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Double Dragon


adam1977

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Double Dragon was one of my favourite arcade games when I was a kid, along with Paperboy and Gauntlet, I could have sworn that DD was brought out for the A8, but it seems my memory is sadly lacking. I've checked online and it was brought out for the Atari 2600 and the 7800, but why not the 8-Bit home computers?? :(

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Basically the hardware sprites are not up for it - this game. Doing any kind of mock-up test for this game - would show a poorly converted game. Just look at any similar game already done that has figures moving around the screen - and you'll get the idea of how few colours and resolution is available for the figures.

(I did do a mock up screen of it - but it was using the Atari ST.)

It would require a really talented and determined programmer to take this project on - to produce something worthwhile and working...

You may as well ask for a StreetFighter 2 conversion? While this game could be done? The graphics would have to go through some kind of downgrade process to be doable.

 

Harvey

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Well,

 

there is no Double Dragon or Street Fighter for the A8, but if you are a big fan of beat-em-up games, this is one of the few available for the A8...

 

 

I had it in my collection and played it for a short while, but found it very repetitive and boring (and therefore gave it away)...

 

 

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Thanks for all the replies, the C64 version of Double Dragon doesn't look very appealing does it :D

 

I've never heard of Riot, it reminds me of Target Renegade, which I played lots on the Spectrum as a kid, Riot does look slightly repetitive and I could see the initial appeal would soon wear off :-D

 

I have played the SNES version of Double Dragon, I think I may have had it on my SNES back in the day ;)

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First DD on C64 sucked big time.

 

I'm kinda fond of Double Dragon II on C64 :)

It's not the best looking game on c64, but gameplay is surprisingly good.

 

 

For A8 you'll have to wait, but a decent beat em up in best style of 80s arcades is coming for sure. You'll just have to be patient and wait a year or two ;)

 

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All don't forget that when Double dragon was out for conversion to the home machines it was set up for mass fast ports to ready roughly at the same time for the launch..

 

Add that Ocean (wasn't it Ocean doing the port) were not fans of the Atari and it was never going to happen..

 

I'm sure we could have one and as Pop above seems to have some possible knowledge of one then lets just wait and see :)

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Add that Ocean (wasn't it Ocean doing the port) were not fans of the Atari and it was never going to happen..

The publishers were Melbourne House but they farmed the development out to independents, Ash Routledge and Dave Saunders (Ash & Dave from t'demo scene) did the final game that was released but they only got six weeks to churn their version out after a previous attempt fell through.

 

Ocean did produce a version of Double Dragon as well, but it was a few years later for release on cartridge.

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Ah, thank you me old mucker...I knew Ocean were in the mix somewhere as I can still see (in my head) the the old Double Dragon POS all over the stand at the PCW show I think, possibly the trade shows at The Angel...

 

Ah, good old Melbourne house, a few decent titles passed out of their doors but again no interest in the Atari that I remember, pure C64 iirc..

 

Poor old Ash and Dave (I remember their monikers well), a 6 week port.....Did they at least give them pre dumped level data or just do what a lot did and give them an arcade machine to play...

 

Ta TMR, I see the Kent-ness has been removed in favour of pure 'upt Norf' :)

Edited by Mclaneinc
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I suppose making a beat 'em up game where you get to set the story and limitations is something else than porting a beat 'em up game where people already have expectations and you need to try to match those as closely as possible. The manual for Double Dragon on the C64 even mentions the sprites will flicker in the middle, but that was the best the programmers could manage and all other solutions would've been worse. When it has come as far as the publisher conveys a note from the developers that "we didn't succeed quite as far as we wished, but at least you get something for your money", it is remarkable, almost tragic.

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Ah, thank you me old mucker...I knew Ocean were in the mix somewhere as I can still see (in my head) the the old Double Dragon POS all over the stand at the PCW show I think, possibly the trade shows at The Angel...

I still don't know where their version sprang from really, presumably they had to pick up a new license to do a from scratch conversion of a coin-op with that was already three years old; that's pretty bizarre when they could've got something more current instead.

 

One of the things I should still have somewhere in my "collection" is a budget version of Double Dragon but, due to a mastering error, it actually has Golden Axe on the tape... someone returned it to the shop despite the latter being a vastly superior game and still a full pricer at the time?!

 

Ah, good old Melbourne house, a few decent titles passed out of their doors but again no interest in the Atari that I remember, pure C64 iirc..

Well, by that point it was just a brand owned by Virgin if memory serves... by Double Dragon 2 they'd stopped using the name entirely I think?

 

Poor old Ash and Dave (I remember their monikers well), a 6 week port.....Did they at least give them pre dumped level data or just do what a lot did and give them an arcade machine to play...

Chances are they just got a video tape of the game being played through, the original coin-op developers usually didn't provide anything - so no dumps of graphics or map data - and even Ocean (who did get coin-op boards to work with at least sometimes) tended to work in the same way from what I gather.

