It begins promisingly enough, with a title screen featuring large Japanese characters and an up-tempo soundtrack to get you in the mood, along with some fairly novel cutscenes by NES standards. Little did we know, multiplayer doesn't mean squat if the game is still terrible. When the 1988 sequel Double Dragon II: The Revenge was ported to NES, home-bound fans rejoiced the multiplayer mode would arrive fully intact for buddy-night shenanigans. The original 1987 Double Dragon is one of the early casualties of arcade-to-home conversion, losing its integral two-player mode entirely in its transition to NES. These arcade classics were ported to home consoles with varying degrees of success, often heavily modified to fit into measly game cartridges. we were kicking mobsters in the stomach together.

Perhaps the most fun aspect of these titles was the multiplayer cooperative gameplay, so we weren't just kicking mobsters in the stomach. There was a period from the late-'80s to the early-'90s when side-scrolling beat 'em up games were all the (streets of?) rage – from Double Dragon to Final Fight to Streets of Rage, we just couldn't get enough of punching hooligans in the face down long straight paths.

Double dragon 2 nes multiplayer