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Double Dragon (NES)

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Elementary, my dear Cactus.
This needs some investigation.
Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page.
Specifically: The European version of the game was published by Nintendo. Take a look at the differences between the two

Title Screen

Double Dragon

Developer: Technos Japan
Publishers: Technos Japan (JP), Tradewest (US), Nintendo (EU)
Platform: NES
Released in JP: April 8, 1988
Released in US: June 10, 1988
Released in EU: 1990


GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
MusicIcon.png This game has unused music.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.
RegionIcon.png This game has regional differences.


ProtoIcon.png This game has a prototype article
DCIcon.png This game has a Data Crystal page

Join Billy and Jimmy Lee on their his journey to rescue Marian from Willy his brother Jimmy. Sheesh.

Sub-Pages

Read about prototype versions of this game that have been released or dumped.
Prototype Info

Unused Graphics

Staff Roll

Unused graphics for a very nice looking credits sequence. In the final, the scene of Billy and Marian reunited is simply followed by a cut back to the title screen.

The final game actually has some leftover code that swaps in these graphics, but unfortunately, this code has a lot of issues, such as following an invalid JSR, which likely means it was abandoned some time before the rest of the game was complete, and there is no proper initialization for this code and synchronization with the current NMI system, so it can't work in the final version as is. Also, there are some errors in text resources with missing data offsets and wrong or missing string sizes.

Nesddragon-credits.png

However, you can see this Staff message in its original place after the ending sequence, just like in the arcade version, with some hacking work. Here [1] is the fixed version with the restored Staff sequence. To see it in action, with the level skip added, just press Select during the game until the ending screen is reached, then wait.

Double Dragon (NES)-staff.png

Still, it is not known where the chair graphics were supposed to be displayed and what palette it used. There are no such graphics in any version of this game on other platforms. We can only guess on how it should look like.

One of the guessed variants.

Dragon Head

Nesddragon-dragon.png

Found near the sprite graphics of the falling stalactite and Mission 4 wall-trap, this is the dragon-head statue from the final area with cracks in it. Also there is a sprite that is a copy of the version of the same dragon, used in the level 4 background, as well as a couple of sprites resembling the broken dragon's head fragments. Most likely, the dragon head was meant to be breakable either as a background static object, or a flying enemy, transforming from the background tiles to a sprite.

Abobo

DoubleDragonNES Abobo genbaku nage.PNG

Abobo was supposed to have a throwing move similar to the one he uses in the coin-op version. In the promotional brochure for the Famicom version, this move is listed as the genbaku nage (原爆投げ) or the "atomic throw." The English language manual makes a mistranslated reference to this technique by mentioning that Abobo "likes to throw bombs." This move was later given to Abobo's replacement Bolo in Double Dragon II.

Chin

DoubleDragonNES Chin climbing.PNG

With the exception of Abobo and Willy, all the enemy characters have ladder-climbing animations, but Chin is the only one who never uses his. When the player confronts Chin at the top of the construction site at the end of Mission 2, the player can climb back down to the lower floor and Chin will remain still.

Unused Music

Intermission

Like in the arcade version, the intermission theme before each stage is cut off around the 6 second mark, so it never gets to be played fully.

Hmmm...
To do:
Track music 0x23 is a looped version of the ending theme, most probably planned to be used at the staff roll.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

The U.S. title screen removes the bottom portion of the flames in order to make room for the Tradewest logo (the game's U.S. publisher), along with additional copyright text. It also adds a few flames on the sides.

Japan US Europe
Dd1nes jpn title screen.png Nesddragon-title.png Double Dragon (Europe) title.png