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By Cloudmann Introduction: In 1989, Double Dragon fever was at its height and everyone wanted the sequel in their homes. Not to be left out, Virgin Mastertronic did conversions for consoles and for the IBM PC. The effort squeezed into conversions like the NES, Gameboy and PC Engine titles was missed out in the PC conversion. Overall, this game is a very rushed, half-done effort that leaves a lot to be desired in almost every category. While the game certainly had potential on the drawing board, too many shortcuts were taken, and this turned into a less than mediocre game.
Graphics: C+ All the graphics here are ported directly from the arcade. Pixel for pixel, everything looks great - except for the choppy scrolling, bad frame rates (used to save precious graphic memory, and 16 onscreen colors. While Virgin made good use of the 16 colors, everything looks a bit washed out and grainy. Why only 16 colors were used in VGA mode is beyond me, but this game could've had arcade-perfect graphics. Too bad.
Sound: D- My old 1984 Ford Escort was largely held together by a mixture of rust and paint and it used to chew through brake pads every few months. Once, I went about a year between changing pads, and my calipers started cutting into the rotors every time I stopped, sparking like fireworks and squealing like a million nails running down a chalkboard, much to everyone else's dismay. Once, the high-pitched noise actually cracked my side view mirror (I got rid of that very soon after). That P.O.S. car sounded much better than this game does.
Enemies: C+ All the baddies from the arcade version are here and they all have all of their moves, but the AI is pretty difficult and seems to know that the player's game control sucks, as it takes advantage of this and beats you senseless. Everyone's here, but everyone’s way too cheap.
Weapons: C Looks to me like all the weapons are here, but because of the generally crappy control scheme of the game, weapons slow you down, limit your moves and actually hinder your progress, which makes them less desirable than hand to hand combat. Bad, bad programming. Go figure.
Controls and Moves: D+ Poop. Plain and simple. I'm not sure if it's the jerky graphics or the whacked out orientation of the moves or the general unresponsiveness of the game, but the game control is pure poop - a great big steaming pile of it, and more than anything else, it kills this game. Forget keyboard control. The joystick control is only marginally better.
Modes: B One player and two player. That's it. There's no versus mode here. Billy and Jimmy don't get to fight at the end of the game either. Two player mode is pretty useless, as one player will have to use the keyboard and that control scheme is pretty crappy and generally unresponsive.
Conclusion/Overall: C- This is a generous score, but I can't really give this game a "D" because the developers tried in a whole lot of areas. They just overlooked a whole lot of other areas, unfortunately. Polish really wouldn't make this game shine; it needs a complete work over. While this game is a better effort than the PC conversion of DD I and is a better game than the PC version of DD III (even though that game is a closer translation), it's still a very weak game, and that's really too bad.
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