan SNES/SFC beat-em-up. Lovely colors and music, exceptionally dull action/stage/enemy design. Default speed is unplayably slow; fortunately, this port has added a speed slider--150% was okay. But the fighting is still really boring; you can't even knock enemies off ledges or into spikes: they just get up in midair, Roadrunner style; and the spikes do nothing. The worst are the incongruous actual clowns with way too much HP.
You can switch to the later, Japanese version of the original SNES/SFC game, "Return of Double Dragon," which according to The Cutting Room Floor web site https://tcrf.net/Super_Double_Dragon has tweaks, level additions, and an Options screen that the US/International version didn't.
It's still really boring.
According to the description below NintendoComplete's video of the SNES version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7JpfAV8-oI - there's a power bar that charges when you hold down the shoulder buttons, and pops off special moves related to the power level--probably what the silent Charge buttons I couldn't figure out do. Looks like if you manage to get the bar fully charged, single punches and kicks deck opponents.
There's a Block button, which I didn't use; looks like you can trigger counter moves with it, if you have that kind of patience. Some enemies block a bit and that just delays things and adds to the boredom. Many enemies, especially later, will randomly counter punches and kicks, and those are too slow when you're surrounded, which is most of the time because surrounding you immediately is the AI's obsessive aim, so 80% of the time there didn't seem much point to doing anything other than jump kicks, which move you out of trouble and don't get countered.
Ah, that might not be so necessary in US/International version: TCRF says "On the Japanese version, enemies can duck end combo blows, thus preventing the players from finishing their combos"; in that case, maybe I'm NOT so keen on the JP version, because that breaks your basic attacks; I wonder if it also effectively increases the difficulty level significantly. The Japanese version ends hung on the game over screen (TCRF: "There is no ending text in the Japanese version")--although it does at least add a boss area and final boss; in NintendoComplete's video, the US/Int version goes right to the end text after you beat one of the repeating sub-bosses in a fairly generic hall.
The port defaults to a slightly vertically stretched screen ratio--probably a square pixel ratio. You can switch it to 4:3 in the menus.
The port's menus are surprisingly clunky--for instance when mapping a controller, most of the button icons are identical--and wrong--so it looks like it isn't working. (And my Hori PS4 stick's L2/R2 buttons weren't mappable.) Basic menu navigation is clunky, seeming to ignore obvious ideas of how to, say, confirm or back out. The Start/Ctrl button is particularly problematic: it acts as the SNES/SFC Start button, but really fiddly, and I usually had to sort of hold it for a split-second before it would act like the SNES/SFC Start button, so it was always anxious moments trying to Continue or Pause; if you hold it too long, it acts as the emulator's Menu button, adding another layer of confusion.
Super Double Dragon's planner, Muneki Ebinuma, went on to work as planner for Double Dragon Advance, and later wrote an interesting article about how with DDA he tried to correct what he saw as design mistakes they'd made in Super Double Dragon; he also described various challenges, influences, references (Fist of the North Star, Bruce Lee, etc), and design decisions involved: https://doubledragon.kontek.net/features/ddacommentary.html (English, translated from http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hzk/kommander/dda.html ).
In the description text for my latest play-through in MAME of the Double Dragon arcade ROM dumped from Double Dragon Trilogy on Steam, there's info on how to set all that up: https://youtu.be/64QIII8Dabg |
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