Day 27 - Double Dragon 4 » Done!
I found DD4 forgettable the first time through, but it got more interesting as I started to unlock characters. All the effort that the devs didn't put into balancing and level design went straight to the extras. There are 20+ playable characters, most having their own fighting style and special moves. These characters don't make any of the design issues disappear, but they add some flavor to the game at least. Still a hard game to recommend.
First time playing as the Mysterious Warrior, aka DD2's final boss. Green hair and all. He's the most OP character in the game, and unsurprisingly also the speedrunners' top choice. MW can throw fireballs, do the Zangief lariat, handstand kick and more. He's fun.
This game has one of the most hilarious design oversights I've seen: you're 100% safe at the very top or very bottom of the screen. It doesn't matter how many enemies you're fighting, you can totally hide in plain sight and no one will ever bother you there. Now, it's hard to actually hit someone from those spots because enemies in DD4 have insane priority, but you can just chill and prepare your strategy with no pressure.
You may notice in the pic below that I have all my credits. That couldn't be further from the truth (lost like 2 full credits to platforming alone). What happened was, I killed the final boss and paused to get a picture of the "mission all clear" text, because the extra characters have no ending and the game just goes back to the title screen. But even if you pause after beating the boss, the level clear jingle plays normally and the game ignores the all clear text. So as I was readying the camera, with the game paused, suddenly all I saw was the title screen. Lame. Anyway, I "continued" from mission 12, beat the boss again and took the pic as fast as I could.

Clear time: 35 minutes