Why did 80s NES owners give a shit about this game?

I have no idea why. They always mention it, it's considered an NES staple, it got its own movie, and it still gets a random sequel every ten years filled with 80's nostalgia wank.
Absolutely mogged by River City Ransom btw, including the basket ball game spin off

>>11876993
>Absolutely mogged by River City Ransom

Unironically a shit game and I easily prefer Double Dragon. The only good RCR was the coop 2v2 "Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu"

Because it was based on a popular arcade game.

>>11876959 (OP)
Because the original arcade game is excellent and we didn't have emulators.

Because it is fun. Honestly, double dragon is only fun on NES. The 16bit games are kusoge.

>>11876993
>Absolutely mogged by River City Ransom
no

Do you believe the theory that Double Dragon exists thanks to the original Japanese high school delinquent game "Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun" having it's graphics altered to convert it into the urban thug brawler "Renegade"? Kinda like how Adventure Island spawned its own separate series, despite the first game being a barely reskinned port of Wonder Boy?

It has been greatly forgotten how huge Double Dragon was in Europe. Castlevania? Mega Man? You had to be a real connaisseur to know about those. Double Dragon though, everyone knew about them starting from the age of 10. Every kid owned at least one of the games from the NES trilogy and it was a guaranteed birthday party game.I remember that one time the kid said
>I've got Double Dragon... 3!
and everyone's face lit up in the room, at that moment this kid was pic related

Nowadays among European retro circles everyone pretends like "America's history = our history", they talk about Dragon Quest vs Final Fantasy (lol), and pretend like everyone knew about Mega Man or Castlevania or Contra, and the game prices tend to matches that of NTSC-U versions which makes no sense.
Any real European knows that Double Dragon was the shit.

>>11876959 (OP)
I'm not taking the bait. I almost did though.

>>11876959 (OP)
From the box art I always thought they were robots because of how their legs look.

>>11877634
Double Dragon was popular in the US, too. There was even a cartoon. I never played it as a kid, unless Battletoads and Double Dragon counts, but I had a friend who would talk about the series. Also the arcade version of DD3 apparently released in the USA long before other regions

>>11877634
>Nowadays among European retro circles everyone pretends like "America's history = our history", they talk about Dragon Quest vs Final Fantasy (lol), and pretend like everyone knew about Mega Man or Castlevania or Contra, and the game prices tend to matches that of NTSC-U versions which makes no sense.
More egregious among European zoomers is the use of the term "Sega Genesis" along with the general Nintendo wank

>>11876959 (OP)
I was told about how amazing the arcade game was by my cousin and we went to play it in the arcade. It was impressive graphically and with its audio (voices, music, and hard hitting sound effects). The enemy in its varieties was pretty good in its time too. Co-op play was another feature which just resonated with me. So having an NES, I really wanted what I thought was one of the best arcade games at the time. Without reviews, only based upon my arcade experience, I had to get it. It is still a fine game, just not accurate to the arcade. I even visited a friend of that same cousin who had a Master System, and I was, in brief interaction, impressed it was more accurate to the arcade that I wanted, but only until the GBA version did I really finally get what I wanted.

Reminder that the ports greatest sin has been fixed. Fighting twin abobos coop was like living a childhood dream, because back then, when the abobos came out of the walls, it felt like the game could do anything.

>>11876959 (OP)
Because it was 80's as FUCK

>>11876959 (OP)
I think this is better than the arcade game. The platforming adds to it.

>>11876959 (OP)
It was a port of a arcade beat em up and it was pretty good at the time.

>>11876993
Not many people cared about RCR at the time, People thought it was too Japanese.

>>11877787
Man I never played the arcade version but I absolutely loved the nes version. It even got a decent amount of playtime in the 1v1 matches. This ten yard fight megaman 2 super spike vball super Mario 3 and Loz were my main nes games. I watched the movie recently too and it is awesome 90s camp. It also has a big bootied Alyssa Milano and wow, after watching her in who’s the boss and being around the same age, my 10 year old self was absolutely in love. Probably why I’m an ass man all these years later and couldn’t care less about boob size. So thank you to this game for having such a positive impact on me. Only thing I don’t remember is the coop on the nes. I distinctly remember dueling my neighborhood buddy in it but don’t really have any memories of us copping the game so not sure if my brain is fucking up or what.

