Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons reminds me of why I love the classic arcade experience

Growing up, I did most of my gaming at home, but I still have some amazing memories of arcade games. There was something truly special about putting a coin in a machine and starting a new adventure, knowing that I could only go as far as my quarters could take me. Nearly all of my arcade sessions ended in defeat, but whenever I made it a little further my last playthrough, it felt like an accomplishment.

Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons doesn’t require quarters, but it still does a great job of mimicking the classic arcade experience. During each playthrough, I earned coins that I could trade in for tokens at the end of a run. Once I had enough tokens, I could cash them in for prizes, like new playable characters, music tracks, or gameplay tips.

Naturally, I wanted to rack up tokens as quickly as possible, but Double Dragon Gaiden made things more interesting by giving me other ways to use my money. I could save up my coins to maximize my payout when I cashed out, but I could also spend them on power-ups that would boost my chances of success. Spending $750 would let me recover health every time I killed an enemy with a special move. For $1,000, I could boost the damage done by a special move by fifty percent.

I could also use my coins and tokens the old-fashioned way: to continue a game once I’d been defeated. The default cost of a continue is three tokens, which is pretty spendy, but it was a small price to pay when I was on the cusp of victory. Even when I was saving my tokens for something special, it was hard to watch the continue screen run down without handing over my coins so that I could keep going.

Double Dragon Gaiden also kicks things up a notch by adding some roguelike elements to its old-school beat-em-up gameplay. After a few playthroughs, I realized that the character upgrades I could purchase were random, which made it much harder to resist buying a really awesome power-up. If I did manage to hold out against the temptation to buy, I’d be rewarded with even more cash, so deciding what to do with my money was a struggle all the time.

I’m not sure I want to go back to spending stacks of quarters on a single game, but I really appreciate how Double Dragon Gaiden showcases its arcade roots. It makes me feel nostalgic for the arcade games of the past, but it smooths over the more stressful aspects of arcade-style gameplay.

From its token system to its pixelated graphics to its local co-op gameplay, it looks like Rise of the Dragons has just about everything I could want from a retro-style beat-em-up game. I’ve only played an hour or so thus far, but I’ll be posting a review of Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons later this month, so make sure you check back if you want to see more of what it has to offer.