The Rosetta Stone is regarded as the point when Double Dragon started to go astray - both thematically and in terms of quality. It was the first game in the series that wasn't developed in-house by Technōs - instead it was outsourced to East Technology. It doesn't appear that the company had much experience with the genre at the time, and it shows.

Double Dragon II might have been a little too similar to its predecessor, but the third game differs too much instead. The plot now revolves around three mystic stones - singular in the title be damned - for which the Lee brothers are sent all around the globe by an old fortune teller, who of course turns out a traitor at the end.

After an introductory stage with the typical New York like urban setting, the journey takes the heroes to a forest in China, a martial arts dojo in Japan, a Coloseum in Italy, and hidden underground chambers beneath the pyramids in Egypt. The traveling aspect allows the background artists to become a lot more creative with the surroundings, but in exchange every stage now has only one or two enemy types, which never appear in any of the other stages. While the roster starts out genre-typical with hoodlums, kung fu fighters and samurais, Italy is entirely populated by half-naked archers, and in Egypt things get supernatural with fighting tree stumps, animate statues and the mummy of no one less than Cleopatra, who seeks to use the Rosetta Stones to return to her human form and rule the world with her black magic.

The gameplay vastly differs from the established style as well. The moveset feels rather closer to Renegade than Double Dragon. There's no headbutt or elbow blow, but it's possible to stomp on downed enemies, or run across the screen and leap for a diving headbutt. It's also possible to dash towards a wall and then use it to violently propel yourself into the enemies. When upgraded, the heroes can also make a one-armed handstand on an enemy's head and do a back suplex, while the regular grappling moves are all missing. A cool new addition is the team-up move where both players can link their arms back-to-back and jump up for a spin kick with twice as many feet to hit enemies with.

The one thing Double Dragon III is famous-infamous for, is its invention of micro transactions - and that in a medium that's already predisposed towards sucking ever more quarters out of players. At the beginning of each of the first three stages, the Lee brothers can enter a shop, which sells upgrades for actual money. For a quarter each, you can buy "Extra Guys" - additional characters that jump in when you're defeated. They look completely different from the Lee Brothers - a karate guy, a fat guy in a stereotypical Chinese suit and a large burly guy - but have the same set of moves, albeit with changes in timing and ranges. Other buying option include "Tricks", which unlocks the two head stand grapples and the spin kick move, "Weapons", "Energy", and "Power Up".

Double Dragon 3 (Arcade)

Without upgrades, a game can be over extremely quickly, as Billy and Jimmy have only one life per credit. The initial amount of health points at 230 looks large at first, but a single enemy attack can subtract more than 30 from that, so if anything the heroes are more fragile compared to previous games.

Unfortunately, even though the game is balanced for the players to have all these upgrades, but since each of them costs a quarter, most aren't even worth bothering with, since they are of less value than just paying for another credit. Some of the companions have more life points or deal more damage than the Lee brothers, but since they require to get used to completely new parameters for your moves, most players will perform much better with the standard heroes.

The only purchase worth contemplating are the weapons, which are just as mighty as in previous games. The first shop doesn't have any weapons available, but you get nunchuks in China and a katana in Japan. Especially the katana is a lot of fun, as you can clash together swords with the warriors that populate that stage, but they're gone once you're defeated and use a credit. There are no weapons to pick up in the stages.

Once you're unarmed, most enemies and especially the bosses have wider reach, faster attacks and higher priorities than the players, and the final two stages don't even have a shop to buy weapons to begin with. In contrast to the earlier games, enemies are super aggressive and always in pursuit, so most of the time is spent trying to avoid getting swarmed from all sides. That's easier said than done, because the characters jerk around the screen in coarse chops, as if this was an old MSX1 game. The scrolling, on the other hand, is perfectly smooth, so apparently this somehow was intentional? At any rate, it renders the game almost unplayable.

It doesn't take long before the dash attack remains your only viable move of dealing with most enemies. If you're playing alone, you might as well just give up once you reach the ninja at the end of the Japan stage, or waste quarters spawning player 2 as a decoy for the three incarnations he spawns, because otherwise there is no escaping from them.

The Rosetta Stone started a little Double Dragon tradition where the Japanese version received a significant revamp from the American release. The whole powerup buying feature is gone, and instead you have all moves at your disposal from the beginning, while weapons can be found on the ground in the applicable stages. The alternate characters are still in the game, although here they're selectable from the very beginning, which makes a lot more sense. For some reason the initial stage skips the first screen with the shop, while they're simply non-interactive in the other stages. The Japanese version also allows a third player to join, for which an extra Lee brother ("Sonny") was invented. All other characters likewise appear in a triplet of brothers, even though it is implied that they were originally meant to be individual characters, before someone decided that all players should be able to choose the same guy.

