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Awesome regional differences in games

Nuclear Muffin said:
Must've forgotten it. Either way, I still posted Tetra's Trackers!

Oh, there's also a lot of name and dialogue changes between the US and EU versions of Nintendo games recently (almost all games have some slight text changes now, but I'm only listing the ones that have significant changes).

Advance Wars Days of Ruin (US) - Advance Wars Dark Conflict (EU). The UK version has a completely different script to the US version! (Personally, I think the UK version is a complete disaster. A travesty compared to the much superior US script) You can see a comparison of the two complete scripts here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ds/943675-advance-wars-days-of-ruin/faqs/51609


Spirit Tracks: MANY name changes. Byrne became Staven (WHY?!), The town of Whittleton became Mayscore in the UK version and the list goes on and on. There's lots of little changes in dialogue (one infamous one refers to the time that has passed since Phantom Hourglass. "100 years" becomes "Hundreds of years". Cue the cries of 1000 Zelda timeline fanatics!)


Wii Party: Voice over was changed and the UK voice over is hilarious! (Sadly I can't find any vids on Youtube)


Layton series (since Layton 2): Luke's voiceover was swapped out with someone else, despite the fact that they used the US voiceover in the first game, and it is absolutely GRATING! (Yes, even moreso than the US one and I'm a brit!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LT4AHPLRUg


Kirby Epic Yarn: Voiceover was changed again (arguably for the better. Personally, I think both are good)

US Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKRiopEbygc

UK Version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeKjXutsP4s


Advance Wars Dual Strike: More name changes (this is where I believe it all started recently): Koal becomes Zak and Kindle becomes Candy (OH GOD, WAS SO CONFUSING WHEN FIRST CHECKING OUT STUFF ONLINE ABOUT THE GAME!!!)


Mario & Luigi Partners in Time: All enemies got a massive HP boost in the EU version. The final boss is particularly famous for this change as it takes absolutely FOREVER to kill in the EU version! Various dialogue changes as well.


Hotel Dusk and Another Code: I've never seen the US versions of these myself, but I've heard that NOA Treehouse rewrote the scripts for these games in the US (I would imagine that they're much better going by their history; that and the fact that the UK script is absolute rubbish: Soooo dry and dull!)


Some older differences as well (not text changes)

Luigi's Mansion US - EU: Enemies do more damage, less money is placed around the mansion (It's impossible to get an A rank in the normal mansion now!), the Hidden Mansion is also mirrored now and is MUCH MUCH harder than the US version (at least double the amount of enemies, lots of red ghosts UGH!) and there's more money available (making an A rank a possibility), there's also a secret sliding move that you can only do in the EU version of the Hidden Mansion where Luigi rides on top of the Poltergust (Skip to around 3:15 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47gjWbipvXg)


Metroid Prime US - EU: Like Luigi's Mansion, Metroid Prime had a ton of additions to make up for its delay. In addition to tons of bug fixes and small changes (the likes of which are well documented online on places like Metroid Wiki), the EU version has increased difficulty. Enemies do more damage, health pickups are rarer and hints take longer to appear.


Donkey Konga 1 & 2: The tracklist is almost completely different between the US and EU versions of the game, meaning that for all gameplay purposes, the EU version is a completely different game from the US version!


But this mostly happens because they translate it to various languages (the localistaion differences I mean) in Europe, instead of only one. Nearly all the countries at the end get different names and text in the games, thats why things like Super Smash Bros Brawl had to be studied by its translators in every country differently, to look for all the different things that could be named different or appeared different in evry european country. It was a very hard task, I can tell you that.

I dont even understand the name character changes sometimes, when they are clearly not needed, in every european country, like with Golden Sun or Advance Wars, or the nps of the new Zeldas. Thats going to make more harder to localize games in the future.

For example, Mario and Luigi's Super Star Saga has very shitty dialog and name for the second in command boss in the game (the one that appears in the third game) in Spain. So when they had him appear in the third game, and it was a really fun character in the rest of countries, while here he was just another boss, they had to overhaul his name and charactarisation, so it could be funny, totally ruining conitnuity.
 
blamite said:
http://earthboundcentral.com/m2eb/
There are soooo many differences between Mother 2 and Earthbound.

tons of other little things listed on that site. Most of it is dialog changes, but there's some other neat differences.
Man, even though I just played it last year, I want to play it again so bad. What a great game. Cool link, too... I've been to EBC so many times, but somehow missed those pages. Thanks!
 
SpacePirate Ridley said:
I dont even understand the name character changes sometimes, when they are clearly not needed, in every european country, like with Golden Sun or Advance Wars, or the nps of the new Zeldas. Thats going to make more harder to localize games in the future.

