Double Dragon IV

Double Dragon IV is a direct sequel to the classic beat ’em up series, continuing the story of brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee. Set after the events of the original NES and SNES titles, the game returns to its 8-bit roots with pixel-art visuals and side-scrolling action. Players fight through waves of enemies from the Black Shadow Warriors gang across multiple stages to rescue a kidnapped Marian.

Double Dragon IV: A Requiem for the 8-Bit Era

In the pantheon of video game revivals, few are as polarizing, as fiercely debated, or as nakedly nostalgic as Double Dragon IV. Released in 2017 by Arc System Works, this title is less a sequel and more a time capsule, a deliberate and unapologetic attempt to resurrect not just a franchise, but a very specific, pixelated moment in gaming history. To review it is to grapple with the very nature of nostalgia, the evolution of game design, and the chasm between what was once celebrated and what is now expected.

Introduction: The Ghost of Dragons Past

The Double Dragon series is foundational to the beat-’em-up genre. Its influence is etched into the DNA of countless games that followed. When Arc System Works acquired the rights to the franchise in 2015, hopes were high for a modern revival that could honor the past while pushing the brothers Lee into the future. Instead, what arrived was Double Dragon IV, a game that so meticulously replicates the look, sound, and feel of the 8-bit NES entries—particularly Double Dragon II: The Revenge—that it feels less like a new game and more like a lost ROM discovered on a dusty cartridge. The central thesis of this review is thus: Double Dragon IV is a fascinating, flawed, and fiercely authentic archaeological artifact, a game that succeeds precisely because of its devotion to its source material, yet fails for the exact same reason. It is a game out of time, for a specific audience, and its value is almost entirely contingent on the player’s willingness to accept its anachronistic design.

Development History & Context: The Guardians of the Flame

The development of Double Dragon IV is a story of returning legends. Arc System Works, a studio renowned for its technical prowess in fighting games like Guilty Gear, assembled a core team of just five developers, many of whom were veterans of the original Technōs Japan titles. Director Yoshihisa Kishimoto, character designer Koji Ogata, and composer Kazunaka Yamane were all brought back to the franchise they helped create decades prior.

Their vision was not to modernize. It was to replicate. In interviews, the team explained their deliberate choice to use the NES version of Double Dragon II as their template, not the more powerful arcade original. The reason was twofold: firstly, the NES games had a visual and auditory consistency across all regions, and secondly, this was the version most fondly remembered by a global audience. They were not building a new game; they were painstakingly reconstructing a memory.

This development occurred within a specific technological and market context. The game was built using the Unity engine, a modern tool used to create something deliberately archaic. It was released in January 2017 for a mere $6.99, a price point that signaled its status as a niche, budget-title curiosity. The gaming landscape at the time was one of high-definition realism and complex systemic depth. Double Dragon IV stood in stark, pixelated opposition to all of it, a defiant throwback in an industry constantly looking forward.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive: A Tale Retold

The plot of Double Dragon IV picks up immediately after the events of Double Dragon II. Having defeated the Shadow Warriors, brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee are now seeking to spread their Sōsetsuken martial art by establishing dojos across the United States. Their peace is shattered by a new threat: The Renegades, a gang that has allied with the remnants of the Shadow Warriors to eliminate the Lee brothers once and for all.

The narrative structure is pure, unadulterated 8-bit. The story is advanced through brief, text-based cutscenes between stages, often featuring the iconic disembodied “Mickey Mouse hand” pointer guiding the player to the next location. The dialogue is functional and campy, with lines like Burnov telling the brothers he was “hired by Jake of the Renegades.” The damsel-in-distress trope is resurrected without irony, as Marian is kidnapped once again, a plot point the game even lampshades by reusing the exact same abduction cutscene from the first NES game.

Thematically, the game explores familiar territory: brotherhood, the spread of a martial arts philosophy, and the cyclical nature of violence. The new antagonists, the Okada sisters (Casey and Shannon), serve as Evil Counterparts and Distaff Counterparts to Billy and Jimmy. Their backstory, revealed in the latter half of the game, involves their family being slaughtered for being weak, leading Casey to become obsessed with strength. This provides a slight moral complexity, as the Lees ultimately defeat them not with killing blows, but with a lesson about using martial arts to overcome weakness—a rare moment of thematic depth in an otherwise straightforward revenge plot.

The narrative’s primary function is to string together a series of locations and boss fights. It is a skeleton of a story, but one that is perfectly in keeping with the NES era it emulates. It provides just enough context for the action without ever getting in the way.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems: The Soul of the NES, For Better and Worse

This is where Double Dragon IV is most fiercely debated. The core gameplay is a direct translation of the NES Double Dragon formula. Players control Billy or Jimmy (or both in local co-op) through 12 side-scrolling stages, punching, kicking, and utilizing a small arsenal of special moves—the whirlwind kick, the hyper uppercut—to defeat waves of enemies.

The Core Loop: The loop is simple: walk right, defeat all enemies on screen, proceed. The controls are deliberately stiff and committed. Movements are not fluid; animations have a tangible wind-up and recovery period. This is not the smooth, combo-heavy combat of modern brawlers like Streets of Rage 4; it is a methodical, almost tactical game of positioning and timing. A misplaced punch will leave you vulnerable, and enemies are ruthless in their exploitation of openings.

