You need to do yourself a favor and buy this game immediately if you're a fan of any of the following things:

• the Double Dragon franchise
  
• classic beat-'em-up video games in general
  
• '70s and '80s martial arts films, and parodies thereof
  
• '80s pop culture, and parodies thereof
  
• Jake Kaufman
  
• over-the-top action games with tongue-in-cheek humor

Just trust me. You'll thank yourself later.

I realize this game is now surprisingly old, and some might argue it hasn't aged particularly well. Personally, I couldn't disagree more. Sure, the graphics aren't up to modern AAA standards, but the game is a TON of fun for the price. The story is ridiculous in the best way possible (in the vein of all great action films from the '70s, '80s, and first half of the '90s), and the soundtrack is amazing (Jake Kaufman, take a bow) and very well-designed to suit the aesthetics of the stages and environments. The "Stance" and "Sosetsuken" songs are also a delightful touch that I won't fully spoil here, but listen to them when you get a chance; I consider them parody Easter eggs. Though the cartoonish art style (most of the character models look to have come straight out of an '80s comic book) is incredibly fun, don't let it fool you: the stages and backgrounds are beautifully drawn and rendered.

There's a great amount of replay value for a variety of reasons: humor and the aforementioned ridiculous story, Easter eggs (including a handful of secret achievements), achievements, cassette tape collecting, the awesome soundtrack, and just plain satisfying beat-'em-up action. Even though enemies and available weapons are fixed for each stage on a given difficulty level, no one playthrough of any given level will be exactly like the next unless you really go out of your way to make it that way.

Though that does lead into probably my single biggest point of criticism. You will have to play through stages multiple times if you want to upgrade your character's abilities by collecting cassette tapes and mithril from bosses. This can feel more than a little grindy at times, because... well, it is. Fortunately, I found the game itself entertaining enough that this wasn't a big issue, as I actually enjoyed replaying the stages multiple times to farm materials.

I'm writing this review primarily because I wanted to share my thoughts on one of my favorite games of the past decade, and hopefully encourage anyone else who might enjoy it as much as I to check it out. I simply cannot recommend it highly enough for all of the glowing (no pun intended) positives I mentioned. Even with the one downside, I found it more than worth it.