Rage of the Dragons was originally conceived by the Mexican development team Evoga Entertainment as a sequel to the Neo Geo version of Double Dragon, but they were unable to obtain the intellectual rights to use the series' characters from the then-current license holder Million (who would later go on to make Double Dragon Advance). Instead, they chose to turn it into a tribute to the Double Dragon series, with several original characters sharing names and other similarities to Double Dragon characters. Double Dragon creator Yoshihisa Kishimoto criticized Rage of the Dragons' close resemblance to the series in a 2012 interview:


In contrast, he defended the freely-distributed fan game Abobo's Big Adventure, which ripped several sprites from the first Double Dragon game:

Abobo's Big Adventure had a remarkably long development time for a browser game. It originally began development in 2002, but work was put on hold until 2006 when it was decided to restart the project from scratch. The game was then previewed at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2009 and 2010, before finally being released on January 11, 2012.