RUMBLE DRAGON

RUMBLE DRAGON is a classic beat 'em up game that is very similar to Double Dragon in terms of content and moves. Game Buddy refers to the Game Boy era, just like the great audiovisual results. Nice game if you want to try something new during a nostalgic moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYYerKXBWr4

I feel that Rumble Dragon is trying to feel like a Double Dragon GameBoy port-clone of Double Dragon, but doesn't quite know what makes classic beat 'em ups fun. The positive is that Rumble Dragon looks and sounds like a GameBoy game. I was there in the early days of the Nintendo hand held, and I have to say they nailed that aspect of the era. It very much looks and sounds like I'm right back in 1992. The negative is that the game mechanics and game play absolutely doesn't feel right at all. And not is any sort of good way. The devs have 30+ years of other beat 'em ups to drawn upon, and I just don't feel like they managed to capture the essence of what made the genre fun back then. I'm not against 'Nintendo hard' games. But even the NEW Double Dragon gave the players a few mooks to wail on to get a feel for the controls. And Streets of Rage 2 perfected this. But in Rumble Dragon, I really don't feel that. Instead I found myself using more or boss level cheese tactics from the get go. Even Battletoads let the player smash and bash for a bit to get the controls under their feet. And I seeing that it is decades later, I am not going to give any benefit of the doubt. And that's…

I love it! Please make more!

Rumble Dragon wears its Double Dragon influence on its sleeve (down to the similar titles) and tries to retain what makes the beat 'em up genre fun on much more limited hardware (I can't be sure, but it seems like this could actually run on an original GameBoy), and in my opinion it mostly succeeds. Where Rumble Dragon shines is in its presentation. The sprites are detailed despite their size and chunky pixels, offering a variety of enemy types with different proportions, fighting stances and attack styles. The environments are also surprising rich in detail, featuring things like different posters on walls, shattered windows, tufts of grass growing out of concrete, discarded cans and even cigarette butts! The music tracks are suitably energized and lend themselves well to urban fistfights. As for the actual brawling mechanics, it's a bit of a mixed bag. You get two attack buttons, a slower kick and a quicker punch. While rapidly pressing the punch button pulls off an effective combo ending in a knockdown (becoming your bread and butter for most of the game), chaining kicks leads to a hop-kick that is very likely to bypass your enemy altogether, leaving you vulnerable. You can do…