Double Dragon (Arcade) ARCADE

Double Dragon is Technos Japan’s 1987 arcade beat-’em-up, one of the genre’s foundational titles alongside Kunio-kun, an earlier Technos game whose engine it builds on. Brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee fight through a gang called the Black Warriors to rescue Billy’s kidnapped girlfriend, using punches, kicks, and weapons picked up from downed enemies along the way.

Its two-player simultaneous co-op and the option for players to fight each other in a duel mode at the end helped set conventions the beat-’em-up genre followed for years afterward, and its commercial success across arcades and later home ports — including the NES conversion also on this site — made it one of the most influential brawlers of its era.