Double Dragon V – The Shadow Falls is a fighting game developed by Leland Interactive Media and published by Tradewest for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis in 1994. A port for the Atari Jaguar developed by Telegames was released the following year. It is an American-produced sequel to the Double Dragon series by Technōs Japan,[5] who had little to no credited involvement in the development of the game outside of licensing the IP to the publisher outside Japan.
Unlike previous games in the series, which were side-scrolling beat ’em ups, Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls is a head-to-head fighting game based on the Double Dragon animated series in the style of Capcom‘s 1991 arcade-hit Street Fighter II. Technōs would eventually produce their own fighting game based on the 1994 live-action Double Dragon film for the Neo Geo the following year, simply titled Double Dragon.
Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls received mixed reception since it was released for the SNES and Genesis. Critics felt it was an unexceptional but respectable clone of Street Fighter II and gave positive comments in regards to the graphics and the sprite quality. However, the Jaguar version received negative reception from reviewers, who felt that the port did not improve upon the graphics and audio from the 16-bit versions and had a needlessly difficult controls layout.
The title comes from the first episode of the 1993 TV series.
Gameplay – Double Dragon V – The Shadow Falls
Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls is a fighting game that follows the 8-way directional pad/stick and 6-button layout common to most fighting games at the time (including Street Fighter II), consisting of weak, medium and strong punches and kicks. The Genesis version supports the standard 3-button controller (making use of the start button to toggle between punches and kicks), as well as the 6-button controller released the previous year, while the Jaguar version makes use of its 3-button controller for punches and the 3, 6 and 9 keypad buttons for kicks instead. Characters have several special moves, as well as finishing moves called “Overkills” where the losing character has their own unique death animation when defeated by a certain type of basic attack.[6]
The game features four game modes to choose from: Tournament, Vs. Battle, Quest, and Watch. Tournament is an arcade-style single player mode, where the player competes against a series of computer-controlled opponents, with each character having their own ending. Vs. Battle is a two-player mode where one player battles another. Quest is an alternate single player mode where one competes in a series of plot-based matches and the player can choose to play as one of the Lee brothers, who are on a mission to stop the Shadow Master from releasing a plague, or play as one of the Shadow Warriors, who must compete to become the Shadow Master’s new second-in-command. In Quest Mode, the player can also adjust the attributes of their own character. Watch Mode allows the player to pit two computer-controlled characters against each other. There is also a Dossiers mode, where the player gets to view the game’s character profiles, as well as an Options mode to adjust the difficulty setting, control configuration and other features.
