Billy and Jimmy engaged a war agaisnt the Shadow Warriors and it's leader, Duke, to rescue her. A female cop named Marian Kelly is kidnapped by a drug cartel known as the Shadow Warriors. The storyline is essentially a remake of the first game. Return of Double Dragon - Sleeping Dragon has Awoken (or Super Double Dragon): Probably the best storyline in the series, too bad Technos forgot to program it into the game. Although, it has a cheesy storyline, the game itself took place in exotic locations and the Dragons fights agaisnt several enemies such as punks, monks, ninjas and strongmen. After Cleopatra is defeated, the heroes donates Cleopatra's treasure to charity and the powers of the stones is left in question. Hiruko dies mysteriously and the heroes are force to fight Cleopatra's reanimated corpse. Upon going to Cleopatra's tomb, the heroes eventually realized that Hiruko took advantage of Billy and Jimmy so that she could steal the treasure at Cleopatra's tomb. They go to China, Japan and Egypt to collect the stones and they meet two unlikely allies: Chin Seimei from China and Yagyuu Ranzou from Japan.
Hiruko tells them that in order to proved their strength, they must go on a wild Goose chase to collect the three Rosetta Stones and solve the mystery at Egypt. Double Dragon 3 - The Rosetta Stones (Famicom Version): Taking place two years after the events of Double Dragon 2, Billy & Jimmy returns home from a training mission only to meet an old fortune teller named Hiruko. At the end, Marian is bought back from the dead and everyone lives happilly ever after or something like that. The setting is that of a semi-apocalyptic New York (as if NYC wasn't bad enough already) and featuresa horde of supernatural villains such as Burnov (a fat man who's body dissappears after dying, leaving behind his mask and clothes), the Phantom Doubles and the Shadow Warrior at the end of the game.
This sequel is more inspired from a Japanese comic book series called Hokuto no Ken (AKA Fist of the North Star). Double Dragon 2 - The Revenge (Famicom Version): Taking place a year after the above, in this sequel, a terrorist group has killed Marian and now Billy and Jimmy are possesed by anger to avenge her death. The game itself draw heavy inspirations from Enter the Dragon, especially at the names of some of the villains (Williams, Roper, Linda and Bolo). Not exactly Shakepearce material, but they could have add an extra dimension to the storyline and give background details about the characters. Double Dragon 1 (Arcade Version): In this game, Billy & Jimmy Lee are martial arts masters out to rescue their girlfriend/student Marian from a street gang known as the Black Warriors, led by the machine gun toting Big Boss Willy and his two right men, Abobo and Jeff. However, the Double Dragon series, unlike Super Mario, has a believable storyline and settings that could had been converted very well into live action.
Which is why they ditched the original plot and made a movie that is nothing like the material it's based on. The Super Mario games was about a fat italian midget plumber who suddenly becomes huge after eating magic mushrooms and had to rescue his princess from a monster who looks vaguely like Godzilla. live action movie bombed? The games themselves didn't have much of a storyline to begin with.