Every era of gaming has one or two genres that dominate. Eventually, the popularity of said genres give way to something new, and from there it's a coin toss as to how relevant they remain. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of those "it" genres was the beat-em-up. In many ways defined by 1986's Renegade, the genre became a worldwide sensation with the game's spiritual successor Double Dragon. The game was a huge hit in the arcades, and its many home ports were tremendously popular. There was a Double Dragon comic, a Double Dragon cartoon, a Double Dragon toyline, and eventually even a Double Dragon live-action movie. Innumerable clones from virtually every other game publisher followed, flooding arcades and eventually the 16-bit home consoles until the coming of one-on-one fighting games pulled the market in another direction.
In all but the technical sense, however, Double Dragon lost its relevance well before the genre it popularized did. The game's publisher, Technos Japan, knew they had a major hit on their hands and didn't seem to know what to do with it. They rushed a couple of arcade sequels that drew increasingly little attention from players, and put together a couple of NES versions of said sequels that went in their own directions. The second NES game, Double Dragon 2, was fairly popular, but by the time Double Dragon 3 hit the NES in 1991 the writing appeared to be on the wall. Competition from the likes of Capcom's Final Fight and SEGA's Golden ...