Return of Double Dragon (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Technos' 1992 beat 'em up for the SNES, Return of Double Dragon.

Played through on the hard difficulty setting.

Return of Double Dragon is the Japanese version of the game released in the United States as Super Double Dragon. There are several differences in gameplay between the two versions, so if you'd like to see the American version for comparison, you can find it here:    • Super Double Dragon (SNES) Playthroug...  

The team at Technos had slightly longer to work on and tweak Return of Double Dragon than they did Super Double Dragon, and the couple of weeks spent made a big difference to how the game feels.

The level of challenge has been toned down considerably, and thanks to the inclusion of an options menu, you can now choose your difficulty setting. The hard setting in Return is slightly easier than the stiff challenge that Super was, so if you ever found Super way too hard for its own good, you'll probably like this much better. The enemies can now dodge, and some go into a sort of "rage mode" if they get whacked - it's pretty funny to see them punching the sidewalk as they amp themselves up - but they seem to take fewer hits to kill this time.

Weapons can now be swapped with one another, and the boomerang can be caught on its return, making it a far more useful weapon than it was previously. Move priorities and mechanics have also been revised - weapons are no longer overpowered (the grenade doesn't insta-kill anymore!), the spinning kick can now hit more than once, and the enemy numbers and locations have been revised. There are a couple more stages included in the Japanese version's final mission, and the backdrop for the final boss has been changed. The order of the songs has been changed between releases, as well.

While Return of Double Dragon does address many of the shortcomings of the US version, it still feels extremely rushed and somewhat incomplete. There are no cutscenes (even though the graphics for them are present in the game's ROM), there is no ending (even the meager text-scroll of Super Double Dragon is gone was removed!), and only some of the originally composed soundtrack was ever programmed into the game.

Return of Double Dragon feels like it still needed a few more months in the oven, but it's certainly more complete and polished in this form than Super Double Dragon ever was. It's a fantastic beat 'em up that towers over the trainwreck that was Double Dragon III (non-NES versions, of course), but just imagine how good it might have been had it been properly finished!

(RoDD also got an "official" physical US release a couple of years ago courtesy Retrosim. Don't waste your money on it - the cart's plastic is cheesy feeling and cheaply made, and it only works on clone consoles. It won't boot on original SNES hardware.)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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