>>11877634
>everyone knew about them starting from the age of 10
Did kids where you grow up just not play video games until they turned 10? That's EXTREMELY late

i played it on an cracked ds it was fun until some retard at school stole it

>>11878036
>Not many people cared about RCR at the time
RCR was peak late 90s/early 00s internet retrogamer fare. I would indeed bet that a good bit of the game's modern western popularity is due to Gen Xers and early millennials discovering it by way of reading about it on blogs, forums, and retrogaming humor websites around that time then proceeding to emulate it.

>>11878120
I started playing computer games at the age of 4 before I knew how to write or read. it was a great incentive to learn actually.

>>11877007
tpbp
The NES version is ok enough, but it's a mere shadow compared to its arcade counterpart, and that was enough to carry it through.

>>11878036
River City Ransom looks bad and plays bad.

Double Dragon fell behind because competition got better (specially Final Fight) and Technos shat the bed in the 90s with poor decisions, it's not hard to see why they went bankrupt.

River City Ransom is open-world Double Dragon with better art and music. It's superior in every way.

>>11876959 (OP)
It was the first beat 'em up of its kind and the NES port was surprisingly faithful to the arcade despite not having co-op. The Master System version is actually better though.

>>11878653
>The Master System version is actually better though.

Too bad no one knew that existed until the Internet. I had a Game Gear back in the day and had no idea that it was basically a portable Master System.

>>11876993
RCR came out a year later and Double Dragon was a port of a popular arcade game

>>11878661
A bunch of people I became friends with as a teenager ended up having had Master Systems as kids when I didn't know them, despite me having no idea it existed until it had been obsolete for years. Kid culture was very spotty back then without being as homogenized by shared mass media stuff.

>>11878806
It was better that way too.

>>11878423
It really does seem that way. I didn't know the game existed until my buddy introduced me to emulators in the late 90s and RCR was one of the first games he showed me. We played the fuck out of it and I actually found the hidden shop in the roadway tunnel on accident, something even he didn't know existed until then.

>>11878036
>People thought it was too Japanese
The rockabilly cover art and all tshirts with jeans was enough for me, don't know what the fuck you're talking about

>>11876959 (OP)
You don't have much better options for a beat em up on the NES. It's either this or Battletoads

>>11876959 (OP)
It's a great game I don't see the problem.

River City Ransom was 1990 and NES standards were getting pretty high. Cool kids had a Genesis with bundled Altered Beast already.

>>11878076
Even though I did play Renegade first, Double Dragon is sort of the real start to the brawler genre for me. Features and systems like friendly fire in co-op, item interactions, even its perspective are small parts of the mix that makes the game interestingly fun for me. I have not watched that movie since it did not appeal to me as I wasn't looking for the game to have a movie. The NES version did have a cool VS mode with larger character sprites that can be played 2-player, but I do not remember it having co-op for the main campaign. Co-op was in the Master System version. However the NES version's main campaign does have a sort of character progression, leveling-up and and adding moves as you go along. Sure the NES has its interesting quirks, but the GBA version is visually more like the arcade with more moves, a combo element, and added enemies from the direct sequel for even more variety. Give that one a shot, as it is my favorite iteration of the game so far.

>>11876959 (OP)
At the end of the arcade version you have to fight the other player to the death over a woman who is hogtied and suspended from the ceiling by rope. The NES version doesn't have this scene which makes it unplayable.

>>11878661
My family had a Master System. (Don't worry, we also had a NES.)
Funnily enough, It came with a mail-in card for a free copy of Double Dragon. Took about two months to arrive. I have two brothers so it was fun playing co-op.

>>11876959 (OP)
because of the second game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKzXCZE5xoQ