I'm having trouble sorting out my feelings about this game (which makes it a great thing for me to write about).

The basic premise is that it's a "remake" of Double Dragon, a popular video game circa 1987. But that would be like saying Conker's Bad Fur Day is a video game about a cute cartoon squirrel.

The developers have stepped way outside the boundaries of what's expected of the phrase "Double Dragon remake." Calling it a "reboot" would be incorrect. It's more like a parody of itself, although even that is questionable. At some point someone decided to make this game into a delivery mechanism for a lot of 80s references (you know, as if Family Guy was funny). I guess just because the original game was made in 1987, the main characters are now members of an imaginary hair-metal band à la Bill & Ted, complete with Valley-speak. (Games that talk to me, especially if the protagonists are stupid, automatically turn me off.) Casette tapes, also last seen in the 80s, are dropped throughout the game, and for some reason these represent magical bonus weapons. It's also apparently important that you have to hear parodies of songs from the 80s for each of these casette tapes. It almost sounds like what we know as Double Dragon is being re-painted in a new cohesive theme, but not really. It goes on from there in a lot of directions that have nothing to do with anything. There's a reference to Little Shop of Horrors, 'cause that's from the 80s, I guess. And a reference to Star Wars is almost appropriate. But a reference to the Rocketeer doesn't quite follow 'cause that's from the 90s. And a reference to Mega Man? A reference to Diablo? A bear holding a shark? And now zombies? What?

Everything about this game is "just plain wrong." Only after the first level or so does it finally become obvious that the game's definitely not just about Double Dragon any more, and you must accept that it's a comedy. It would have been much more fitting to call it Captain Commando, or maybe Big Trouble in Little China: The Game, 'cause those names would more accurately describe the fucked-up mismatch of themes present. Even PuLiRuLa is more consistent. The game is funny, not because of all the references, but simply because it keeps becoming more and more ridiculous.

Double Dragon was never a "serious" game enough for any of this to really matter (it's not like that time they turned off "serious" Zelda fans with that unexpectedly childish cartoon iteration called Wind Waker). So this can easily be thought of as a parody of all the corny "beat 'em up" games we've forgotten about. Indeed, if it were to appear in an arcade in the 80s, it wouldn't be much weirder than a lot of other stuff we took for granted at the time.

But even though this kludgy "remake" in particular was mostly harmless, the principle of the matter is still worth discussing. In short, this game epitomizes everything that's wrong with remakes today.

• Why invoke the name of an ancient franchise if you're only going to betray the fraction of the audience that remembers it? Why do artists feel compelled to leave their mark by drastically changing the spirit of the work they're re-creating? And then why do a sloppy job of it? There's really no good reason for anyone to have made this game, at least not with the Double Dragon name. It's masturbation for the sake of masturbation, and we're all expected to watch.
• Most of the stupid jokes and references can be fully appreciated only by someone my age who played a lot of NES. This is precisely why video games cannot be art. A work based entirely on lame inside jokes and obscure references is by definition unoriginal. Why spend so much effort making a game that's going to be largely inaccessible and forgotten? There's a reason why Disney carefully, deliberately "Disneyfied" everything his company produced: so that it would be timeless.
• If you're going to have some cohesive vision for re-imagining something in an unexpected style, great, it could be worthwhile. But if your vision could be described as "random, whatever, haha," then you're not really being an artist, are you? There are an awful lot of "artists" working in the game industry who are unwilling to hold themselves accountable as artists. I'm going to start calling this the George Lucas Yes-man Syndrome. "I couldn't possibly disagree with my boss or endanger my employment because I just have to be a part of Star Wars even though we're destroying it."
• Putting a few blocky oldskool sprites and sound effects in the middle of your elaborate modern environment isn't cool, it's as clashing as it ever was. Did we already forget about the terrible "multimedia" CD-ROM games of the early 90s? I'm getting tired of people insincerely trying to summon an "8-bit" or "16-bit" nostalgia without succeeding.
• Even the obscure references, the crux of this production, are half-assed. If you're going to make a parody, shouldn't you do it shamelessly instead of hiding behind your lawyer, all wishy-washy?
• It seems as if whoever made this wasn't actually alive during the 80s. Whom do you think you're trying to fool?

Yes, I am exaggerating a little, but it's to make a point. As I said, Double Dragon isn't important enough for anyone to really care about its artistic merit, so no harm done, mostly. Double Dragon Neon is silly and fun, and who cares? But in principle, this very obvious example must serve to illustrate the problem with remaking other games that are important to us. If you're willing, think about what I've said, except apply those assertions to a game that's more "sacred" to you.

Moving on, I want to say that I don't care for collecting the casette tapes and "leveling up" the magical bonus weapons. While I'm playing a "beat 'em up" game, I couldn't care less about playing Diablo, so I'm not sure why every single fucking game today has to have Diablo on the side. But this is excusable if we think of it as yet one more obscure reference, this time to another Technos game, River City Ransom.

The mechanics of the game are actually OK and strike a fair balance between the simple pummeling of foes that we remember in the original game and just barely enough new moves to keep things from getting tedious. The presentation is quite polished, and some of the boss fights are particularly well executed. The overall difficulty of the game is pretty tame, although I once beat Double Dragon in the arcade on two quarters, so perhaps the amount of difficulty here is accurate. Nonetheless, there are increasingly difficult modes available in case you wanted to play the game more than once.

The animation is passable, nothing special. The characters are exceedingly skanky, which adds to their appeal, probably, though they could have at least made Abobo look like Abobo. (In the 80s, my friends and I used to call him "Beans" ...I guess 'cause we were a little bit racist.)

One more thing: I like the 80s because I used to live there (and yes, it was indeed totally awesome at the time). "The 80s" is not just a label you can put on something to invoke my feelings like a commodity. It's much more than that, and you obviously don't understand. So cut it out already.