Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team

About This Game

Gameplay

Battletoads/Double Dragon is a beat 'em up video game where the players, as either one of the three Battletoads or Jimmy and Billy, attack enemies, swing ropes, go on spaceships, and turbo bike to defeat the Shadow Boss and Dark Queen. It has three play modes: a single-player, a "2 Players A" mode where the players can hit each other, and a "2 Players B" that doesn't have that. Its engine and gameplay is from the original Battletoads, and less like Double Dragon. Like the prior Battletoads installment, there are only three continues and no password system, and in the two-player modes, if one player loses all lives, both players have to start a level over. The 16-bit versions have identical gameplay to their NES counterparts, attacks and jumping are triggered by only two buttons. The player has a choice of five playable characters: Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon, and Zitz, Pimple, and Rash from Battletoads.

History

Battletoads/Double Dragon was developed by the company that handled the 1991 Battletoads game, Rare, which produced several games as contract work for other intellectual properties in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the 1993 crossover was one of them, and its development involved Rare receiving little feedback from the owners of the Double Dragon license. The NES version features 3D scrolling and other advanced special effects uncommonly sophisticated for the console. The Game Boy version is similar to the NES version, but it is only for one player. The sprites are the same size although the screen is smaller (leaving less room for movement) and the 3D effects are absent. The logo on the game cover art is one of Rare's first uses of 3D graphics.