In an interview with gamereactor.eu, assistant product manager Pete Rosky gave some details for the upcoming Double Dragon Neon
WHAT IS IT? It is not an HD upgrade, it is not the same game you played before, it's more of a lover letter to the franchise and the 80's. This is for every kid of the 80's and every fan of old school brawlers; we've put this nice little package of just gold for you. It plays like an old school brawler, little more sped up. The characters are enormous compared to what they looked like in the last game. The art is tight...and it's just this really gorgeous, fun, over the top 80's love letter. It's sick. We're actually re-imagining the whole franchise, so it's not 1, it's not 2, it's not 3, its not any one of those. Lots of elements of all of them are thrown in for nostalgia; it's an all new game on its own. The bottom line, it's a reimagining in the sense that we wanted to give you a new experience, but make it feel like Double Dragon. And that's kind of where our hearts were, and that's what I think the game is.
INSPIRATION? Sean Velasco from Way Forward, the lead designer, is an absolute nutcase, and I mean that in the nicest way possible. He watched "Big Trouble in Little China" WAY too much while writing the design doc, and it shows. So between the love of this game and getting the mechanics and the feel, through the look and aesthetic, you can tell it's from a sick mind of someone who watched way too much Kurt Russell and Kim Catrell.
THE NAME NEON? We looked at the game when they first started sending builds, and couldn't think of a better name based on the look and the colors, and the feel. It's just NEON, it's bright, so we stuck with it, it worked...It's sort of an anime vibe. Everything is recognizable, but at the same time very unique.
MUSIC - Jake Kaufmann did most of the music for all the way forward games as well as a lot of other games. He went in the studio, re-made a bunch of double dragon songs that you'll love, went and re-did 'em in a much heavier, cleaner sound. And then he wrote a bunch of songs. Some of them with lyrics. And I can't tell you how amazing they are...They're amazing 80's ballads, rock anthems, heavy crunchy metal, and the lyrics are gold, it feels like a karate kid theme song, but it's got its own double dragon touch to it.
CAMPAIGN - There are 10 large levels over 5 unique areas. It's a reasonably long game, and there are 3 difficulty levels. You're gonna want to beat it on the hardest. And because of our new mix tape system, you're gonna be unlocking new abilities and powering up, and wanting to do that in the hard difficulty to see if you can hack it.
MIX-TAPE? It's the 80's. It's Neon. We're definitely embracing that. So we decided we had an extra button on the controller, what are we gonna do with it? We give you a power up. What you do is, you have two sides to your mix tape. Side A is your actual moves and abilities that you can assign, one per side, but you can change it whenever you want, based on what's going on. Side B is more passive abilities, it's more like a buff, so we can give you increased health, increased defense, speed, or your special ability can get increased as well, and you can change that, again on the fly. You pick those up as songs throughout the game. When you add a song, you can assign the song to your mix-tape. And on top of that, we have a guy named the tapesmith, he's this kind of old sensei type character who is hanging out in ships throughout the game. You collect money, you can upgrade songs on your tape from him, and keep building your character.
WHEN CAN WE PLAY? XBLA or PSN, before the end of the summer.
