Double Dragon Dojo Forums

kidding, on a serious note do billy and jimmy often decide to switch hair style and clothes?
DD1 arcade billy wears blue, blond hair - Jimmy wears red, brown hair
DD2 arcade basically the same except jimmy wears white
DD3 arcade same
SDD err what? is billy second player now or did him and jimmy switch hair? lol
DD and BT now both of them are blond
DD Adv we're back to the super double dragon issue

I guess it's obvious who's who I just don't understand what made them swap them back and forth.

Okay, here's my two cents. See if you can keep up and be warned, it's not particullarly thrilling. In fact, it's downright dull as dish water!

At first, I believed that this was a mistake on the people who did the NES games' part. In actuallity, the original NES game was developed around the same time as the arcade game and was probably a miscommunication or merely creative licence (Jeff isn't in the NES game either and the machine gets its own unique character, etc, etc). It may have even been a colour pallette problem. It looks orange to me. Anyway, you see my point.

From there of course you have to please your audience so it makes sense that the arcade sequels have Billy with the blond hair whilst it also makes sense that home versions have Billy as the brown hair guy since people playing the arcade sequels will more likely to be familar with the original arcade game whilst those that play the home sequels will be more likely to have discovered the series through the original home version (NES). Super Double Dragon is a Super Nintendo game, and I guess Technos assumed that people playing this will have once had a NES. Got all that?!

The Battletoads games are clearly inspired by the original arcade game with a similar graphics style. They're by RARE too, which is a Western company so that makes sense to me also (believe it or not but whilst the NES was a big hit in the US and Japan, it wasn't elsewhere. It came to the UK far too late).

At some point, whomever was behind these games decided that Billy had brown hair and Jimmy was the blond guy. DDA is also a Nintendo console so that makes sense I suppose. I prefer the original graphics style anyway so I'll always consider Billy a blond guy.

Makes sense, and an interesting read. I likes me a good video game musing!

I'm totally with you, on Billy being blonde and Jimmy having brown hair. Notably, that's the way it is in the Neo Geo game, and its pseudo-follow-up.

My thinking is that Billy was given dark hair in the NES game, to make him look more like Kenshiro. If you look at the Japanese covers for DD on the NES and Game Boy, they're very Fist of the North Star, and Billy's hair is dark. Ditto, regarding the manga-like pictures, on the back of the Japanese DD II cover.

In Battletoads/Double Dragon, I think Jimmy's hair is supposed to be brown. That's the way it is, in his portrait. While his sprite's hair is light-ish, it's still darker than Billy's.

What I'd like to know is where and when their hairstyles started to differ. In the original arcade game, they're exactly the same. Then at some point, Billy began to be portrayed with a mullet, while Jimmy had a crew cut. To tell you the truth, I can't remember seeing an in-game sprite with a mullet - Billy's sprites had a Bruce Lee mop, which is his current official portrayal.

ah interesting, very good explanation. knowing me I would've just said they decided to switch places for a day

as for the different hair cuts in DD2 (at least the arcade version) the haircuts were in the ending. I honestly go by RotD, while it's not officially canon I do think they did a good job sticking close to the classics.

You're right about DD II arcade. In fact, I just noticed that despite the sprites' in-game hair colours, in the ending, Jimmy's crew cut is blonde, and Billy's mullet is ... well, it's at least darker, although it still looks kinda blonde-ish (much like BT/DD!).

As for RotD, it does stick relatively close, but I don't like that it gives Jimmy the dead girlfriend, not Billy (perhaps Evoga got that idea from the fact that she appears with Jimmy in the DD II promotional material, rather than Billy). It also gave Billy the crew cut (although since they kept his hair blonde, and Jimmy's crew cut had always been blonde, there is some consistancy in that one).