(Note: I’m not sure how old this article is. I found it on my hard drive and I can’t remember why I wrote it or who I wrote it for. I think I wrote it for a magazine or web site. It doesn’t look like I ever posted it here, so now I will so I can delete the file. Enjoy.)

In the early days of home video games it was hard to associate with your on screen character due to graphical limitations. I don’t know anybody who ever felt like they “were” the paddle in a fierce game of Pong. Surround was fun, but those blocks didn’t look like anything but blocks to me. As graphics began to improve, it became easier to relate to the on-screen characters you were controlling. By the time Superman for the 2600 was released, even though the graphics were pretty crude compared to today’s standards, while flying around you kind of got the feeling you were Superman (or at least that you were controlling a tiny little Superman).

Still, Superman didn’t have a face (or even any hair for that matter), just a small, pink cube where his head should be. The earliest face I remember seeing in a video game was Mario’s in the arcade classic Donkey Kong. Mario’s head was no cube; he had a nose, a hat, an eyeball, even a mustache! Even the inferior Atari 2600 version managed to squeeze in similar details.

As characters began looking more realistic I began relating to them even more strongly, especially in arcade games. When playing Rastan, I felt personally responsible for getting my muscle-bound barbarian from Point A to Point B. In Donkey Kong Jr., I always felt a little bad when the tiny monkey would get smacked and his eyeballs would pop out of his skull shortly before falling off the playfield. But there was still one thing that kept me from “being” that character — the control panel.

How many times in your life have you tried to walk and instead, on accident, punched the person next to you in the face? My guess is, this has never happened to you. (Or, if it has, it wasn’t really an accident now, was it?) And yet, I can remember screaming hundreds of times “I PRESSED LEFT” or “I HIT JUMP” at arcade monitors and television screens whenever my on screen pal didn’t do what I wanted them to do. When ghosts are hot on his tail, Pac-Man needs to maneuver corners quickly to avoid being chomped. Your eyes see this; your brain knows it. Your brain sends the signal “GO LEFT” to your muscles; your hand presses left … or so you thought. You miss the alley and end up with ghosts on both sides. Game over. I PRESSED LEFT! We’ve all done it and we’ve all done the same things like wiggling the joystick back and forth, pretending like it must’ve been stuck.

As player characters began to look more realistic, this began to become more of a problem. For example, most of the early golf games used a swingometer ™ to control the strength of your swing. If you weren’t paying attention and let the meter go too far, you would end up hitting the ball at maximum strength. Even on a two-foot putt, if you weren’t paying attention. WHACK! The end result is this surrealistic moment where you are taken out of a game’s immersion. Tiger Woods never hit a ball 80 foot while trying to make a 3 foot putt. It would be funny if he did though.

One limitation of early fighting games is that they were 2D. In games like Karate Champ and Kung-Fu Master, people fought “left to right”, and that was it. Before long, fighting games were drug into a pseudo-3D world. One of the earliest (and one of my favorites) from this genre was the professional wrestling game Mat Mania. The ring in Mat Mania is isometric, and the characters can move up/down/left/right, but the characters are only drawn looking left and looking right. You cannot attack “up” or “down”, only left and right. This creates a unique issue. If you stand “behind” (above) someone, they cannot hit you until they move on to the same plane as you. Since they cannot punch “up” (only left or right), and you cannot punch while moving in the game, this creates an unbeatable situation. To beat your opponent in Mat Mania, all you have to do is constantly move above or below him and start punching. When the CPU moves up or down to meet you, you’ll already be punching him in the face. In Mat Mania you must beat five opponents to win the title, then the opponents begin repeating. I have played Mat Mania for two hours before on a single quarter.

The problem with 2D characters in a 3D world is that they don’t understand the third dimension. 2D fighting characters want to punch you in the face, and they can’t do it while above or below you. This brings me to the Double Dragon Elbow.

Double Dragon, the early side-scrolling beat ’em up that I’m sure most of you are familiar with, suffers from the same design flaw that Mat Mania does. It’s a 3D world with 2D characters fighting in it. Bad guys not hit you from above or below, so to attack you they must rise or drop to your plane. This is where the elbow comes in.

In Double Dragon, the two protagonists (“Hammer” and “Spike”) are each controlled by a joystick and three buttons: punch, kick, and jump. There are, however, more moves available to them than that, the most important of which is the elbow. By pressing punch and jump at the same time, Hammer or Spike will throw a reverse elbow, leveling any opponents behind them. Using this technique, Double Dragon becomes one of the easiest games in the world to beat. Even when enemies approach you from the rear they want to punch you in the face, meaning you can hit them with the elbow long before they ever throw a strike. By using a “square” pattern of moving down and left followed by up and right, you become virtually impossible to defeat. Enemies will line up behind you to gladly eat your elbows. What makes the move even sweeter is that, when throwing it, your character can not be hit. Timing and spacing of the move is also pretty forgiving. If you throw the elbow too early, most enemies will just walk into it and fall down. You can also time it just right so a fallen enemy will stand up into your elbow and fall right back down.

So why can I not beat Double Dragon every single time? Because you have to hit the jump and punch button at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME to throw the elbow. Hit the punch button slightly early and you’ll end up throwing a punch in the wrong direction, followed by a jump. Can you imagine doing that in real life? “Okay, here comes a guy. Oh man, I am sure looking forward to elbowing this jerk in the teeth. Here he comes, he’s coming, and … WOW I JUST JUMPED INSTEAD.” (POW)

Hitting jump a split second early causes your character to jump up in the air; hitting punch at this point launches a kick to the right. The spacing is different for this move so even if your opponent is on your right, your kick won’t connect. And if your enemy is to the left, well, it’s another one of those surreal moments. “Man oh man, I’ve been looking forward to elbowing this dude in the chops for days now. Aaaaaaaand … WOW I JUST JUMPED AND KICKED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION INSTEAD!” (POW)

There are other things that can go wrong, too. For example, occasionally in Double Dragon you will find items on the ground that, under normal circumstances, would help you (baseball bats, daggers, and whips, for example). The way you pick up an item is by pressing the punch button, which is also half of the elbow combo. When you hit an opponent wielding one of these items, he or she will drop them, usually at your feet. If you are standing on one and you try to throw an elbow, you’ll squat down and pick up the item instead. Typically this is followed by your character getting pounded repeatedly in the face. Another common mistake is hitting the joystick twice in the same direction, which causes your character to attempt a head butt. I find myself doing this on accident quite a bit when trying to line up an elbow. Can you imagine that in real life? “He doesn’t know I’ve got my elbow ready, boy he’s gonna get it … here he comes … AHHH WHY DID I THROW A HEAD BUTT IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?” (POW)

The “elbow technique” was mitigated in later versions of Double Dragon. It’s much more difficult to throw and land in Double Dragon II, and was removed altogether from Double Dragon 3.

If you ever see me in public or at a game convention suddenly jump or kick in the wrong direction, now you’ll know what happened. If you ever extend your hand for a handshake and I head butt you instead, don’t take it personally. I just hit the wrong button.