A Night at the Arcade: Double Dragon

I staggered away from an intense couple rounds of Team Sharpshooter in Rainbow Six: Vegas to find the grand daddy of beat'em ups, Double Dragon available on XBLA.

Like TMNT 1989, the brawling saga of Billy and Jimmy Lee has not aged terribly well. I fired up the trial and was greeted with a colourful, "next-gen" main menu. The graphics of the game itself appear to have been improved slightly for modern audiences but let's get real: it still looks and plays like a relic of the '80s. You can forget about fancy attacks or combos with this one. It's punch, kick, jump, grab, knee and throw, with maybe an accidental head butt or elbow strike thrown in for variety's sake.

Double Dragon has off and online co-op available, so I'm almost duty bound to spend my 400 points and play through this once with a friend, just like I did with TMNT. Then I remember that I'm still waffling on my purchase of last week's Live surprise, Catan. Oh, what to spend my precious points on!

For those of you who inexplicably do not know what Double Dragon is all about, the trial gives you but a taste of the retro punching/kicking action. It is so short you'll finish it before you can recall how old you were when this game first hit the arcades. Ah arcades... remember those?