Silent Dragon (1992) for arcade is Taito’s forgotten attempt at a Double Dragon spiritual sequel.
This one came from East Technology, the same crew who made Double Dragon III (arcade, NES, Genesis, everything). That game is infamous for its stiff, awkward animation—arguably the weakest of the trilogy. But here, they got another shot.
And Silent Dragon is much better. You can tell East Technology saw what Final Fight was doing and tried to mash that polish with the Double Dragon formula. It’s still not Final Fight—by 1992, Capcom’s juggernaut was the yardstick every brawler got measured against—but it feels tighter than what they’d done before.
The action has weight, the sprites pop, and the set-pieces—like smashing through a clothing boutique or blowing up scenery—keep things lively.
It’s also packed with oddities that make it memorable. The bosses are wild: Animal Cupid (a bandaged brute), Wolfkid (basically Jagi from Fist of the North Star), and Frankenman (a stretchy mummy-thing). The HUD even has a bat icon that foreshadows the man-bat enemies later on.
And when you run out of credits, you don’t just get one “Continue?” countdown—you get a second screen with Catherine begging you to keep going, practically shaming you into feeding the machine another coin.
Mechanically, it’s a mixed bag. No separate punch and kick buttons, so the combos never get as flashy as Capcom’s. Still, you can wield a car battery as a weapon, chow down on gift-wrapped chicken, or watch a monkey pelt you with Molotovs before randomly dropping apples as health items. That sort of nonsense is peak arcade beat ’em up.
What I always notice, though, is the stock cast of enemies. Punks with mohawks? Check. Whip-wielding dominatrixes in leather? Of course. It’s as if there was a genre rulebook that every developer cribbed from. Silent Dragon follows it to the letter—only with a few more quirks to keep you smiling while you’re bashing away on the buttons
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