This week just gets better and better as another game has hit our news feeds and it's none other than Double Dragon for the Amiga, but as an AGA edition. First released way back in the 80's by Taito Corporation, Double Dragon in the Arcades was a fantastic beat 'em up game that featured high grade fighting two player fun on many different systems such as the Amstrad, Amiga and C64. But now thanks to JOTD, he is working on bringing the Amiga version more in line with the Arcade. In fact one person even said "I honestly thought that the original was the worst home conversion that could possibly exist."
The long-standing quest to bring a definitive, arcade-quality version of Double Dragon to the Amiga could be reaching its full potential. Legendary porter JOTD (Jean-François Fabre) has provided a significant update on the project, which is being developed specifically for AGA-equipped Amigas (such as the A1200 and A4000). After what JOTD described as "brutal debugging sessions," the developer has successfully stabilized the core of the game, with scrolling still to fix and a completable game. While the original 1980s Amiga port was often criticized for poor graphics and lackluster performance, this new AGA edition which also features music by n09, aims to leverage the advanced chipset to deliver a much more faithful recreation of the arcade original.
- This project follows JOTD’s successful track record of high-quality Amiga conversions, including recent releases like Dig Dug 2 (January 2026) and Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja. His ports are known for being "transcodes" that often use original arcade code (z80 to 68k assembly) to ensure maximum accuracy.
Links :1) Download
How does the conversion work? Do you take the original ROM and “transcode” the code to make it compatible with the Amiga? I’d like to understand more about this kind of conversion
ReplyDeleteLook up Reassembler on youtube, He did an outrun arcade to Amiga conversion and is currently working on Sonic Megadrive to Amiga conversion.
DeleteYes, it's is roughly the same process, except that Reassembler uses 68000 code, and here code must be converted from 6809 to 68000 first, which is no picnic.
DeleteI feel your pain, I had this on my to do list after porting Renegade but realised converting 6809 was a lot more challenging than 6502. I'm glad you've risen to this challenge instead đ. Looking forward to the finished product.
DeleteMy conversion tool supports 6809 and 6502 with equal very good quality. But there are still a lot of manual fixes to apply (stack usage, carry operations). Plus this game has 5 switchable 16kb banks, 4 of which containing code so if not handled properly it becomes a nightmare. And there's an additional MCU for coord conversion, which means another ROM, and cpu communication/shared memory to emulate. Fun!
DeleteCool, I think if I was to convert another game to the Amiga I'll go down your route and create some automation tools for the code (I made some for the gfx). I did Renegade code by hand and it was a massive undertaking and I know both 6502 and 68000 to a reasonable level.
DeleteI'd be glad to help with the process. With games like Double Dragon, full RE & manual rewrite is just too big a job. I prefer doing more conversions, and not understanding 100% of the code, than trying to fully know how a game works. Also trying to lift enemy A.I. only is a false good idea, as the rest of the code like animations, transition screens is mundane and super-annoying to reimplement from scratch right.
DeleteThanks for the offer. I agree, best to reuse as much code a possible and just hang the correct drawing/sound functions on top. It does always make me happy though when something first draws properly, a visual indication that things are heading in the right direction.
DeleteI had the original Amiga port way back in the day, and it was pretty bad even then. A shame because the Amiga could surely have done much better.
ReplyDeleteI can’t decide whether the old Amiga port is more bad or hilarious. It’s so typical 80’s. A lot of the beat em up games had terrible controls which was always my main issue. The PC version I had on a 5 1/4 floppy disk looked far worse. Who would have known that decades later arcade perfect ports would be released not by the companies but by fans who care.
ReplyDeleteTry the Commodore 64 port.
DeleteThen you'll have seen how bad Double Dragon conversions really were.
Amiga users, you've hit the jackpot with JOTD =)
ReplyDeleteAhhh! Finally the conversion we always dreamed of for the Amiga (perfectly capable to do a decent job at that time already...). Glorious DD probably received the worst computer/console conversions ever in the history of arcade conversions
ReplyDeleteRest in Peace, Yoshihisa Kishimoto, creator of Double Dragon and Renegade and all its River City sequels, who just died at the age of 64. His legacy will last forever.
