

The game's sequels on the same platform, Double Dragon II and III, both included their own 2-player co-op modes, thus having both Lee brothers as heroes again.

While the arcade version did feature a fight between both brothers, it was an optional battle that occurs if both players defeat Willy together and was simply a contest over who wins Marian's affections. The title wouldn't had made much sense with just one of the Lee brothers in the game, so they made the other one into a bad guy. Presumably this change in the story was done due to developer Technos Japan's inexperience with the NES hardware at the time, making it difficult for them to work around the console's limitations and properly implement a 2-player cooperative mode in the game's conversion. Whereas the original arcade version had both Lee brothers working together to fight against the Black Warriors in order to rescue their female friend Marian, in the NES version Billy fights completely alone and Jimmy only shows up to confront him after Willy Mackey (the leader of the gang in the arcade version) is defeated by the player.

Character designer Koji Ogata's concept art of Boris actually labelled the character Abobo. Rajiv of Team India and Boris of Team USSR. The 1988 NES version of Technos Japan's Super Dodge Ball features two team captains modelled after Abobo.The mohawked version of Abobo is alternately known as Jikku/Jick (ジック) according to the June 12th, 1987 issue of Famicom Tsushin, although this was likely a typo. However, the NES and other console versions at the time cut the mohawked variants and only kept the bald version, giving him the "Abobo" name in the process.

According to the September 1987 issue of the Japanese gaming magazine Beep, the bald version was originally named Zack (ザック), while the dark-skinned mohawked version was originally named Jack (ジャック), with Abobo being the green-skinned palettte swap from the end of Mission 3. The arcade version of Double Dragon features two variants of Abobo, the regular bald-headed version with the horseshoe moustache who appears as a recurring sub-boss and a bearded/mohawked variant who appears as the end-boss of Mission 1 and Mission 3.
