Following yesterday’s announcement, Arc System Works has come out with an official press release for their 3D Double Dragon game, with its official name, Double Dragon Revive.
As we had reported yesterday, this will be beat-em-up title that plays just like how the genre did in the 1980s and 1990s. This update will feature Billy and Jimmy Lee in full 3D, but on top of that, we now see that the game will have a street smart aesthetic. Courtesy of Gematsu, we can now say that Double Dragon Revive’s developer is not Arc System Works themselves, but Yuke’s.
And yes, that would be the same Yuke’s that has been most famous for making the WWE wrestling games. And that’s the same Yuke’s who most recently released AEW Fight Forever last year. While development continues on that title, based on the game’s visible metrics, and a lot of rumors, it seems unlikely that AEW Fight Forever will rise to the level of quality that fans expected.
Yuke’s has always been making more than wrestling games, so this isn’t that big a departure for the studio. We will note that the press release also states that:
“The carefully crafted experience, supervised by staff with experience on Arc System Works fighting game titles, makes it easy for new players to get engrossed right away.”
Both Arc System Works and Yuke’s have demonstrated they are very much capable of bringing a vintage genre like fighting games and wrestling games to modern gamers, in a way that both casual and hardcore gamers will enjoy. While Yuke’s has their WWE games, Arc System Works demonstrated they were for more than hardcore players with Dragon Ball Fighterz and Persona 4 Arena.
We sincerely want to be excited for this one, but at least as of right now, the initial visual reveal is not bolstering our confidence. We had noted that there had been several attempts at reviving Double Dragon for the modern era. If we were to be honest, Wayforward’s Double Dragon Neon seemed to be more visually pleasing than what they have shown us so far.
But even more than that, both Yuke’s and Arc System Works have demonstrated they can do much better than this. We have seen what Arc System Works’ refined animation in Guilty Gear Strive, and they have to match that level to even begin to grab interest from newer gamers, away from the likes of Valorant and Genshin Impact.
We do understand that this is an early preview, so we hope that the game will be looking much better upon release. Gamers today don’t necessarily expect realistic graphics in everything, but the baseline is higher than what it was in 2012.
Double Dragon Revive will be releasing in 2025 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|s, and Windows. You can watch the official trailer below.
