Rage of the Dragons (レイジ・オブ・ザ・ドラゴンズ) 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 2020, Piko Interactive has acquired the game's IP and has expressed interest in using it in some way. Ports for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, Microsoft Windows, and Xbox One and Xbox Series were released on November 14, 2024, ported by QUByte Interactive. In April 2024, during EVO Japan it was announced that new Rage Of The Dragons game called Rage of the Dragons W is in the works for ExA-Arcadia arcade port.

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 slowly fills up when an attack connects with an opponent. When the meter is full, special moves can be performed (Ex: Counter Attacks, Super Moves, etc.).

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 single entries.

Development and release

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 (that were purchased by Million, a company founded by former Technōs Japan staff which developed Double Dragon Advance), 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 Double Dragon II: The Revenge, and the boss character Abubo is based on Abobo from the original Double Dragon. Two supporting characters in Rage, Linda (Abubo's female assistant) and Mariah (Jimmy's girlfriend), are also based on Double Dragon characters. Jimmy, Lynn, Elias and Annie 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 projects such as Fatal Fury: King of Fighters. Prior to launch, French magazine HardCore Gamers noted the inclusion of both Billy and Jimmy from Double Dragon in the game.

Reception

Spanish magazine Gametype gave Rage of the Dragons a positive review. Monthly Arcadia reported on their September 2002 issue that the game was the sixth most popular release in Japan. Double Dragon original 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".