According to Muneki Ebinuma, the game's planner, the developers took a lot of influences from Bruce Lee's movies to the game. One of the most notable is the cover and promo art being an imitation of the cover art for Lee's Way of the Dragon.

A lot of content planned for the game was cut during development, including a playable prologue, additional cutscenes, improved enemy AI, lots of weapons and special moves, "Marian's Escape" mode in which the player would play as Marian escaping from her captors, "Renegade Abobo" mode in which the player could play as Abobo helping Marian escape, and the three main characters from Combatribes being playable in Survival Mode. In addition, Marian would have appeared in Survival Mode after every 20 beaten enemies to refill some of the player's health.

The green palette swap of Abobo is actually named Mibobo. This is revealed in Double Dragon Advance where the name was used in a cutscene. It is likely the name is a play on the name Abobo and the Japanese word for green, "midori".