Tag Archives: NES Online

Double Dragon II: The Revenge Review

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It’s tome to look at the sequel to the original Double Dragon. Double Dragon II is a pretty solid followup that handles everything just as good as the first game except for a slightly weaker story experience. At the same time it doesn’t give us any crazy loop levels this time. (Still can’t believe the first one did this) So I’d say that this does beat the original game. It’s really got all the hype you could want from a classic NES game and is a fun way to spend around 30-40 minutes.

The plot of the game is definitely a lot darker than the first one. Instead of being kidnapped, the main heroine is murdered by an opposing gang this time around. The heroes decide to avenge her and head off to destroy the gangs. This will be difficult though as the villains heavily outnumber them by hundreds of fighters. That’s not enough to set these guys back but they’ve also got to find the main hideout which will be tricky. Fortunately they have a lot of henchmen to beat up and one of them ought to know where the villains are. From there it is just a matter of finding the right one.

So I was pretty surprised at the story. I mean, it just seemed really intense for back in the day. That being said, towards the end of the game they start hinting that the heroine is actually alive. We seemingly hear her voice after all. Unfortunately the game cuts out before you can get there. I guess there’s some kind of trick to actually facing the final boss or maybe it’s a difficulty level thing. How the game ended on my playthrough is you fight a shadow clone of yourself. It’s always fun to do that but I never liked the idea of the game hiding the final level behind another difficulty. Cmon, you should let me actually get the ending. Having a bonus for people playing higher difficulties makes sense, but make it in the form of a post game or something instead of cutting out my ending. I thought that was uncalled for.

As for the gameplay, it’s your classic 2D beat em up. You have to keep fighting through scores of enemies in order to beat the level. A lot of them are big bruisers this time so definitely time your punches right or you’ll eat a counter worth a ton of damage. There isn’t much to the controls so you should know how to play the whole thing straightaway without any real problem. That being said, the ninjas will still be a pain to deal with. They move incredibly fast and are constantly jumping. They also like to throw things at you once in a while and I don’t know what the proper strategy is to deal with them. They definitely caused me a ton of restarts and rewinds so these guys are definitely serious business. They were actually even tougher than the bosses to be honest.

The graphics are pretty fun. There is a noticeable improvement which is always good to see. The character designs and stage layouts are all pretty fun. Then when it comes to the soundtrack it’s pretty pleasant. I can’t really say that it’s memorable though but I’d say that the important thing is that it’s not distracting in a bad way. A good soundtrack should enhance the experience and I’d say that it does even if only slightly. The game’s fairly short also so it’s not like you got to experience it for very long. You’ll be through the game in no time.

There isn’t really much replay value though. I suppose if you picked the wrong settings or something then you will need to play the ending again. I’d look up why you don’t get the real ending before you play the game though just to save yourself some time. If it is that you have to beat the game twice no matter what they that’s really forced to try and make the length better. I never support that kind of practice, it just seems a bit underhanded to me. You shouldn’t force people to play your game a lot through gimmicks like that.

Overall, Double Dragon II really shows you what a sequel is supposed to be all about. It grabs the positives from the first game and erases the big negative I had with it. All of the levels here are pretty linear and you don’t have to worry about the game trying to trick you. It’s all about just using your skills here and fighting with great speed and precision. So long as you do that then you’ll be okay. I’m slowly but surely making my way through all of these classic NES games. I think this may have been the last full fighting game left though so it’ll be missed.

Overall 6/10

Double Dragon Review

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It’s time to look at an old beat em up game for the NES. I’m pretty familiar at least with the title because this was a pretty popular game back in the day. Who doesn’t like a good 2D beat em up right? The only thing holding this game back is that it randomly decides to throw an infinitely looping level at you during the campaign. Why would a game even add that? I feel like there is no real benefit to doing so and it just throws you out of your rhythm. Still, the game is definitely fun and it has an actual plot which is always nice.