 

I forget who it was, but remember an interview where one dev said they'd sometimes have to take a camcorder into the local arcade and film footage for themselves!

 

Ta TMR, I see the Kent-ness has been removed in favour of pure 'upt Norf' :)

Not really, been here for nearly seventeen years and still have the old accent... it's just not a Kentish one. =-)

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ATD talked of doing ST Super Sprint by taking a Camcorder and cassette player with them to the arcades.

 

Someone would play the coin op with another filming and they'd tape the sound and music as it played, but due to the chaos of an arcade, they'd be recording music and sound FX from the other coin ops at the same time :-D

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Perhaps we shouldn't be so harsh on poor arcade game conversions after all...

I know it's of little to no interest to most folks, but i always enjoy finding out why (beyond the obvious hardware restrictions), coin op conversions often turned out as badly as they did on multiple platforms.

 

It's a little window into how the industry worked back then.

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I suppose making a beat 'em up game where you get to set the story and limitations is something else than porting a beat 'em up game where people already have expectations and you need to try to match those as closely as possible.

I'm all for first option. Making brand new world with it's own rules, using machine advantages as much as possible...

I have a "beat em up a8" folder in my c:/dev :) So far it's just coupel gfx tests, but everything points to A8 being more than capable for real beat em up action....

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My 2 cents of comments is as follows:

 

Sure - the beat 'em up could be done reasonably well? on the A8 hardware - all it takes is some competent programmer keen enough to take up the challenge to do so. What has been done so far - are by programmers relatively new to the hardware - or lacking the experience needed to pull it off.

Of course - just don't expect a decent home conversion of Final Fight or Double Dragon etc to be done - it needs to be a radical redesign - of the graphics especially to allow a worthwhile project to bear fruit.-

 

As to the many home conversions of various mid-80s' coin games - that the A8 users have missed out on - done by Ocean and others? Very few of these games could have done competently for the 8-bit machines - to be worthwhile buying at their normal retail pricing. And I always thought that - the games players would have been better off spending their money on playing the coin-op games - instead of playing a boring, poorly done home conversion. There would be very very few titles that were the exception - that would be regarded as being amazing.

 

One of the few games that stood out to me - on the Atari ST - was Star Wars. Contrast that with Xevious - on ST - it simply failed.

 

It seems amazing to me - that Ocean did make money from it's home conversions - but then, we don't really know the numbers involved - and how profitable were they? Compared to unlicensed games which did show off what the hardware can really do?

 

For fans of arcade coin-op games - it was a matter of waiting for the home hardware to catch up with what was in the arcades - that it took the arrival of 16-bit games consoles with their hardware sprites and scrolling etc - to deliver worthwhile home conversions of the likes of Final Fight, StreetFighter II and others - the era of the early 90s'.

And these machines delivered home versions of games - that were of arcade quality - the likes of Contra 3 for SNES standing out.

 

Retrospectively - the A8 hardware can be pushed - by programmer(s) willing to put the time and effort to do so - with the projects chosen suitably for them.

 

Harvey

Edited by kiwilove
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I never realised they had to sometimes visit arcades and record the games, you'd have thought it could have been done a little more professionally :-D

 

That's how it was done in the old days, I don't think source code would have been particularly useful since the games were rushed out the door as fast as possible and time was of the essence. Also, the arcades were usually z80 and multi-cpu architecture, this would make direct ports much more difficult if not impossible given the hardware constraints of home computers.

 

I know that some of the musicians received the game music and sound effects on cassette tapes. Artists often had photos for reference.

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I never realised they had to sometimes visit arcades and record the games, you'd have thought it could have been done a little more professionally :-D

I think it was Domark who spoke of the delivery driver dropping the APB cabinet they were planning to loan the team converting it to various home systems at their offices and thus breaking it :-))

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This awakened a memory - around 1990/91, I visited my local computer shop in Tonbridge, who stocked a handful of Atari budget tapes, and they had some sort of catalogue of upcoming (expected) releases, which I'm sure contained Double Dragon on the Hit Squad label for Atari XL/XE. I think there was one other that I didn't recognise at the time, and didn't remember. Obviously they didn't happen, and the shop didn't last much longer either.

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I'm surprised people actually liked Double Dragon. I got a copy with my Amiga back in 1989 and I thought it was embarrassing rubbish. I didn't have many games though, so I played it - at least long enough to erase all the existing high scores.

 

I thought maybe it was rubbish because it was a bad conversion, but after seeing videos of the arcade version, it looks about the same.

 

Did you know there was game that combined Double Dragon and Ruff'N'Tumble? Actually.. there wasn't - but I imagined the possibilities with this screenshot. Behold.... "DoubleRuffDrag'N'Tumble!"

 

 

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