Why was double dragon always slow?

[II_DeLo_II]

Was playing double dragon on MAME and it was running slow. I was thinking it was the emulation but then I remembered I played the cabinet about 5 years ago and it was painfully slow then too (I even had it on free play and I was getting pissed!).

 

Why is this? Even when there aren't very many characters on the screen, the gameplay is horrid.

[Rybags]

Wasn't it one of the first scrolling punchups?

 

Uses 2x 6309 processors at 3.5 MHz, although some games only use extra CPU/s for sound processing.

 

It's kinda hard to say without knowing what the graphics hardware could do, but I'd guess that the AI probably takes a fair amount of CPU time.

I just gave the game a 5 minute run, and it definately slows down one there's 3 bad guys onscreen.

 

Agreed it's a bit of a bore due to the slowness - something like a 40% speedup would enhance the game a good deal.

 

Given that it came out in 1987, kind of strange that they didn't go for something gruntier like a 68000.