The game starts with a girl being kidnapped by a gang of thugs. The main character decides to save her, but to do so he will have to travel across cities and mountains to their base. He is also up against an entire city’s worth of thugs who are out to get him. It won’t be easy to stop all of them, but that’s fine. The main character is ready to do whatever it takes in order to win and he is clearly not opposed to getting into some fights. If anything he looks forward to the action.

The controls are pretty simple. You can punch, kick, and do a flying kick. You can also grab the opponent to get some extra pummel damage in which is pretty handy. To continue to going through the level you have to defeat all of the enemies you currently see. After a few waves of this you will make it to the next level. Most of the enemies are pretty easy to dispatch. I recommend kicking over punching as it has a longer range so it’s just a lot more efficient. They will have a hard time landing a counter hit on you.

The toughest enemies are the big dudes who show up to smash your health away. The trick to beating them is to kick when they are the maximum distance away from you. That way you can unleash all 3 kicks in time to knock them down. That’s absolutely your best bet here and if you do that then you will certainly be in a great spot. It’s easier said than done though so you will likely need to work on the timing a bit. A lot of times enemies show up out of nowhere too and throw things at you which are hard to react to in time. These items take a lot of health away so you’ll likely need a few restarts. Still, eventually you will have beaten the game. There are only 4 levels if I recall correctly so that won’t take you very long at all.

The gameplay is straight forward as I mentioned, but the one thing holding it back is level 3. I don’t see why a level loop was necessary. It’s really just penalizing the player for going ahead and kicking everyone around. There’s no reason you should be looking for a secret exit because you haven’t needed one throughout the game. Up til now all you had to do was just beat people up and that worked really well. I feel like this was just to extent the game a bit and it didn’t really age well.

The graphics are pretty solid though. I like the various level backgrounds. You can use quite a few objects throughout the game and it’s always easy to tell what you’re using. The character models are good and the main music theme is pretty solid as well. I definitely didn’t have any complaints with this. There isn’t much replay value since the game is so short and there is no post game content to try and tackle so this is definitely a game that you just play through once and call it a day.

Overall, Double Dragon is a pretty fun game. It may not be the game of the year material you may expect it to be, but you’ll have a good time. It’s fairly short but should still last you for around 30 minutes. Maybe even longer if you get tricked into the infinite level for a while before realizing what is going on. The levels all have time limits which is the main indicator that something is wrong. The time limit is around 2-3 minutes so if you’re still running and there isn’t much time left then you know that something isn’t adding up. If you have the Nintendo Switch Online then there is no reason not to check this one out. The Switch Online even has Double Dragon II already so then you can see if that one does a good job of following up the original.

Overall 6/10

Gradius Review

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It’s time to look at another classic NES game. This one is a retro shooter that you may be familiar with. Gradius definitely has a pretty epic cover. I know you can’t judge a game by its cover but if you ever could then this would be the one. It does have an actual ending with a final boss so I was happy to see that. The last few games didn’t really deliver with an ending on the NES so I take what I can get. It’s still a pretty short game though at only around 20-25 minutes, but it’s a good time. The difficulty level here is pretty crazy though so I wonder how you could beat it without a lot of rewinding and such. I suppose in the end people found a way.

The the gameplay here is that of a 2D shooter. You have a main blaster and when you defeat enemies they drop power ups which upgrades your ship. It seems like the powers stack which is pretty cool. Your speed also starts to get bumped up which is a mixed bag. On one hand greater speed is usually a lot of fun because you can essentially do anything. On the flip side, you move so fast that it is very difficult to just dodge an attack. A lot of the time your dodge will end up bumping you into an energy blast or into the wall. A lot of my deaths came this way rather than actually falling in battle. So to an extent you actually may prefer not to get all of the power ups. The issue is that you can’t avoid the speed if you want better lasers so while it’s a tough call I’d say to just grab them.

The best power up is definitely when you get a little energy disc who will follow you around and shoot blasts of its own. By the end I had two of them which was pretty cool. They really had my back. There’s one level in particular that is tough to move in because the ceiling is small and you have little robots running along it. If they get behind you then it is really tricky to land a good hit on them. That’s where your little assistants come in. They have no trouble shooting behind you and catching all of these blasts.

