Last year, Arc System Works released Double Dragon Advance and Super Double Dragon on all major platforms, allowing fans to experience two of the best games in the Double Dragon series on modern hardware. At the same time, they quietly published Double Dragon Collection for the Nintendo Switch in Asian markets. While that version has been available to import for a while, collectors now have the chance to preorder an official North American version from Limited Run Games.

Double Dragon is one of the most enduring beat 'em up franchises around. Limited Run recently announced physical copies of the Double Dragon Collection, Double Dragon Gaiden debuted to rave reviews in 2023 and later received online co-op, and River City Girls 2 is due to get Double Dragon DLC sometime this year. The arrival of fresh Double Dragon merchandise from Kumagumi (a Japanese merchandise label) is certainly appropriate, and there will be more to come.

Earlier this year, Arc System Works released the Double Dragon & Kunio-kun Retro Brawler Bundle for modern consoles and Switch, bringing heaps of NES beat ‘em up goodness to Sony’s console. It looked like Xbox owners would be left out of the fun, but that has thankfully changed today. Seven of the games from the Retro Brawler Bundle are now available as $5 individual downloads on Xbox One. At last, Microsoft fans can play Double Dragon II, Double Dragon III, and River City Ransom in local and online co-op! While the Xbox Store page does list Double Dragon as having co-op, since this is the NES version of the game, it actually does not offer cooperative play - instead it's a two player versus mode.

While Sony and Microsoft are trying to one-up one another with the "2.0 versions" of their consoles, Nintendo has decided to go retro. A $60 version of their original NES console, dubbed the "Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition," will arrive this November with 30 original titles, including a fair number of co-op classics.

Long before double rainbows were a thing, double dragons were an even bigger thing. The Double Dragon series of sidescrolling arcade beat-em-ups helped popularize the genre with solid co-op kicking and punching action. The effect was even greater when the games made it to consoles. Now, that shift to home systems is repeated some 24 years later with the release of Double Dragon II: The Revenge on PS4.

In honor of Double Dragon: Neon's recent release on XBLA and PSN, this month's Co-Op International looks at a couple of classic Double Dragon games that never made it out of Japan. Both are ports of Double Dragon II: The Revenge and share a few things in common, but otherwise they could hardly be more different.