The final game in the trilogy.Billy and Jimmy Lee are returning from martial arts training when their paths cross a fortune teller. She tells them of a great evil in Egypt, their strongest adversary yet, and how the Rosetta Stones can aid them.This game features weapon shops where Billy and Jimmy can buy power-ups, tricks, energy and extra lives to aid them in their quest.Power-ups make Billy and Jimmy twice their size, increasing their damage done and range of attack.The character graphics have changed, moving away from cartoon style graphics to more realistic looking characters.
Here is the last part of the Double Dragon series. It was made in 1992 by Virgin Interactive.
The graphics aren't bad, but I can't say the same thing for the sound. In the whole game you will hear about three different samples. The first one is when you hit someone, the second when you hit the boss of the current level and the last one is the sound of the swords of Japan in the third mission.
The story won't get an Oscar, either; Billy and Jimmy are about to finish their martial arts course when they suddenly meet a mysterious old woman. The woman tells them about some strange rosetta stones with secret powers. She wants you to find the stones and return them to her.
Thus your quest begins. You can play as Billy or as Jimmy if you "buy" him in a shop. At the beginning the game is fun, but after about ten minutes of play you might get bored. During your five missions you'll have to kill the bad guys and beat the boss at the end of each level. You can kick, punch, jump (which is a little bit difficult) and kick while jumping. You'll use the latter all the time because it's the easiest way to destroy your enemies. You also have the option of jumping against a wall and hitting your enemies after you bounce back. Sometimes the game may become so annoying that if you are not a calm person, you will want to break the computer while yelling at the game. This begins in the third mission when the ninjas force you against the wall and every time you get up you fall back down immediately after being hit by ninja stars.
One thing I liked in the game were the shops. You can find them in every mission except the fourth. There you can buy some tricks, weapons, energy, power or an extra character (to play with Jimmy or someone else). The other thing was the motorcycle - during the first and last missions you'll have to kick the bad guys from their motorcycles. However, the good things end here. Jumping and kicking gets boring, and you often decide to play something else. You can't pick up objects and throw them at your enemies. The bosses are quite easy to beat with no special hits or powers - you just have to hit them 10 times and they are dead. If you are a fan of the series play this last part, but if not, try something else.
This game doesn't have a quit option. You will have to press Alt+Tab and then when you return to Windows you can press Ctrl+Alt+Del to close the game. (This applies only if you don't use DOSBox).
Part of the Double Dragon Series
Oh yeah, I remember the Double Dragon series from my Amiga. We played those games for hours. Now I digged up a PC version of one of those games and happily I started it up. Hm... now what's this? I guess my memory isn't that good anymore. Your fighting options are somewhat limited, kicking, punching and jumping - aaaalright. Let me tell you - forget about the other options, you get along best with only using your kickjump. Mysteriously your player takes off for one of those and then you can let it kick left and right without him landing - although that proved useful I have never EVER seen someone doing this in real life ;) Unfortunately the fights often get very stupid - your enemy will knock you down and then wait for you to get up again just to knock you down once again, sometimes it's hard to get back into the game again, especially when there are more than one enemies standing around your unconscious fighter. Of course you can do the same with the enemies you know down, but you carefully have to knock all enemies down to one spot to keep them under control. Then you just stay there waiting for them to get up again and send them back to sleep with one of your kickjumps. It gets a bit boring after a while.
One of the nicer parts of this game is the background story - you are searching for three mysterious stones and are travelling to many different places - everytime you finish that scene that old man comes up to you telling you some more mysterious things. Well, the surroundings are good, the graphics are really nice for 1990, but as I said above - for a good fighting game your options are just too limited and the need to press 3 keys at the same time to achieve something doesn't really make this a good game. In case you don't find out yourself, the Shift-Key and Return act as Fire-Buttons, pressing them together and indicating the direction with the arrow-keys will make your player perform that kickjump I talked about. Sometimes it could also be a good idea not to walk, but just jump, but that's up to you of course.
Ask any longtime action gamer, and most will tell you that Technos' classic arcade classic Double Dragon series took a nosedive with the final game in the trilogy, Double Dragon III: The Rosetta Stone. The arcade version met with only lukewarm response, so naturally the NES version (which is always the best port), is still a lot less fun than the first two games.
That said, you shouldn't expect this PC port to be somehow better than the rest. And that's true, although it's ironic because this is arguably the most faithful PC conversion of all three games. The faults lie squarely with Technos for making poor design decisions, such as: you no longer can pick up cool weapons or power-ups to use at will, but must buy most of them in stores. So while there are interesting new power-ups including an item that makes Billy/Jimmy twice their size, you'll have to first collect enough money (by beating enemies of course) and THEN find the weapon shop, and hope that the one you enter have what you want. It's unnecessarily tedious, and unlike Legend of the Mystical Ninja, weapon shops are few and far between. Ironically, that turns out to be negligible, since the enemies have an IQ level of a rock. You can beat them very easily with jumping kicks and punches - like the first game, keeping the attack keys pressed is all you need to do.
The plot is also a dramatic departure from the gangster setting: now Billy and Jimmy Lee must find the Rosetta Stone to fight an evil in Egypt. The graphics and animations are much improved over the original, but that can't make up for repetitive gameplay. In short: a faithful PC port of a mediocre arcade game that ends a blockbuster series with a fizzle instead of a bang.
How to run this game on modern Windows PC?
People who downloaded Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone have also downloaded:
Double Dragon II: The Revenge, Contra, Double Dragon, Doom, Double Dragon 3, Doom 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Duke Nukem
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