Double Dragon 3 - Random Arcade Review

Remember when Double Dragon was released? No? Well bugger off and steal a Delorean and find out then. It was something of a revelation. Okay so Renegade came first but you never saw the arcade game (apart from the arcade in Canterbury which became the Penny Theatre). DD was two player as well and featured the now legendary "Billy Elbow", which you could finish the whole game with. Final Fight came along later and Double Dragon was forgotten. This game is probably the reason why.

So Billy and Jimmy are tasked with finding the Shankra stones by a little yoda-like Chinese guy. Unfortunately they're not really up to the job. They move like geriatric pensioners, their two frames of animation showing that they probably have arthritis or rickets or something. Shame as they were so quick and nimble in the other games. The generic bad guys move much faster even the Meatloaf lookalike moves faster. The bad guys change with each level, great you might think but think again. Level 2 has straw hat wearing chinese guys and Bruce lee as a boss (its a chinese level you see), level 3 is in Japan so it's all samurai. And probably ninjas but to be honest I really couldn't be bothered beyond the 1st screen of this level.
Something that is different is a that each level has a shop at the beginning. So you wander inside and the girly shopkeeper (not as good as the one from Forgotten Worlds) squawks stuff at you. I think it's english she's speaking but it's hard to tell. The shop sells power-ups, weapons, health and men. Yes that's right it's a front for white slavery. Problem being that there seems to be no in game currency so how the hell do you buy this stuff. The answer is simple. With REAL money, you have to put another credit in after you've paid to play the game to get one in-game coin. The game is so Gil-Gerard-hard that you HAVE to buy at least the power-up. Then I found that when you buy a man you get, guess what, an extra life, which is stupid as you only get one per credit anyway. So why not use the continue function? What is the point of paying for a life in the shop if you can continue anyway? Why were Billy and Jimmy resurrected to find these stones? Why am I still here? WHY?