ReplyDeleteCongrats ! Please make an .adf version.
ReplyDeleteFinally, the definitive conversion for AMIGA!!!
ReplyDeleteIt arrives just as the creator of the original ARCADE game leaves us.
RIP, great Yoshihisa Kishimoto, you brightened up my arcade childhood.
What an impressive job he does.
ReplyDeleteSome of you guys are taking this way off track, to the point you are attacking each other. Come on guys play nice please! Don't drag the site down. I for one have a huge respect for JOTD and every developer out there. I could never dream of creating an Amiga game let alone having the time to do so. As for AGA, atleast JOTD has hinted he might be working on an ECS version as well. So lets see what happens next :)
ReplyDeleteThe Original Arcade game uses 3 buttons : punch, kick and jump. How about this amiga Version ?
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of controllers with enough buttons can be used ?
it will be sega 3 button, CD32, or ... keyboard :)
ReplyDeleteYou can use loads of buttons on an Amiga, Cd32 pads are a thing.
ReplyDeleteA500 was powerful enough to have perfect ports of the arcade games from the era. The problem was programmers should code the game to use Amiga's cuatom chips and all the 'tricks' that they could do. Motorola 68k was was quite weak CPU even at the time when A1000 was released. All the magic was within the custom chips which were true marvel and they were simply ahead of it's time. Games like Lionheart or Elf Mania showed how powerful OCS/ECS chipset was. The main bottleneck of the Amiga was floppy medium and RAM. 2MB of RAM and additional cartridge slot like in MSX computers would made Amiga not only better machine but it would extend the lifespan of the machine. Even Chip/Fast Memory architecture was amazing thing. Adding Fast RAM made the machine faster which was ahead of it's time again. Some people say that Amiga wasn't good computer for office work which is wrong. Hardware multitasking was outstanding on this machine and only the mai
ReplyDeletedevelopers of office software didn't really understood how to use the potential. But still plenty of great offi e apps were released after the C= flop. Wordworth was pretty good WYSIWYG word processor, especially if you had 4MB of RAM and Harddrive. I had a lot of fun using it with my Star LC10 dot matrix printer. Very user friendly app and I was like 15 years old when I was using it. Still can't get over the fact that Amiga isn't the third power on the market nowadays, but thanks to emulation I still have lots of fun withplaying games and using Amiga productivoty software. Cheers. :)
wrong analogy with specifically designed amiga games. A500 7MHz cannot cope with games like this (unchanged) there are just too many colors and objects on screen at the same time. Arcade hardware is merciless. But with some fastmem, mild acceleration and AGA, more things become possible.
ReplyDeleteYes they can, arcade games are notorious for having very inefficient color choices. Not having a proper artist and direction makes all the difference.
DeleteOf course a decent port of DD is possible on OCS. But JOTD is doing a transcode - not rewriting the entire game with OCS in mind.
DeleteEven with transcode one could have an artist to reduce the colors to 16 or whatever.
DeleteAgree.Even A500 is good enough to run decent port of DD at 50 fps in 16 well choiced colours. The original Amiga Double Dragon version is good for joke purposes only.
Deleteit's delusional to think that it's possible to reduce 256+ colors (with dynamically changing palettes several times per level) to 16 colors and maintain good visuals all throughout the game. My plan is rather 1) stick to 1 palette per enemy and 2) use EHB to provide a second palette. That way, a 32/EHB color version is maybe possible.
DeleteECS DD can be done. Just not on A500/68000/1MB
ReplyDeleteSeems the dream comes true in this case.The most proper port of Double Dragon ever not only proper Amiga version of it. If the sound in this latest video is the real Paula output with no channel intermissions , then i'm pretty amazed. I'f not, maybe i can tell how to do the sound arcade perfect on the Amiga.
