Rage of the Dragons

Rage of the Dragons (レイジ・オブ・ザ・ドラゴンズ) is a 2002 tag team head-to-head fighting game released for the Neo Geo hardware by Playmore (currently SNK). The game was co-developed by the Mexican team Evoga and the Japanese company Noise Factory. Evoga worked on the initial planning and designing, while Noise Factory worked on the final graphics, sounds and programming. The main illustrator for this game is Ooma Bunshichiro. Character designs were done by Mario Vargas "Mr. Vo" and Jose Luis Belmont.

Gameplay
Rage of the Dragons features a tag team system, in which the player takes control of two characters and can switch between one or the other during gameplay. The character who is not being controlled will slowly recovers part of his or her energy while the other is fighting. The player can perform special combos in which both characters attack an opponent at the same time for added damage.

An auxiliary meter located at the bottom of the screen that slowly fills up when an attack connects with an opponent. When the meter is full, special moves can be performed (Ex: Counter Attacks, Super Moves, etc).

Characters
There are a total of fourteen playable characters in Rage of the Dragons. The player can select from one of the seven default pairings, or create a custom pairing with nearly 80 possible combinations. The player will see a hidden ending if they complete the single player tournament with a Billy and Jimmy pairing.

Pair 1

 * Jimmy Lewis (protagonist)
 * Sonia Romanenko

Pair 2

 * Billy Lewis (protagonist)
 * Lynn Baker

Pair 3

 * Kang Jae-Mo
 * Mr. Jones

Pair 4

 * Pepe Rodriguez
 * Pupa Salgueiro

Pair 5

 * Elias Patrick
 * Alice Carrol

Pair 6

 * Oni
 * Cassandra

Pair 7

 * Radel
 * Annie Murakami

Bosses
There are also two boss characters in the game, who are fought by the player at the end of the single player tournament. Unlike the regular characters, these bosses only fight by themselves with no partners.

Sub Boss

 * Abubo Rao

Final Boss

 * Johann

Production
Evoga originally envisioned Rage of the Dragon as a sequel to the Neo Geo fighting game version of Double Dragon released in 1995. However, Evoga were unable to use the intellectual rights for the characters (which were purchased by the company Million, the developers of Double Dragon Advance), and thus Rage of the Dragons was turned into a homage to the Double Dragon series instead of an official sequel. The two lead characters in Rage of the Dragons, Billy and Jimmy Lewis, share their names with the protagonists of the Double Dragon series, Billy and Jimmy Lee, while the boss character Abubo is based on Abobo from the original Double Dragon. Two supporting characters in Rage, Linda (Abubo's female assistant) and Mariah (Jimmy's deceased girlfriend), are also based on Double Dragon characters.

Jimmy, Lynn, Elias and Mr. Jones would later appear as hidden guest characters in Power Instinct Matrimelee, a fighting game also produced by Noise Factory. Ironically, Atlus, the company that originally produced the Power Instinct series, published Double Dragon Advance for Million.