Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls (World)

Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls platform overview

As someone who punched their way through the '90s arcade scene, revisiting Double Dragon V: The Shadow Falls on the Atari Jaguar hits differently. It’s a 1994 fighting game and a bizarre footnote — a spin-off of the short-lived Double Dragon cartoon built on a different game's engine, Lethal Enforcers developer Leland Corporation's first and only fighter. You won't see Billy and Jimmy busting heads in a scrolling alley; you get polygon graphics and one-on-one bouts against villains like Shadow Master and Jamil that look just like the Saturday morning versions. Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls includes region marker: World, which helps separate this page from nearby ports, regional releases, and similarly named entries.

• Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls version details
  Double Dragon V - The Shadow Falls includes region marker: World, which helps separate this page from nearby ports, regional releases, and similarly named entries. The strongest visible context is the Atari Jaguar platform and its RPG play style. Emulator core: jaguar.
• A Complete Genre Pivot
  Forget the iconic side-scrolling brawler roots. The Jag version commits fully to the one-on-one fighting craze, with a six-button scheme, super moves built up with star icons, and stages like Shadow Island. It feels closer to a stripped-down Street Fighter II, which was a wild departure for the franchise that always left me a bit conflicted.
• Direct Toon-to-Cartridge Adaptation
  They’ve faithfully copied designs from the 1993 DiC cartoon down to Marian’s blue outfit and Burnov's massive frame. Hearing those digitized voices taunt you during fights perfectly nails that cheesy ‘90s aesthetic, though a real fan will catch how different its tone is from the gritty original arcade.
• A Technical Showcase, of Sorts
  The Jaguar's '64-bit' horsepower gets shown off through its Mode 7-esque rotating arena on the Technodrome-esque final stage and the polygonal character avatars. Graphically impressive for the Jaguar back in 1994, though I always thought the digitized sprites felt a bit stiff, and that weird combo system took time to figure out compared to standard Capcom inputs.