Games totally reskinned for release in another country

[Dr. Morbis | 2,091]

12 hours ago, dvertov said:

Power Blade for the NES was originally Power Blazer, starring a wimpy Mega Man knock-off. Not only did the character get turned into a badass Schwarzenegger knock-off instead, but the gameplay was changed to make him significantly more powerful, the levels and bosses were redesigned, and a lot of quality of life improvements were added. 

That's backwards: it was developed over here and then reskinned to be less realistic and more cartoony to cater to the Japanese market.

[Tulpa | 3,534]

13 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's backwards: it was developed over here and then reskinned to be less realistic and more cartoony to cater to the Japanese market.

Really? That's weird, as the Japanese version was released almost a full year before the North American one.

[Avgn Gamer | 671]

Pretty funny how Jetsons got re-skinned in Japan as Yokai Buster Ruka, they toned down the difficulty from Jetsons and made Yokai really easy.

[dvertov | 208]

1 hour ago, Dr. Morbis said:

That's backwards: it was developed over here and then reskinned to be less realistic and more cartoony to cater to the Japanese market.

Not according to Hardcore Gaming 101. The Japanese version was released in 1990, the NA version in 1991. They wrote a good article about it: 

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/power-blade/

Edited September 5, 2020 by dvertov

[Tanooki | 4,950]

On 9/3/2020 at 12:00 PM, Lincoln said:

There is a game boy game that was double dragon here and a kunio game in japan. There was a thing going around a while ago when someone figured out how to get them playing in link mode

You're thinking of Double Dragon II which they popped out the Kunio characters out of and it was called: Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun: Bangai Rantō Hen.  Really good game, but they really should just have you know, converted the NES game or something as it's still the series high point.

[CMR | 522]

I don't know if it counts, but Ninja Gaiden Shadow for the GameBoy was originally going to be a Shadow of the Ninja game.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,091]

10 hours ago, dvertov said:

Not according to Hardcore Gaming 101. The Japanese version was released in 1990, the NA version in 1991. They wrote a good article about it: 

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/power-blade/

You're right - I remembered there being something very different about this particular localization from an article I read on the net a few years ago, and I thought it was a reverse localization, but now you made me go and look it up!

So the interesting thing about the Power Blade localization is that it was a complete redesign of the original game by a US employee at Taito America by the name of Randy Studdard, who just so happens to be the former Nintendo employee who created the Captain N / Captain Nintendo character originally for Nintendo Power.  Of course Taito, being a big famous Japanese game developer, did not exactly want to advertise that some random white dude in America had single-handedly taken their game and made it way better, and so this is why it's so difficult to find any credits for this game other than for the music composer (Kinuyo Yamashita), since the music was never changed.

[T-Pac | 7,584]

On 9/2/2020 at 1:51 PM, Tulpa said:

Kid Klown is a reskin of Mickey Mouse III. In fact, a lot of the Crazy Castle series was reskinned depending on where it was released.

This thread reminded me of the Crazy Castle series, too. I found this Youtube video that explains all the franchise madness going on with it, but I still can't quite wrap my head around it all.

-CasualCart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CwWMF5Ku_o

 

[Splain | 2,581]

On Game Boy, McDonaldland is the same game as Spot's Cool Adventure with different sprites. 7Up <-> McDonald's lol.

Also, Wheel of Fortune had a Germany-only release called Glücksrad because that's what the TV show is called there. It doesn't seem like any actual sprites are changed, but obviously the puzzles are all replaced with German ones.

There are lots of re-title only differences. The really annoying ones are where the title on the label is changed, but the ROM is identical.

[Sumez | 2,989]

There's a long article about the Power Blade incident here, from the gaijin's own mouth.

http://www.nintendoplayer.com/feature/the-man-behind-captain-nintendo/chapter-8-new-worlds-to-conquer-and-a-new-superpower/

Keep in mind that this story is heavily biased towards his perspective. He seems pretty full of himself, and even though the western release is much better than the original Japanese one, the ideas he actually came up with are mostly for the worse.  

[Sumez | 2,989]

I just got Doki! Doki! Yuuenchi yesterday.

It's also known as Trolls in Crazyland in its western NES version. Pretty weird reskin, basically just slapping a popular property on to whatever.