The title Double Dragon refers to two martial artists twins, Billy and Jimmy Lee both running a dojo where they teach locals the means to defend themselves. A tilted plane for the action with eight way movement, two player co-op, picking up weapons, and having to defeat on screen enemies to keep moving forward are all present here in the first Double Dragon game, and while the home ports may hold a higher place in the hearts of many, the arcade version was what kicked off a golden age of beat ’em ups. However, it is quite clearly the game that really helped codify what we now easily recognize as a beat ’em up. The beat ’em up certainly suffers from this since it has some similarities to typical sidescrolling action and platforming titles, but no matter how loose your definition of one is, you can’t really say Double Dragon was the first. It’s very hard to get people to agree on the first game to introduce a new genre, especially since many genres have nebulous and subjective qualities that can often be applied to games in other genres.
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