Double Dragon II Two-Player No-Death Playthrough (Game Boy Player Capture)

This is a capture of me and a friend playing through Double Dragon II for the Game Boy. This is not an emulator. This footage was captured directly from my GameCube using my Game Boy Player with progressive scan mode enabled (you'll need the GameCube's component cables to do this and your model of GameCube must support component out as well). I’m player one (dark color) and Drew is player two (light color). We’re playing on normal difficulty.

For some reason when you start this game in two-player mode, it doesn’t show the opening cutscenes, so those are missing here.

When I was a kid, my parents used to take me to Toys R Us on my birthday and let me pick out a toy/video game for my birthday present. On one of those trips (probably around 1993) I picked up Double Dragon 3 for the Game Boy. I was expecting it be like Double Dragon III on the NES, which I absolutely loved. I was wrong.

Nonetheless, I remember seeing the Game Boy version of Double Dragon II on the shelf and noticing that its box art looked exactly like Double Dragon III on the NES, which confused me quite a bit. I thought about getting Double Dragon II based on the box art alone, but I figured I should go with Double Dragon 3 just to be safe. That ended up being a huge mistake since Double Dragon 3 was absolutely horrendous.

In 2001 I then picked up a sealed copy of this game off eBay for about $30 to satisfy my curiosity from that one day in Toys R Us. But when I played Double Dragon II on the Game Boy for the first time, I was disappointed. The game featured no enemies or levels from Double Dragon II or III on the NES, and it didn’t even have useable weapons or a basic jump ability. So basically, it inherited nothing good from the Double Dragon sequels on the NES (the games that truly hooked me on the series).

It turns out there is a specific reason for this. Double Dragon II on the Game Boy is not a Double Dragon game at all, but is instead a reworked version of Nekketsu Bangai Rantou Hen from the Kunio-Kun series (which includes the Renegade/River City Ransom games). So that's why it feels so out of place.

Aside from that, the only remarkable fact about this game is that it includes a two-player mode which actually allows the second player to join at any time - something I've never seen in a Game Boy game before. Since I love doing multiplayer whenever possible, I picked up a second Double Dragon II cartridge off eBay back in 2013 for about $8 and then recorded my original two-player playthrough. Luckily though, I kept that extra cartridge, which allowed me to record this new footage with Drew.

Although I think this game is mediocre overall, the two-player mode makes it much more entertaining. Drew and I actually had some fun playing through this, and we even managed a no-death run on our first and only recording attempt by simply approaching enemies from above or below, similar to our strategy for Double Dragon III on the NES.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and the GameCube's component cables at 60 frames per second.

I'm using an original model Game Boy Advance as a controller via the GameCube/Game Boy Advance Link Cable, and Drew is using a Game Boy Advance SP which is connected to the Game Boy Player through a third-party multiplayer link cable for the Game Boy Pocket/Game Boy Color.