The Five Emperors (五虎将 Gokoshō, lit. "Five Tiger Generals") are an enemy organization featured in Double Dragon Advance. They appear as the end bosses of Mission 7. The Five Emperors are masters of a deadly martial art known as Gen-Satsu-Ken (幻截拳, lit. "Phantom Interception Fist") who were hired to serve as Willy's bodyguards.
The Lee brothers fight the Five Emperors in three phases: first against Wu and Anderson, then against David and Yáng, and finally against Raymond himself.
Members[]
- Raymond (レイモンド) - The leader of the group, who wears a purple outfit and has blond long hair with a ponytail. Has all the special abilities of his subordinates.
- Wu In-sik (呉仁植) - Bald member who wears a green outfit. He's the only subordinate member of the Five Emperors without a special ability.
- Anderson (アンダーソン) - Wears a blue outfit and has long light brown hair. Has the ability to create a darker shaded duplicate of himself after falling to the ground.
- David (デビッド) - Wears a red outfit and has long red hair. Can create four duplicates of himself at will.
- Yáng Zhèng-lì (楊正利) - Wears a black outfit and has spiky black hair with a white headband. Can disappear into his shadow and strike his opponent while on the ground.
Trivia[]
- The Five Emperors were based on the Mysterious Warrior from the Famicom/NES version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge, who trained in the similarly named martial art of Gen-Satsu-Ken. While the normal boss music is played when the player initially confronts the Five Emperors, it switches to the Mysterious Warrior's theme, "Fight of Fate", when Raymond shows up.
- The stances of the Five Emperors on their introductory illustration are based on actual stances from the Five Animals style, a martial art used by Jackie Chan in some of his movies, such as Spiritual Kung Fu and Drunken Master.
- With the exception of Raymond, the names of the Five Emperors are never mentioned in the game, nor in the Japanese manual. They were revealed by the game's lead planner Muneki Ebinuma in his commentary published by Game Kommander.[1]
- Anderson shares his name with the main antagonist from the Game Boy version of Double Dragon II.
- The Five Emperors originally represented the Five Animals style composed of the following: "Dragon", "Snake", "Tiger", "Crane" and the "Leopard", while their techniques represented "wind", "shadow", "strength", "lightning" and "phantasm".[2]
- Originally, Duke's theme from Super Double Dragon was to play prior in the battles with the Four Emperors before Raymond.[3]
- Five Tiger Generals is a popular Chinese phrase referring to the top five warriors of a lord. The term was popularized by the famous novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It also makes them a counterpart to the Double Dragons.