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Five years ago the brilliant Double Dragon team, Billy and Jimmy Lee, rescued the beautiful transexual singer Marilyn (Marian on the C64) from the clutches of the evil Shadow Boss. Until yesterday the three friends lived together quite happily. Yesterday Marilyn was shot dead, and the Lee brothers have sworn revenge.

But the Shadow Boss has not spent the last five years idly watching TV. He's worked long and hard using oriental black magic to establish another vast network of underworld crime. The Lee brothers' quest for revenge begins at a heliport run by the Shadow Boss. They must fight their way through the heliport to confront the end-of-level baddie, a man twice as big as them. Along the way, Schwarzenegger-clone muscle men and punk women armed with bicycle chains will try to stop them. Dropped weapons, such as the chains, can be picked up and used. Alternatively, creates can be picked up and thrown!

Level two takes place in a warehouse, level three in the MidWest complete with combine harvesters, the tiny level four on a mountainside, and level five is inside the Shadow Boss's temple. Apart from the graphic changes, the basic game is little changed from the original. There's some shared continue-plays, a time limit and plenty of bashing.

Beat-'em-ups are great fun to play although nowadays a little more originality is required in execution and game ideas. While Amiga Double Dragon II is certainly nice to look at with some good animation about the characters and a fantastic title screen tune, there's a lack of graphical variety and I'm not very sure of the long term appeal.

The C64 version is a better game to play with a difficulty level set just about right. On the debit side, there's some pretty garish background graphics and weak sound effects, but the sprites are very well animated.

There's very little difference in game structure between this and the original Double Dragon, but this conversion is much better and very playable. While I was disappointed, there's nothing new to it, art dept star Mel absolutely loved it.

With other software houses neglecting the beat-'em-up format, Virgin seem to have cornered the market with this, Shinobi and Ninja Warriors. For the C64 Shinobi's the best, although worst on the Amiga where DD II and Ninja are very close.

Presentation 76%
Nice intro piccy but the music isn't a patch on the Amiga's.

Graphics 69%
A bit blocky and garish, but some nice animation.

Sound 58%
Standard spot FX.

Hookability 70%
Quite a bit tougher than the Amiga...

Lastability 75%
...making for slightly higher long-term appeal.

Overall 72%
An enjoyable conversion of yet another beat-'em-up coin-op.

Presentation 76%
Wonderful and very lengthy title screen music, text plot recap and slick logo.

Graphics 71%
Original arcade graphics weren't that good, but the Amiga recreates them well.

Sound 62%
In-game FX a bit muffled, but still quite good.

Hookability 74%
Instantly playable, continue-plays make it easy to get far into the game.

Lastability 62%
Not much variety in the levels and little originality.

Overall 67%
A very classy conversion of a mediocre coin-op.