Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones

Double Dragon III: The Sacred Stones (Japanese: ダブルドラゴン III ザ・ロゼッタストーン) is a side-scrolling beat 'em up developed by Technōs Japan and released for Famicom in 1991. It is not a direct port of the arcade counterpart but an original adaptation built exclusively for the Famicom, marking the finale of the Double Dragon trilogy on the console. A fortune teller named Hiruko tells Billy and Jimmy Lee that Marian has been kidnapped. To save her, they must collect three sacred Rosetta Stones scattered around the world. The Lee brothers embark on a global martial arts journey through five themed missions: USA, China, Japan, Italy and Egypt. Its landmark feature is recruitable boss characters. After defeating the Chinese fighter Chin Sei Mei and Japanese ninja Ranzou, they join your playable roster. The four playable characters have distinct stats: Chin hits hard while the ninja moves extremely fast. A new dash mechanic is added. The cyclone kick remains, but overpowered special moves such as flying knee and uppercut from the second game are removed. Each character has exclusive limited-use weapons including nunchucks, iron claws and shurikens. Two-player simultaneous co-op is retained. The health bar from DD2 is removed, returning to a limited life system, making the game noticeably harder. It has the best pixel visuals of the three Famicom Double Dragon games, with distinctive art for each country. The story has a major plot twist inside the Egyptian pyramid, revealing Hiruko’s deception. Widely distributed on Subor multicarts in China, its unique recruit mechanic and worldwide adventure make it a memorable, though divisive, classic Famicom brawler.

These are the default keys. Click the gamepad icon 🎮 in the player’s bottom toolbar to rebind them. Gamepads are detected automatically. On phones you get on-screen buttons.

1P

2P

The NES was always two-player — 2P uses the numeric keypad, and NumLock does not matter. No numpad? Rebind 2P to other keys in the 🎮 panel.