In a sense this game plays out like one of those bullet timer games where there are energy blasts everywhere. A single shot can take out your ship so you really have to keep blasting. There are 7 main levels and there is a boss at the end of each one. The bosses are actually the easiest part though. I only lost a few times to them until the final boss but the others go down in a cinch. You just gotta keep working at it but their attacks are very slow. The final boss seems like a homage to the Mother Brain. It can’t really move or fight back much though so you’ll beat it with ease. That’s the problem with these bosses who don’t have arms or legs, they just can’t really fight back and it gets them into all kinds of trouble.

The graphics are pretty good. It’s aged pretty well in that respect and the game is also pretty good about not lagging. Only near the end of the game where there are scores and scores of enemies will the game start to freeze up. Otherwise you’re good on that front. The soundtrack is also pretty solid with a good tune or two here. It really gets that sci-fi feel across.

Overall, Gradius is a pretty fun game. I’d rate it higher but 20 minutes is still a very short amount of time to keep yourself busy. The levels keep on looping across various cycles which get harder and harder so I suppose it would last you a while if you want to beat all the cycles. It’s still the same levels though so I can’t really say that I would really be working on that for very long. There are still quite a lot of NES titles left to play after all so I can’t forget about them. Still, if you have the NES Online then this is a fun one to check out. There was definitely more effort put into it than some of the others that I’ve played.

Overall 5/10

Excitebike Review

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It’s time to look at another classic NES game. This one’s very retro, but I’m sure many of you are familiar with it. Excitebike is one of those racing games that you just tend to see everywhere despite not getting a lot of sequels. Excitetrucks for the Wii is the game in the franchise that I know the most about by far. That was a really fun game. This one has some pretty solid gameplay at its disposal but there isn’t much content even for a NES game so you won’t be here for very long.

There are 5 levels in the game, 10 if you count the reverse levels. Each level is around 1.5 minutes long so you can beat the game in about 7 minutes or 14 if you play them all. That’s really not a lot of time and there are no more modes to play. The only other option is a level that goes on forever which is neat I suppose, but there’s no real replay value to it because it doesn’t keep track of a score or anything. You can’t die, you just keep on driving forever. So if you spent any coins on this in the Arcade I get the feeling that you would be disappointed. Likewise if you bought a physical copy on the NES. You just need something more to do if you ask me.

The graphics are pleasant enough. It’s a colorful game and I especially like when the other racers get involved. It’s always more fun when you’re racing with actual opponents. You can knock them down if you bump into them while you are mostly ahead. Otherwise if you bump into them then you will just be knocking yourself over so it’s all about timing. Only knock them off balance when you have the lead. Beyond that just drive while going between lanes to dodge obstacles. Jumps can be tricky and if you don’t balance yourself right then you go into a tumble animation and can’t move for a few seconds.

In general I do think 3D racing beats 2D though. I always like to see where I’m going to better anticipate the obstacles. In that sense I would consider 2D racing to be the hardest form of the genre. It can also be tough when you’re running towards the screen since you really have to react quickly. If you don’t then be prepared to suffer defeat although in this game there is no such thing as defeat so you don’t really have to worry about that. Considering when the game came out I’d say they did a good job with the gameplay. I personally found it fun enough, I just don’t think I would be playing it for very long. After even 20 minutes you’ll have played every level twice already so you’ll be ready for the next conquest.

Overall, Excitebike is a game with solid gameplay and animation for its time. It’s reasonably fun, but there is just nothing to it. Even for a NES game this is pretty low on content. I’d like to see a modern reboot of the game because I think you could do a whole lot with this on the Switch. In the meantime if you have the Switch Online then this is a pretty good pickup. It’s free anyway so you may as well play it for a few minutes right? I see that there is another Excitebike type game on the list so I look forward to checking that one out pretty soon.

Overall 5/10