Rage of the Dragons


is a 2002 tag team head-to-head fighting game released for the Neo Geo hardware by Playmore. The game was developed by Japanese company Noise Factory, co-developed by BrezzaSoft and chiefly-designed by the Mexican team Evoga. As of May 11, 2020, Piko Interactive acquire the game’s IP and has a plan with it.

Gameplay

Rage of the Dragons features a tag team system, in which the player takes control of two characters and can switch between one or the other during gameplay. The character who is not being controlled will slowly recover part of his or her energy while the other is fighting. The player can perform special combos in which both characters attack an opponent at the same time for added damage.
An auxiliary meter located at the bottom of the screen that slowly fills up when an attack connects with an opponent. When the meter is full, special moves can be performed.

Plot and characters

There are a total of fourteen playable characters in Rage of the Dragons. The player can select from one of the seven default pairings, or create a custom pairing with nearly 80 possible combinations. The player will see a hidden ending if they complete the single player tournament with a Billy and Jimmy pairing.
There are also two boss characters in the game, who are fought by the player at the end of the single player tournament. Unlike the regular characters, these bosses only fought by themselves, having no partners.
Evoga originally envisioned Rage of the Dragons as a sequel to the Neo Geo fighting game version of Double Dragon released in 1995. However, Evoga were unable to use the intellectual rights for the characters, and thus Rage of the Dragons was turned into a homage to the Double Dragon series instead of an official sequel. The two lead characters in Rage of the Dragons, Billy and Jimmy Lewis, share their names with the protagonists of the Double Dragon series, Billy and Jimmy Lee, while Kang is based on Burnov from ', and the boss character Abubo is based on Abobo from the original Double Dragon. Two supporting characters in Rage, Linda and Mariah, are also based on Double Dragon characters. Jimmy, Lynn, Elias and Mr. Jones would later appear as hidden guest characters in Matrimelee, a fighting game also produced by Noise Factory. Coincidentally, Atlus, the company that originally produced the Power Instinct series, published Double Dragon Advance for Million.
The game was co-designed by Mario Vargas and Eduardo d' Palma, who would later work in the anime industry. The soundtrack was composed by Toshikazu Tanaka, who was previously employed at SNK and worked on project such as
'.

Reception

Spanish magazine Gametype gave Rage of the Dragons a positive outlook. Double Dragon creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto stated he had "nothing to do with Rage of the Dragons". In 2012, Complex ranked this "sequel to the first Double Dragon fighting game" as the 13th best SNK fighting game ever made. Kurt Kalata of Hardcore Gaming 101 regarded the game as "an excellent game for anyone into late era 2D fighters, and doubly so for its rad character designs and awesome soundtrack".