As a lifetime fan of this genre & this series, I've played this game to death for the last twenty years, starting with the GameBoy Advance handheld version & then moving onto the big screen with emulators. This has always been the best Double Dragon game, only being held back by its lack of local co-op due to it being a link-up GBA game (something emulators struggle to emulate), an issue that has finally been resolved with this new version.

While recent games in the series like Double Dragon Neon & Double Dragon Gaiden are lots of fun, they never attempted to recreate the feel of the original arcade game, whilst modernising the mechanics & ironing out the issues expected in a game made back in 1987. in 2003 Atlus did just that, with what could be considered an Extended Edition remake of the original Arcade game. They just took everything that was great about the original Arcade game & married it with extra levels, enemies, weapons & moves introduced in later sequels, the NES home versions & Super Double Dragon. The result is what to me has always felt like the definitive Double Dragon experience.

The graphics may look a lot more rough than modern beat em ups but the sprites are huge & dynamic. Gameplay in beat em ups hasn't hugely evolved in the last twenty years & you'll struggle to find a game in this genre with tighter controls than DD Advance. The fighting mechanics & button layout may appear strange at first, but unlike most beat em ups that rely on single button combos & special move buttons, DD Advance has a deep, engaging & highly versatile variety of moves for every situation. While it lacks the visual flashiness of recent beat em ups, it more than makes up for it with highly-efficient combat mechanics. Skilled players can really put on a show with the fighting moves on offer here. Probably the only beat em up I've played that really makes you feel like Bruce Lee.

There's some improvements that could be made. No online multiplayer, survival mode is only single player & at the end of the day it is only a port of the GBA game, but for the price point you can't argue with it. Arc need to patch this as the Scoop Moto billboard on Stage 1 has been greyed out (presumably for copyright reasons) when they could have literally replaced it with a picture of a different car. Anything would look less ugly & lazy than a grey box.

So a must-buy if you're at all a fan of beat em ups. If you know the game well you'll be happy to finally play it co-op without the restrictive GBA link-up, & new players will get introduced to a far more accessible & fun version of the most influential beat em up of all time.

Now if only Arc Systems can release the 2011 iPhone game, or Double Dragon Zeebo.

Will re-review when it is fixed, but at the moment it is tied to your PC's refresh rate, making my game effectively run at a blistering 2.4x regular speed. Please fix whenever possible. Heard great things about this game, but can't play it as intended until this changes.

Very fun Double Dragon game! It would be sweet if we could get some Trading Cards, Point Shop items and achievements added to the game.

Works great on Steam Deck!

Double Dragon Advance is the best Double Dragon game ever made. If ArcSys was smart, they'd iterate on this for any future sequels.

It's the pinnacle of sandbox brawlers. Freeform combo systems without a reliance on canned dial a combos (which never work well in games vs mobs) , environmental interaction/manipulation, and enemy behavior changing up so that no run is the same, and you can get them to take each other out means the game is fresh across countless replays.

Add in the survival mode, and there's tons of gameplay to be wrung out of this game.

In terms of the overall package, it's still a GBA game at the end of the day, but you can bump up the resolution to 1080p and add in scanline options to take the edge off some of those giant pixels. Minor quibble on these options for me is the game wasn't designed for a CRT, rather a dim LCD panel, so an overlay that better approximated the true design intent behind the game would be nice as well. Three aspect ratio options are offered with one of them being fill meaning there's only two useful options.

Audio options are weird. You can opt to crush the highs or the lows if you want. (Simulating covering the GBA speaker with the palm of your hand or something?) The enhance audio option is very welcome however since the base GBA audio is on the scratchy side.

In all, its a functional albeit spartan package supporting an excellent game that's well worth getting if you like beat 'em ups at all. Note: As of the time of this review, the game runs at an uncapped frame rate, so you will have to cap the frame rate to 60fps if your monitor has a refresh rate higher than 60hz. Annoying, but fixable with quick tweaks in your respective GPU's control panel.

The Best Double Dragon in existence.

Pros:
- Gameplay works as expected.
- Hard Difficulty is Hard and Fun.
- Good Co-Op game. Wish they add the option to turn off friendly fire
- Save/Load your game progress everywhere, useful for new players.

Cons:
- The new menu/options are not very visible.

Negatives: It's a barebones romdump with really garbage graphics options.
Positives: It's a barebones romdump of the best double dragon game ever made.

At least they didn't break anything, which already puts it above most missguided modern "remasters", but then it's basically just a rom with a lazy af custom emulator frontend.

Regardless - the game is still amazing.

I still got the original cartridge but the shoulder buttons of my GBA are broken.
This has always been one of my favourite DD titles, probably second best after DD2 for NES.
The move set is original and it combines many great aspects and some maps of older DD titles.
The emulator has a lot of options and you can tweak a lot of things. It is pretty hard though due to the huge amount of enemies.
Just be sure to put punch and kick buttons next to each other (x and square, A and X, etc.) because pressing both at the same time is ducking and ducking is mandatory for good combos.

I waited a LOOOOOOOONG time to play this game, mainly because I didn't have a Game Boy Advance, which was previously the only platform you could play this game on (aside from a MAME type emulator, I guess).

I have to say, this was worth the wait. The controls take a little getting used to, but once you get everything nailed down, this is a hell of a lot of fun.

This is the Double Dragon I've been waiting for all my life.

It's not every day you get an Atlus game on Steam.

Double Dragon has a long confusing history of being owned by various companies and having games of varying quality, but one thing is for sure: Double Dragon 1 was one of the most historically important videogames in the beat em up genre. What you have here is a glorified port from a GBA game so reviews for that apply to this, BUT it's one of the best interpretations for Double Dragon 1, with extra moves not in the original like parrying/blocking. Also you can do 2 player with only 1 copy of the game this time so that automatically makes this version an improvement.

Yeah Yeah Yeah it's 2d and the game boy advance sound is showing it's age, but it has the price to match and it's a steal when on sale

Double Dragon advance came out a very long time ago for the gameboy advance , it is a reimagined version of the original Double Dragon arcade game that also include elements from Double Dragon 2 such as some of it's iconic music track.

the gameplay is very fluid and put most other older Double Dragon games to shame in comparison , there is a good variety of attacks you can execute and your own character is fast and responsive. the enemies also have been adjusted to this and will often try to move away from your punch when given the chance.

it is a short game but one which also flow well with a very good pace.

you get a difficulty setting and overall I'd say this game feel fun and fair yet still offer some challenge even when you play on easy.

this game only support local co-op , but this is already much better then the original console release where you need to have two gameboy advances. (there is only one gameboy advance emulator I've seen on PC that allowed you to have 2 players co-op on a single machine and it's a pain to setup compared to just playing this version game)

the only bad thing about this is that this port is still the same sound quality then the gameboy advance , there is a sound filter and I highly recommend putting on to emphasis low frequencies range which remove most of the ear piercing noises this game has , this help a lot's and the music sountrack itself is great despite the low quality of the sound.