What the Japanese version cannot fix, however, are the shoddy core mechanics. At the end of the day, Double Dragon 3 is just as badly designed as it is implemented. While the motorcycling goons that need to get kicked off their bikes are a neat idea - lifted directly from Renegade - the archers and swordfighters are extremely annoying. The stages offer little deviation aside from an Indiana Jones style puzzle room where you have to step on the floor plates that spell "ROSETTA" from the only latin characters among a bunch of "hieroglyphs". The Saturday morning cartoon plot and graphics that cater heavily for an American audience throw everything out the window the series had going for it in terms of indvidual style. With that, it set an unfortunate precedent for the direction Double Dragon licensing would take for most of the nineties.

The only half-decent home port comes for the Genesis. At least it retains all fighting moves and fixes the horrible choppy movement. On the downside, several animations were cut - running now looks exactly the same as walking - and none of the attacks really feel like they connect. The shop system is still in place, although you get 15 coins to spend in the beginning and can earn additional coins while playing.

The various computer versions are prime examples of cynical cash grab ports, as clearly no one involved could give a damn. They do feature smooth movement, but lack any music and don't even bother trying to adapt the controls to a single button scheme and just leave out all moves except the standard punch and kick, only with the additional spinning kick to justify the "Tricks" purchase. The 8-bit versions further reduce the amount of coins available and are unbearably slow.

While it does feature music, the Game Boy port is just as miserable. The moveset is stripped down here as well, and even the additional characters are missing. Instead you just get to buy extra lives at the shop, but you only start with two credits.

While Technōs let others make Double Dragon 3 for arcades, the NES version remained an in-house product. The result is much more worthy of the Double Dragon name. It still tells the same story of world travel in pursuit of the Rosetta Stones (which are renamed to Sacred Stones in the English version), but at least it provides a motivation for the Lee brothers by letting Marion get kidnapped yet again - but only in the English translation. Despite the similar premise, it differs the most from its arcade counterpart among all three NES games.

From the beginning, The Sacred Stones proclaims its affiliation with the series roots by booting to a new remix of the classic Double Dragon theme, which was painfully missing from the arcade game. The stages don't have much in common aside from the general themes, and the controls feel very much in line with its predecessors, though the punching and kicking animations feel a bit different than Double Dragon II. The standard grappling moves are back, and the handstand throw is the only move taken over from the new attacks introduced in East Technology's game, but there's no need to buy upgrades to access them. The Lee brothers are able to run quickly by double tapping like in the arcade, but the input for this isn't very responsive and there aren't any attacks to link into anyway other than long jumps. You can bounce off walls to jump kick, or even jump in your partner's arms and have them fling you across the screen. The enemies can cooperate in the same manner, of course.

While the players always start as Jimmy and Billy - or Bimmy, how the intro infamously misspells him - the companions from the arcade game appear as bosses, and two of them join the team after they're defeated. Chin Seimei remains exactly the same, but the Oyama brothers of Karate fighters are replaced by the ninja Yagyu Ranzou, whereas big guy Roney Urquidez - or rather an unnamed character who looks just like him - apparently didn't fit on the character select screen, and he is not playable. Once the additional fighters joined the cause, it's possible to switch characters from a pause menu at any given time. Some bosses can be ridiculously easy when timing Yagyu's shuriken right so they never get a chance to properly stand up again, but in general Billy and Jimmy's spinning kick is the most effective move in the game because it has a far reach and gets rid of opponents on both sides. It's executed a bit differently than Double Dragon II though - you need to jump straight up to execute it rather than leaping forward.

Double Dragon III (NES)

Weapons can once again be picked up after disarming enemies, but the broken bottles and sai are only good until its previous owner dies. Fortunately each character also comes into the fight with his own special weapon. Billy and Jimmy can pull out their trusty nunchucks, while Chin Seimei has a nasty steel claw, all three of which can be used five times per stage. Yagyu always wears his katana by default, but can also throw shuriken, drawing from a stock of 20.

When it comes to presentation Double Dragon III is easily the prettiest among the three NES entries. It has some really neat 8-bit pixel graphics for backgrounds and features a decent variety of evildoers, who keep appearing in later stages in contrast to the arcade game. It is also the first NES game in the series that manages to put two different enemy types at once, although the flickering when all four on-screen characters occupy the same scanline is from another dimension.

The big problem with The Sacred Stones is the absolutely brutal difficulty for a single player, especially in the beginning. Enemies are tough, numerous, and aggressive, and each character gets exactly one try - there are no extra lives and no continues until you get to stage 4, where you are thrown some breadcrumbs in form of a single credit. The Japanese version gives the characters a few more health points and reduces the amount of adversaries, but that doesn't help much.

When playing alone, it's incredibly difficult to get past the first two stages, after which it ironically gets much easier because the companions have separate life bars. But when a character is out of the game, you never get him back, so it's always best to switch when someone is low on health. This odd difficulty curve doesn't even seem intentional, as the difficulty early on is much more moderate with two players. It's still one of the harder games in the series, but at least it's manageable. The problem could have easily been mitigated by allowing solitary fighters to switch to Jimmy when things get rough, but as it stands, the single player mode is almost unbeatable for most normal players.