Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone

Double Dragon basically made the brawler what it was. Unfortunately, its position at the height of beat em ups was very short lived. By the third game, an externally developed one called “The Rosetta Stone” that replaces the postapocalyptic streets with a world tour, it had been left behind by the likes of Final Fight. Really far behind.

If Final Fight has fluid controls that only seem slightly worse or clunky now than they did over thirty years ago, this feels like someone at the time who played both would have noticed it. The characters just move like they’re pieces on grooved slots (maybe it was even programmed like that). On top of it, being able to buy power ups with real quarters made this one of the first games with microtransactions.

So yeah, there’s a reason why Double Dragon fell out of favor. It didn’t make good games, and this was definitely not a good game.