Flawed Systems: The game inherits the flaws of its ancestors. The lack of a dedicated block button is a significant omission in 2017, making crowd control against encircling enemies an exercise in frustration. The collision detection can feel inconsistent, with hits sometimes registering from seemingly impossible distances. The most criticized element is the platforming. The Lee brothers are not agile platformers, and sections requiring precise jumps over bottomless pits feel clunky and unfairly punitive, often leading to cheap deaths and the loss of precious continues.

Innovative Modes: Beyond the Story Mode, Double Dragon IV offers two significant additions:
* Duel Mode: This transforms the game into a one-on-one fighting game. By progressing through Story and Tower Mode, players unlock a roster of over 15 characters, including all the enemy bosses and palette-swapped variants. While simplistic, it adds substantial replay value for fans.
* Tower Mode: An endurance-based survival mode where players must clear floor after floor of enemies with a single life. This is the ultimate challenge for mastery, unlocking secret characters and providing the game’s toughest tests.

The UI is spartan and functional, and the “continue” system is brutally old-school. The experience is designed to be played in short, intense bursts, a design philosophy directly at odds with modern expectations of accessibility and player forgiveness.

World-Building, Art & Sound: The Aesthetic of Authenticity

Double Dragon IV’s presentation is its most successful and consistent element. This is a masterclass in Retraux.

Visuals: The game does not use upscaled or touched-up NES sprites; it creates new sprites and backgrounds that perfectly mimic the 8-bit style. Koji Ogata’s character designs are instantly recognizable, with returning favorites like Abobo, Linda, and Burnov looking exactly as they did in 1989, albeit with a few new animations. The new enemies, like the kunoichi Ayumi and the sumo wrestler Kodani, fit seamlessly into the established aesthetic. The color palettes, the flickering sprite limitations, and the simplistic background details are all meticulously recreated. It is a flawless visual facsimile of a late-era NES game.

Sound Design: Composer Kazunaka Yamane returned to score the game, and his work is phenomenal. He reportedly composed new music and then converted it into an authentic 8-bit soundtrack. The result is a chiptune album that stands among the best in the genre. Tracks like the desert theme and the final boss music are instant earworms. The game even includes an option to switch between this “NES-style” soundtrack and a more modern, sampled version, a wonderful nod to the player’s preference. The sound effects—the thud of a punch, the shing of a knife—are also lifted straight from the original, completing the sensory time warp.

Atmosphere: The overall atmosphere is one of pure, uncut 1980s arcade nostalgia. From the neon-drenched cityscapes to the dusty highways and Japanese castles, each location feels like a page from a forgotten issue of Nintendo Power. The atmosphere is not sophisticated or nuanced, but it is powerfully effective in its singular goal: to make the player feel like they’ve plugged a new cartridge into their old NES.

Reception & Legacy: A House Divided

Upon release, Double Dragon IV was met with deeply divided reviews. On aggregator sites, it holds a Metacritic score of 49/100 on PS4 and 50/100 on PC, indicating “generally unfavorable” and “mixed or average” reviews, respectively.

Critical Reception: Critics largely acknowledged its authenticity but lambasted its refusal to evolve. Publications like IGN (3.5/10) and GameSpot (5/10) criticized its “clunky mechanics,” “cheap shots,” and “frustrating design,” stating it “shines a light on the shortcomings of the time” (EGM). Conversely, outlets like TechRaptor (80%) praised it as a “pure nostalgia trip” with “interesting combat tweaks,” and Hardcore Gamer (4/5) called it “possibly its best home game to date.”

Player Reception: The player base was similarly split. A vocal contingent of hardcore fans celebrated it as the true sequel they had always wanted. User reviews often contain perfect scores, praising the authentic feel and the sheer joy of a new Double Dragon that played like the classics. Detractors found it to be an “aggressively mediocre” (Way Too Many Games) and “insult to the series” (Jeuxvideo.com).

Legacy: The legacy of Double Dragon IV is complex. It is not a influential game; it did not redefine the genre or spark a new wave of 8-bit revivals. Instead, its legacy is one of purity. It stands as one of the most authentic, uncompromising retro revivals ever made. It made no concessions to modern audiences. Its commercial and critical performance was modest, but it proved there was an audience for such a specific vision. It arguably served as a learning experience for Arc System Works, who would later release the much more acclaimed and innovative Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons in 2023, a title that successfully married retro aesthetics with modern rogue-lite mechanics. Double Dragon IV is the rigid, purist precursor to that more adaptive and successful experiment.

Conclusion: The Verdict of History

Double Dragon IV is not a “good” game by contemporary standards of design, accessibility, or technical achievement. It is riddled with archaic flaws, frustrating difficulty spikes, and a stubborn refusal to innovate.

Yet, to dismiss it on those terms is to miss the point entirely. Double Dragon IV is not for everyone. It is a game for a specific, niche audience: the die-hard Double Dragon fan who holds the NES trilogy in sacred regard; the historian fascinated by exacting recreations; the player who seeks the specific, unvarnished challenge of a bygone era.

Its place in video game history is secured not as a masterpiece, but as a curio—a flawless, almost academic, reconstruction of 8-bit design philosophy. It is a time machine that only goes one way, and whether the journey is worthwhile depends entirely on whether you ever wanted to go back. For those who did, Double Dragon IV is a near-perfect, if deeply flawed, pilgrimage. For everyone else, it is a museum piece: fascinating to look at, but difficult to love. The final verdict is that it accomplished exactly what it set out to do, and in that narrow, specific mission, it is an undeniable, if controversial, success.