Double Dragon Gaiden on Modernising an Arcade Classic for a New Era | Push Square

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The humble beat-‘em-up, like so many fan favourite franchises, is enjoying something of a renaissance on modern consoles, like PS5 and PS4. With the likes of Streets of Rage 4 and TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge proving immensely popular on PlayStation platforms, it was only a matter of time before Double Dragon returned to the limelight.

Of course, this isn’t the only new game starring Billy and Jimmy in the past decade: Double Dragon Neon attracted a lot of attention in the latter days of the PS3’s lifecycle, while Double Dragon 4 was a modern attempt at recapturing the feel and flavour of the NES originals by Technos Japan. Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons sits somewhere in the middle, remaining faithful to the beat-‘em-up gameplay of the originals while adding in contemporary new features, like a roguelite structure.

We caught up with developer Secret Base’s Raymond Teo to learn a little more about the game and its ambitions. Please note, throughout this article you’ll find a hand-picked selection of exclusive screenshots, kindly provided to us by the developer.

Push Square: Double Dragon is obviously a legendary franchise. How did the opportunity to make Rise of the Dragons come about, and how does it feel to be a custodian of such an iconic series?

Raymond Teo: When I released my parody zombie beat-’em-up Devil’s Dare (later re-released as Streets of Red) in 2014, I was approached by Arc System Works, which if I recall correctly, was exploring the idea of publishing games on Steam. We had some discussion, but as I already had the publisher then, we did not have the chance to collaborate.

Fast forward to 2018, when I was exploring my next game, I learnt that Arc System Works acquired Double Dragon and released