Luigi Mario

Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone

Developer: East Technology   Publisher: Technos

Introduction:

The year was 1990 and by that time, Technos' Double Dragon series was a huge juggernaut among the beatemup genre. After the success of Double Dragon II for the arcade and NES/Fanicom, Technos contracted another company named East Technology to develop the third title in the series. Which was probably one of their biggest mistakes ever! The game barely follows the events of the previous two games, except that after the events of DD II, Billy and Jimmy went on a two year journey to improve their martial arts skills only to return home and is confronted by a fortune teller named Hiruko telling them that they must collect three Rosetta Stones throughout the world. Pretty stupid I know. The most different, and controversal feature in this game is the shop system. More on that later. Well on to the reviwew we go!

Reviewed By: Legend

Graphics: D+    

Simply disgusting! The character models are just bland and have very little detail! If this is supposed to be a sequel, then shouldn't it look just as good as it's prequels?!? The character animations are slow and choppy. Even more than the first two games! Also, sometmes I couldn't tell if I was hitting or kicking my enemy! There's no excuse for this! Obvioulsy Technos didn't have any involment in this title seeing how it doesn't have their trademark coloring or lighting! Very disappointing...

Sound: C-          

No no...a thousand times NO!! The sound in this game just plain sucks! The music is forgettable, and the punches and kicks sound okay at best. It's nothing of the same epic quality of the first two games...which is a shame since this had the potenital.

Control: C         

The controls in this game are at least somewhat decent. The moves respond quickly upon command. But the thing that hurts this category the most is, yet again, the choppy animation! Due to your character moving too slow, it's sometimes hard to face your enemy when you're really trying to quickly turn around to do so. This is very frustrating and at times I wanted to throw my controller across the room! So to sum it up...punches and kicks respond quickly, but everything else...just doesn't! Another letdown!

Gameplay: F      

The gameplay blows! Pure and simple! I'm surprised I even went through and beat this shit that's called a game! First off, the shop system sucks! Back in the day at the arcade, this game was nothing but a quater muncher! By that I mean, if you actually wanted to buy things in the store, you actually had to put real quaters in the machine to purchase them! Want a new character? Well tough luck! You'll have to kill you current character before you get to use the new one! Want a new weapon? No problem! You'll get it...but then quickly lose it due to the many cheap deaths in the game. And I mean CHEAP! Want more health? Okay. You'll get it, but then quickly lose it to the CHEAP deaths! Basically, it's too retarded and pointless! Oh yeah, you can buy new tricks too...which give you the abillity to jump on fallen foes and what not. And you can also do a stupid little gay headstand on your opponents neck. But anyways, speaking of the new characters, there are four new pointless characters to join the Lee brothers on their journey. The first is Sonny...who is basically a Billy and Jimmy clone. The next is the big strong man named Roney...who's attacks are mostly just power moves. Then next is the fat guy named Chin Seimei. Whatever. And finally, the last pointless character joining them is Ooyama. Just play the game okay. The one thing that I thought was a cool new feature, however, was the inclusion of a third player! That's right, instead of two players, this installment had the feature to include a third player to help you out. So yeah, that's the one cool feature.

The enemies in this game are just pure cheap! From the standard enemies, to the bosses! You will put in quite a few continues by the way! If this as the arcade...then there's no way in HELL you'd beat the game! It's filled with stupid puzzles, stupid enemies who are nothing more but palette swaps of each other for that certain level, and fighting trees! Yes, FIGHTING TREES! If it couldn't get anymore stupid than that, then I don't know what could! Oh wait, it does! You fight Cleo 'Freaking cheap as hell" patra! She has got to possibly be one of the cheapest and uninspired bosses in history! Whenever you try to approach her, she just jumps to the other side of the stage! When you're anywhere near her path, she'll just do the most retarded move in Double Dragon (and gaming) history by lifting you right up off the ground and throw you doing alot of damage!  Be prepared to do quite alot of continues! This is just too ridiculous! If you have an emulator, then this should be fine but you'll still get pissed off at the game! If this were the arcade, however, then it'd be impossible to beat unless you're rich and very determine to beat the game!

Overall: F        

This game just frankly sucks! It had the potential to outdue it's predececessors but fell very short! The stupid storyline (okay DD never had a great storyline, but this one is just ridiculous!), the stupid enemies, the cheapness, and the choppiness just hurt this game. Now I can see why Technos decided to redo the storyline come Return of Double Dragon/Super Double Dragon! The fact that the first two games did even better than this is also an insult! I do know that Technos did make an in house DD3 title for the NES/Fanicom...which is much better. But to be honest, I just don't give a damn for DD3 on any platform! That's how much I hated/hate this game! They basically almost ruined the franchise if it wasn't for Double Dragon IV (Return of/Super DD) to hurry up and come rescue it! A huge letdown! It's on par with Double Dragon "V": The Shadow Falls as far as being one of the worst games in history! Just avoid this pile of shit at all costs and stick to the other DD beatemups! Hell...even stick to the Neo Geo DD game!