ReplyDeleteyes, that's the real (emulated) paula. No added music or such. It's using 2 or 3 channels, leaving room for sfx.
DeleteWould it be possible to smoothly fade the palette change across multiple frames?
ReplyDeletethis is a complex issue, as the transition phases use part of both level tiles. The palette changes constantly, but here the problem is that the colors are quantized down to 64 colors for backgrounds, against 128 colors in the real hardware. Using the actual palette dynamically is not possible.
DeleteNow the fact is that old gamers mostly want to be surprised by these kind of works, even knowing the stringent limits of their beloved machine.
ReplyDeleteMostly with the same intent, the elder programmer tailors the visual appeal and feedback of original code by squeezing every bit of the custom video/audio chips on duty, surpassing sometimes the archetypes in surprising ways, with a dedicated sprite redrawing, a modified palette or a custom soundtrack (take as an example the exceptional tracks realised by the Follins on Amiga Sly Spy conversion).
As you all know by consulting these pages, those kind of "miracles" already exist. But it seems this is not the case, as in the coder's explicit intentions.
This will be a fairly competent adaptation of the original code running on enough powerful machines, even surpassing the limits of the original board/gameplay, by removing the infamous slowdowns that often plagued ingame action, and so granting us hours of mildly modulated martial mayhem.
An ocs/1mb version is another story, yet to be told.
Obviously, we hope all the best, because is there that true challenge is found and old expectations fulfilled ;)
Just noticed a small amount of slowdown is still there, in two players session. But ... er ... for the sake of an authentic arcade experience !
ReplyDeletelol I wish it was the reason :) I hope most of the slowdowns will be fixed in the future
DeleteGreat to see the original DD get a nice release on the Amiga. I am hoping for some remixes for the tracks as there are some great ones out there. When I think of DD I always think of the music and the sequel too.
ReplyDeleteI remember playing Double Dragon on A500, the version which came out in 1989. It was still fun with 2 players, but the game had pretty awful controls, and fighting felt stiff and slow. Scrolling was not smooth. Still, picking up a baseball bat, and slashing at enemies was great fun.. nothing like this was available on the C64, which I owned before the A500.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, quality is quality, these days nobody should be satisfied with poor old Amiga ports, and instead demand better, and enjoy those new games which are now made. Like this version of Double Dragon. It's certainly not bad, even compared to modern 3D games really. Best games were made in the 80's and 90's, and AGA makes possible the better quality that OCS/ECS can't do (more memory, better sprites and more colors).
Nice work JOTD.
ReplyDeleteThe more I learn about the Amiga, the more I realise how just constrained the hardware was compared say to that of the Sega Mega Drive, particularly in terms of game development.
Devs back then had to use every trick in the book to get things to look good. That being said European developers were often used to such constraints coming from platforms such as the Spectrum and C64.
An OCS 1mb conversion in this style is possible, but the whole engine would have to be built from the ground up in assembly, the sprites and backgrounds would need significant editing by someone who is an expert in color theory and really at the point you'd only be lifting the AI and parts of the game logic. It would be no mean feat and probably take few years to complete.
JOTD's process across AGA is much quicker! đ
first, let me say that the game engine is 100% assembly. The code is on github. You cannot possibly squeeze all the frames of the games not even mentioning the music into 1MB. You can adapt the game but it's not going to have all characters & moves. I'll try an ECS 32 color version I'm eager to see what it's going to be like.
DeleteI'm able to get to level 5 and then the background goes completely black and it's impossible to progress. Pretty good all round so far. It does need optimising as there's lots of slow down even with a fast cpu in spots, seems to run fairly well on an 030 or 040, slightly more buggy when using the 040 for some reason.
ReplyDeleteIt crashed on me when you jump from the ledge at the beginning of stage 4. If you fall however, it lets you continue on. There are some strange spots where it pauses and the color palette shifts. Not sure how that will be solved, but it sort of breaks the fourth wall in the experience a little, but it could be worse I guess. Apart from the odd bit of glitching with moving doors and some flickering occasionally it looks near arcade perfect. I suspect this has had a small amount of color reduction, but it's hard to tell.
