Double Dragon II: The Revenge is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System in the end of 1989. It is the second Double Dragon game for the NES and was published in North America by Acclaim Entertainment, who took over publishing duties from Tradewest. The game shares its title with the 1988 arcade sequel to the original Double Dragon, using the same promotional artwork for its packaging and having a similar plot, but the content of the two games are otherwise drastically different. The NES version of Double Dragon II was directed by Hiroyuki Sekimoto (co-director of River City Ransom), with the arcade version's director Yoshihisa Kishimoto taking a supervisory role in the game's development. Players control Billy and Jimmy Lee, who are on a mission to avenge the death of Billy's girlfriend Marian after she is killed during an attack by the Shadow Warriors (an unnamed group in the Japanese version). While this version ignores the plot twist of the first NES game, in which Jimmy Lee turns out to be the final boss (likely due to the inclusion of 2-players co-operative play), it also replaced Willy, the gun-toting gang leader from the arcade version, with a nameless martial artist who wields supernatural abilities as the game's ultimate antagonist. The game contains nine stages and three difficulty levels; only by choosing the hardest level can the player access all nine stages and see the true ending.