─The whole program was built to be full of action that will keep you
coming back for more.

Double Dragon ended up as a side-scrolling beat 'em up, but its evolution into that essentially came out of our prior experience with Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun.
Double Dragon actually started out as a wrestling game, and didn't become a beat 'em up until it was five years underway.
But that side-scrolling beat 'em up system went on to become the very heart of Technōs Japan's games.
Double Dragon had a whole range of great attacks, even giving you the ability to take enemy items, making it a great action game.
But its unique characters and dynamic range of sound were also part of its draw.
This time around we had a really small dev team of just four members, but among them were Kouji Ogata and Kazunaka Yamane, two members of the original Double Dragon team, so we are sure fans will be pleased with the outcome.
Through them we've introduced some characters like the famous Abobo, and brought the whole thing to life with Yamane's sound effects and music.
The whole program was built to be full of action that will keep you coming back for more, so definitely be sure to check out the new Double Dragon IV!

Director Yoshihisa Kishimoto

─The backgrounds are what really gave me a hard time.
So when you're playing, you might be able to catch glimpses of
my struggles here and there subtly in the back.

To be honest, when Arc System Works first got in touch and asked me to handle all of the graphic design work, I was a little taken aback.
Usually I'm more focused on character design, you see.
But still, it's not like I'm locked down to it or that I don't have any experience working on background design, so after thinking about how it was going to be based on the NES Double Dragon 2, I figured I could handle it and pretty readily took the job.
But, of course, that was all just some magic trick of Kishimoto's!
The map ended up being at least double the NES game and there were at least 1.5x more enemy characters than before! Not to mention, we had a team of four graphic designers back then, so doing this all alone seemed almost impossible.
Somehow though, with the help of Kishimoto and the other people at Arc System Works, we somehow managed to successfully get all the art done and incorporated.
My real, sincere thanks to everyone.
Since this title was meant to be done in an NES-like style, I've worked on all of my designs to preserve the retro feel, but since I'm a character designer first and foremost, it was pretty easy to add new movements to them, and add completely new characters, too.
The backgrounds are what really gave me a hard time.
So when you're playing, you might be able to catch glimpses of my struggles here and there subtly in the back.
But anyway, the characters have all been designed in a stylized way reminiscent of how games were back in the day, so please definitely give this expansive new Double Dragon title a try.

Character Design Koji Ogata

─I was actually finding phrases I couldn't believe I could have made
myself. It was really quite a lot of fun.

So, one day I suddenly get a call out of nowhere from Kishimoto asking me to handle the music for Double Dragon.
And not just any music, but music just like the old days, made with a max of only four simultaneous sounds, including the percussion track.
To be honest, I wasn't quite sure I'd still be able to pull it off, but once I got started I found that a lot of my old ways had kind of stuck with me.
What I would do, for example, was to take two sound channels and harmonize them for some measures, make one channel the main melody and the other a delay, or add a fill here and there.
As for the drums, I typically only had one channel at a time for percussion (meaning no bass drum and hi-hat at the same time), but I'd still run into points where I just needed to fill a blank space with something or other.
All the older music I made was created in such a rush that I had really forgotten about most of it, so this time around I got to go back and essentially copy some of my own work.
I was actually finding phrases I couldn't believe I could have made myself. It was really quite a lot of fun.
That's not to say that everything is just more of the same, though.
What I tried to do was preserve that retro style while still letting it become something new. But I guess whether it has or not is up to you to judge.

Music Kazunaka Yamane

─I just hope that people might decide that,
while they still love the original, they might like this new DD4, too.

When we started off development, we had the basic concept of a game similar in style to Double Dragon 2. But there were next to no materials around for us to use, so we ended up having to watch videos and actually sit down with the old game to work out the specifications.
At the beginning we had just planned on making a story mode, but talking with the producer, the mode we had added to play as an enemy for debugging seemed to be quite a hit, so part way through development, the game also became a competitive two-player game.
But the enemy characters didn't have nearly enough attacks just going by our original plans, so we added more skills for them using the drawings Ogata put together for us.
Pretty much all of the characters have been revamped with lots more they can do.
Then for the music we had planned for a normal track list and a retro track list, and asked Yamane on to handle the normal one.
He finished up his tracks and sent us his song data (MIDI) mid-development, but at that point I still had not found the time to work on the retro ones.
It wasn't until development had pretty much wrapped up and we were in the middle of debugging that I spent one of my days off finally getting started, and somehow managed to finish in time.
And, well, that's essentially how Double Dragon 4 happened.
I worked to make something along the lines of my favorite Double Dragon games, DD2 and DD Advance, and I just hope that people might decide that, while they still love the original, they might like this new DD4, too.

Programming Kei Oyama

─We've really been able to put together a game that
takes you right back to your time playing the original.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Double Dragon series, we are finally launching a new Double Dragon title!
This whole thing came about from a desire to play more, and have other people play more, of the old style Double Dragon right where it left off.
After consulting with former dev team member Kishimoto, it didn't take long at all before we had members of the old Double Dragon team with us working on the new game.
Blessed with such a great team of original members from 30 years ago, we've really been able to put together a game that takes you right back to your time playing the original.
One problem we faced was with what sort of art style to go with.
Since each title, and even each country's version of each title, had it's own distinct look, we weren't sure what do for the main visuals and the story, but after some contemplation, we decided to go with something like Double Dragon 2, the reason for this being that Double Dragon 2 on the NES used the same visuals in both Japan and the rest of the world. No changes made.
Then, after listening to what all sorts of people had to say, we added some extra modes, too!
I never would have thought way back when that I would ever be playing multiplayer and controlling an enemy character like Abobo.

Now, I don't know if anyone happened to notice, but for this homepage we all brought out pictures from the original development run back in 1987.
Everyone on the original team looks all fearless and cool, huh!
For me and Oyama though, 30 years ago we were still only eight!
Which leaves us around 40 these days...
But anyway, definitely be sure to check out our long awaited new title!

Producer Takaomi Kaneko