Nice work. Can't wait to play level 5.
I wish to stress that AGA/OCS or whatever, the job is massively impressive to my eyes. It reproduces quasi perfectly the arcade feeling and gameplay and that's all that counts for me. Great big up to the team, I have preordered the A1200 especially to have a modern Amiga to precisely play all those new games/ports today.
ReplyDeleteGreat work JOTD. Please just ignore comments from people that over estimate certain Amiga configurations, there is no beginning or end.
ReplyDeleteI know but I just can't help it. I'm really hoping to get a decent ECS version.
DeleteWHDLoad only ? The amiga version could work from a simple floppy disk.
ReplyDeletethe amiga version was also crap. The size of the data is currently 3MB. Won't fit on less than 4 disks.
DeleteI'm really pleased with this latest port of JOTD, but I'd be even happier if they released an ECS version.
ReplyDeleteOver and over, another dream come true from the wizard JOTD! Thanks for all you do to keep the Amiga alive and relevant!
ReplyDeleteI guess I might as well bin my version I was working on now :D
ReplyDeleteNot at all, if it is something you want to do. How were you doing it with the scorpian engine or assembler?
DeleteIf you can still keep the requirements lower than JOTD's version, you should definitely go on with it!
DeleteI feel that's the 2nd time you've had to say that recently. Just combine your efforts into a Sonic / DD crossover game! :)
Deletewhy not an adf version? Not everyone uses that whdload
ReplyDeleteIf you want ADF,maybe wait for the OCS version as pobably everyone who uses A1200 bought the IDE CF card converter for less then 30 Eur including CF card. That means Whdload which is the new standard for A1200 instead of ADF.
Deletemaybe just use the provided version and be happy? I don't understand this need (especially for Amiga users) to be spoon fed everything
Delete"That means Whdload which is the new standard for A1200 instead of ADF."
ReplyDeleteNever was, never will be. It's just a waste of ressources, forcing you to take care of any single byte of Chip memory you can free to be able to launch your game. I have got hundreds of complex games installed on my hard drive, most of them were created years before Whdload and work just fine. Some of them are more recent and work great too without the need of this piece of... Anotther way is to create a .hdf file. It can work on a lot of different Amiga systems. I don't like to be forced to use Whdload to be able to play a game. A lot of games makers understand that and let you chose the format wich suits you the best.
Incredible work, JOTD. The transcode approach — converting 6809 to 68000 — is a serious technical undertaking, and the results speak for themselves. The arcade colors and Paula audio output on AGA are genuinely impressive. Really looking forward to seeing the ECS version take shape too.
ReplyDeleteI would normally agree and my smaller ports always come also as ADF, but here the game data is huge and fastmem is required anyway. whdload is just a way to make things simpler to load stuff from hard drive. BTW noone forces you to play this game.
ReplyDeleteAppreciate there's no other way sometimes, but WHDLoad doesn't make anything "simpler". Basic WHDLoad installs, which comprise the majority of those that are out there, simply *don't work* on emulators. You've done amazing work in making a vast library that DO work, for which I for one am eternally grateful, but we still have to just cross our fingers and hope you do one of the "special" ones. Most of the time when something is released as a WHDLoad, or if it's by anyone other than you, we just sigh and don't bother downloading it.
Delete@JOTD
ReplyDeleteTo load stuff from hard drive never was a problem on the Amiga. Thousands of different softwares of all kinds prove it. As you probably know, the aim of whdoad was to permit to use floppy disks softwares, wich had no installer, on any hard drive.
Whatever, your work is amazing and I enjoyed a lot of your .adf games. Thanks for them ! Despite Double Dragon is my favorite arcade game (nostalgia), no I won't play your whdload version and I'm pretty sure that I won't be the only one in this case. Whdload should be an option but never the only choice, else it' becomes one more fork in the users base and we have already more than enough of them.
of course but the extra effort is somehow daunting for me. Maybe it will be done, but I'm sure that people will complain that they have problems with their setup. That's what whdload is for. I don't really care if you play the version or not, too bad to deprive oneself of that game just for a question of principle. If you can afford the ram, it's nonsense not to try it.
