Double Dragon Dojo Forums

Most of the images I have are stuff I found online through auction sites and other websites, so unfortunately a lot of the stuff I don't personally own (I do have complete copies of the DD2 and DD3 Famicom games, as well as the Super Famicom and PC Engine versions). There's flyers for each of the Double Dragon game released for both, the arcades and consoles (at least for the ones that were published by Technos).

http://www.disk-kun.com/handbills/publisher/technos
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=a ... he+Archive
http://www.gamengai.com/bn_inf.php?id=328 (this one is from RoDD)

Incidentally, the Billy illustration you asked about is from the cover artwork of the Double Dragon III Famicom game, which depicts all four player characters and the comic in the flyer is different from the one in the manual.

As for the other games, the Return of Double Dragon manual has illustrations for all the characters (including Marian, who never appears in-game as you may know), while the instruction card for Double Dragon NG has illustrations for all ten playable characters (don't ask me where there are clean versions though, since the ones in the home version's manual are in black and white).
http://mrdo.mameworld.info/mame_artwork ... l?p=4#here

mechapop, I’m surprised that you use character design, as the reason why it’s difficult to acknowledge those games. Billy and Jimmy’s designs in DD 3 and V are pretty consistent, with what came before.

Don’t get me wrong – just like you, I find it hard to accept the actual games. And, like you, I quite like the look of the comic incarnations (though I know that a lot of DD fans don’t).

[Humorous sidenote: The Yinyang-like sign of the Double Dragon from the comic (you can see it on Billy’s shoulder) is exactly the same as the sign of the Shadow Warriors, in the cartoon!]

However, Billy and Jimmy still look like they always have.

DD3 has ugly pixel-work, but Billy and Jimmy have the same design they’ve had in every arcade game. Check out both the Japanese and American flyers. In fact, the heroes’ group shot, from the game’s ending, seems to be based on the DD III Famicom image you mentioned. Billy’s resemblance is pretty obvious, but take a look at Jimmy and Seimei, too. They’re all in the same place, doing the same thing (Jimmy with the nunchucks, Seimei with the same pose, on the right). Masao is where Ranzou would be, and Roney seems to have missed the boat.

As for DDV, the art style is based on the cartoon, but Billy and Jimmy’s designs are pretty much what they’ve always been, in Nintendo games. The most similar pics are the cover for DDV, and the cover for Super. But even if you’re going to look at a completely different style, like the manga artwork on the back cover of Famicom DD II, the character design is, again, consistent.

The only new thing in DDV (design-wise) is the swords, and since the Double Dragons had already used katanas in DD3, that didn’t bother me. The look in DDV is closer to the original games than the comic look, so I don’t know why you don’t like it – although perhaps I should clarify something:

My introduction to DDV was the SNES cover itself. And it’s a pretty cool cover. I had never heard of the cartoon. I didn’t know it was a tournament fighter. I didn’t even look at the back cover. All I saw was Billy and Jimmy, looking as they did on the Super cover, and what looked like a new final boss, in a big, metal mask (Somehow – I don’t know how – I knew that this wasn’t Burnov).

I thought this was another BEU. The tagline “The Shadow Falls” made me think that this was to be the final, epic showdown, between the Double Dragons and the Shadow Warriors. This would be the last fight, and the Shadow would, finally, fall.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, and the game I envisaged never existed. But, as I’ve said, the character design is consistent, and I still like it.

The very first issue of Nintendo Power had colorized versions of the character illustrations. While most likely the colorization was done by some in-house artist employed by the editorial staff and not by Technos, I was always curious why they colored Billy with red clothes and Jimmy with blue clothes, when it's supposed to be the other way around. It makes me wonder whether they actually intended Billy to be the red guy all along and Jimmy to be the blue guy.

I mean, Jimmy is supposed to be the older twin after all and it makes more sense for the older brother to be Player 1 if that's the case. It would also explain why the promo illustration for DD2 shows Marian embracing the Lee brother in red or why Billy wears red in the Japanese cover art for the single-player-only Game Boy version. This perhaps might be reason why Billy and Jimmy had their in-game hair colors switched in the NES version as well.

Yeah, I've wondered for a while why Billy is shown wearing red, in all the Topps cards (both the stickers, and the adventure scratch cards). Interestingly, Jimmy doesn't appear, in any of them.

As for their in-game hair palettes, I assumed they were switched due to the NES' limited colour capabilities. Red is used, for sprites' brown hair. So, Jimmy would have both red hair, and red clothes. Perhaps, for this reason, the hair colours were changed in-game first, then in the artwork.

On the other hand, that's exactly what they did with Jimmy (Red hair and clothes), in NES DD II. Which actually brings me to my next point.

If you look at the Gameboy cover art, it's very reminiscent of the style used in the NES DD II cover - even Marian dresses closer to her appearance in arcade DD II, than DD I. Given that NES DD II was released only shortly before the first Gameboy port, I'd guess that they either got the same artist, who made the same mistake; or got one who used the (then current) DD II cover as inspiration.

The reason why Jimmy's hair was red in DD2 and DD3 on the NES (as far as his in-game sprite is concerned) is because the NES has a limited color palette and because of this, Jimmy uses the same palette used for Billy's hair and skin tone for his outfit. Jimmy's hair is obviously supposed to be blond in those game, going by the character portraits and cut-scenes. Since DD1 for the NES is 1-Player only (well 2-Players alternating, same difference) and he only shows up for the final battle, they had the luxury of his giving his sprite blond hair in that game.

I think the Japanese cover artist for the Game Boy DD1 (whose name is Kazumi Kakizaki or かきざき和美) might had indeed been the same person who was commissioned to do the DD2 artwork, but I have no evidence of this other than the similar style. Kakizaki also did the Japanese flyer art for the arcade version of DD3. Her signature appears in both works (in the DD1GB cover, it appears between the Nintendo and Game Boy logos on the lower left corner, on the DD3 flyer it's on the lower right corner).
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=t ... db&id=6122