Double Dragon Video Game Series

The first installment of the series, simply titled Double Dragon, debuted on arcade machines in 1987. Soon after, the title arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System console, and in 1990 - also on the Game Boy Advance. The aforementioned editions of the game were overseen by the authors of the original, Technos Japan; the versions for other platforms, on the other hand, were the work of external developers.

In the meantime, in 1988, the second part of the series saw the light of day, viz. Double Dragon II: The Revenge. In 1990 the series lived to see its third installment, titled Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone. Although both games were first released on arcade machines, in time they also appeared on the NES console (with the third part of the series receiving a different subtitle on it -. Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones). In addition, in 1991 debuted the "other" Double Dragon II, developed for the Nintendo Game Boy handheld, while in 1992 the fourth major production under this banner appeared, entitled Super Double Dragon (released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System console). This was the last work of the team that had been overseeing the development of the series from the beginning. In addition, after the release of this item began a period in which successive developers were unable to find a sensible idea for further development of the brand.

In 1994, a game appeared on the Super NES and Sega Mega Drive consoles (and later also on the Atari Jaguar platform). Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls, which, unlike its predecessors, was not a beat'em up, but a racial brawler; interestingly, the project was an adaptation of the animated series Double Dragon. In 1995, it was followed by the game Double Dragon, which first hit the Neo Geo console and then lived to see a version for the first PlayStation. After the release of the latter, there was an eight-year silence on the subject of the series. In 2003, Atlus developed a remake of the first installment of the series, titled Double Dragon Advance and released for the Game Boy Advance handheld. In 2009 and 2011, the first Double Dragon lived to see further remakes, which were released on the Zeebo platform and on iPhones. The year 2012, however, brought the release of the game Double Dragon Neon from the WayForward Technologies studio, which was, in a way, a parody of the entire series. April 2013 was marked for the brand by a 3D remake of the second installment of the series, the game Double Dragon II: Wander of the Dragons, released by the Gravity team.

Finally, in 2015, Arc System Works took over the rights to the brand. In 2017, the series lived to see a full-fledged fourth installment, titled Double Dragon IV, which came to personal computers and consoles. The game was supervised not only by developers from Arc System Works, but also by some of the original developers. In July 2023, players received a spin-off of the series, the game Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons, which combined brawler mechanics with solutions native to the roguelike genre. Shortly afterwards, the game was released for PCs and consoles. Super Double Dragon.

Series Double Dragon ushered in a kind of golden era of beat'em ups, triumphing primarily on arcade machines. On the wave of its popularity in 1993 an animated series was created, while a year later its film adaptation debuted, in Poland known as Sign of the Dragon.