Delete.... "Only WHDLoad makes it possible" ?
ReplyDeleteIm playing in Coin-Operator during '80 years !!!
ReplyDeleteGood beat'em'up !
You are incredibly heavy, all of you (except the game creator). Do you realize that someone is designing a game on a machine that has been dead for almost 30 years. It takes his time, his energy, but nothing obliges him to do so. Be grateful. And if you don't like the game, for whatever reason, don't feel like you have to say it or vent your frustration. Again, be grateful. Has this disappeared from our society?
ReplyDeleteAnd no one answers: yes but we can give our opinion. NO ! Except positive. Not when someone does something for free. It's called decorum.
"all of you" I disagree with this, the vast majority are in massive support of JOTD. There's a minority of people who are either asking for ADF or begging for the same conversion to be done for the Amiga 500. I for one am happy with just a WHDLOAD version as I've had some form of a hard drive even going back when I had an A600! My Amiga 1200 is a beast, just frustrated there's still no sign of an A1200 Framethrower for the PISTORM! GRR lol
DeleteLuckily, most people appreciates what JOTD does. But I 100% agree that many of these comments are embarrasing and ungrateful. New Amiga games should never be taken for granted. That goes for free games as well as the paid ones. We should all appreciate that this old machine is still considered for game development by someone.
DeleteOnce the game is released this article will be nuked for a brand new one, plus with ecs in the works too that's a good thing
DeleteYeah JOTD's insane skills and popularity clearly rub a few people the wrong way. I guess it's a complement in a roundabout way, and it goes with the territory when you're really good at something. I was using WHDLoad (and JST) back in the 90s, and it was always considered a godsend for people with upgraded systems. The OCS thing is pure silliness, no one made those complaints until now so again it just seems like a personal problem of some kind.
DeleteWe tried to warn about these troubled times waaay long ago, with far too whimsical words of wisdom but the message was ... uh ... lost in the sands of time ;)
ReplyDeleteAt least nowadays an ecs version seems to be on the way, for the delight of those who dared to endure in their beliefs.
The others should enjoy the present, but without being afraid of the future, for its seeds are about to sprout in a tiny square pot (or many) of 880k
@JOTD
ReplyDelete"That's what whdload is for. I don't really care if you play the version or not, too bad to deprive oneself of that game just for a question of principle. If you can afford the ram, it's nonsense not to try it."
I'm not surprised that you don't really care if I will play your version or not (I knew it would be the next step).
If I was the only one to think this way, your answer would be more than justified.
Let me remind you that you invited me to skip your game, so I answered you that I will do it, like I do with all the Whdload games. It has nothing to do with a question of principle, it's about technical reasons and the way I never support tools wich have a tendancy to waste ressources and make my system heavier for no good reason, because it has consequences on daily use (start up time, need to close some other nice tools to have enough free memory to launch a game, conflicts with some other tools, decrease of system stability, etc...)
In the 90s, I had plenty of these tools installed wich affect the user's experience. No more. I try to keep my system has responsive has possible. To my eyes, it's the real Amiga O.S. force.
I thought it would be interesting for you to know that a part of the users won't have the opportunity to enjoy/buy your game, and I asked if it was possible for you to offer another choice. I think I never was rude or anything like that.
If you think it's too much work, ok. I didn't know it was so difficult to load data from harddrive without the help of Whdload.
I still think your work for the Amiga is amazing but hey... just my opinion...
it's not difficult, it's just so much easier and stable with whdload. I'm sure that if I do the hard drive loading thing someone will complain that it locks up on their machine because the background OS doing something unpredicted. Maybe it will happen. You'll have to boot without startup to have enough chipmem, disable all commodities and crap... like in the old days.
ReplyDelete