Double Dragon III has twice the characters, three times the action, and the same damn goal

Despite this ad’s promise of twice the characters and three times the action, I can’t recall much about Double Dragon III, the third installment in that classic game series. Maybe I was still fuming back then over my inability to master the devastating Cyclone Kick introduced in its predecessor, a move that my good friend could perform with aplomb, a fact he never ceased taunting me about as we, as Billy Lee and Jimmy, chopped our way through waves of villains. (Hey, it wasn’t my fault he had the Nintendo and not me.) But no matter what, it was hard to hate a game that at the end of its original Arcade incarnation had the two players, who had scrapped side by side for the whole game, fight one another for the right to bang the busty bimbo. Vérité.

What differentiated this game from the two previous punch-kick-kill extravaganzas? Not much, apart from two more playable characters. And, once again, girlfriend Marian found herself abducted and the target of our heroes’ pugilistic quest. Which ranks her right up there with Kim Bauer as one of the most kidnapped female characters in fictional history. Cut the sleeves off your shirts and get to work tracking her down, boys!