I find this kind of thing incredibly annoying as well. It's just so arbitrary. There is no reason that Link's village in Spirit Tracks should be called Outset in the EU version and Aboda in the US version, along with all the other name changes. Then there are things like the script for AW Days of Ruin. They should get the character names and locations set in stone for all English translations at the very least. Most of these things come about because of stupid delays or uncoordinated localisation schedules between the US and EU that mean Treehouse hasn't got round to doing a script when the EU releases are being prepped.
 
Clipper said:
The other interesting thing is that NAL (Nintendo Australia) actually just repackaged US cartridges to release the game here instead of their usual practice of using the PAL releases (the PAL release was massively delayed, so that's good). When Wild World came around, they used PAL due to the Wii being region locked, which broke the transfer system if you bought both games locally as they were from different regions. They fixed this via a redemption, but it's still crazy that this problem was never detected.

Hmm, I guess you're talking about Wild World? Because I had the Aus GC version and it ran on my EU GC...
 
Shenmue 2

There was one character who's gender was changed....I think. Think it's name was Yuan I think.

It's been too long since I last played this game. Could someone kind enough explain the differences in this character in the Jap and euro versions?
 
Hwang originally replaced Mitsurugi entirely in Soul Edge when released in Korea. Hwang was available elsewhere as a hidden character, the only one in that game. When they both were main characters in Soul Calibur, Arthur was created to replace Mitsurugi.

I don't know what they did with Soul Calibur III when Arthur became an official (hidden) character, anyone know? Or is that not an issue with the Korean versions anymore?
 
I think they stopped caring about Mitsurugi in the Korean versions after SC1. I don't remember hearing anything about him being missing or altered since then.
 
For all the fussing over them Pokémon sprites I'm surprised no ones mentioned localization changes that mattered and these are recent to boot!

In the European release of Platinum the sot machines were replaced by game machines cause gambling = bad or something.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Game_machine

In the North American and European release of Heart Gold & Superior Silver the slot machines were replaced with a new non-gambly game called Voltorb Flip.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Voltorb_Flip

After 10/11 years of releasing games with slots its stupid that they all of a sudden decided its bad for westerners. Black & White doesn't even have a Game Corner in any regional release! Did they decide its bad for Japan to??
 
Nuclear Muffin said:
Mario & Luigi Partners in Time: All enemies got a massive HP boost in the EU version. The final boss is particularly famous for this change as it takes absolutely FOREVER to kill in the EU version! Various dialogue changes as well.

Hotel Dusk and Another Code: I've never seen the US versions of these myself, but I've heard that NOA Treehouse rewrote the scripts for these games in the US (I would imagine that they're much better going by their history; that and the fact that the UK script is absolute rubbish: Soooo dry and dull!)
Guess which version of Partners of Time I own? That sounds like a Working Designs style change. IIRC it was Silhoette Mirage where I think they gave you less money, made things more expensive and generally the game harder.

UK Hotel Dusk is the US script with some of the American slang changed. Or at least thats what the localising Hotel Dusk interview implied (theres a part 2 too somewhere)

Your post (due to mentioning others in the franchise) reminds me of Advance Wars. The first GBA one. In Japan some of the COs looked slightly different, these changes were made back in 2001 if you look at old screenshots so it was probably an NOA demand and its cool how they still kept military themes for them.

Plus let's not forget Orange Star was Red Star. IIRC, most the official artwork used in US/EU assets still says Red Star.

Fire Emblem always has a number of localisation changes. Usually boring things like character names, slight changes to stats but the most significant I feel was to Radiant Dawn. Versions after the Japanese release added 16:9, three character exclusive weapons (Caladbolg, Lughnasadh and Tarvos) and added "preview videos" of the next part of the game (played when you end a part). You can read more about Fire Emblem game changes here

Lindsay said:
For all the fussing over them Pokémon sprites I'm surprised no ones mentioned localization changes that mattered and these are recent to boot!

In the European release of Platinum the sot machines were replaced by game machines cause gambling = bad or something.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Game_machine

In the North American and European release of Heart Gold & Superior Silver the slot machines were replaced with a new non-gambly game called Voltorb Flip.

http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Voltorb_Flip

After 10/11 years of releasing games with slots its stupid that they all of a sudden decided its bad for westerners. Black & White doesn't even have a Game Corner in any regional release! Did they decide its bad for Japan to??
This is due to age ratings. PEGI requirements mean if a game has gambling in it the lowest rating it can get is 12+. Given how much of the Pokemon fanbase is under 12 its best to ditch the casino and get the 3+ rating. I'm not sure if the ruling was changed for when Platinum came out or if NOE had been naughty for the past decade but it doesn't matter.

Given US and EU versions of HG/SS came out pretty swiftly and the Game Corner needed changing for the EU version anyway (and not the rush job "lol it does nothing"*) thats why America got Voltorb Flip.

*-Inazuma Eleven features this. In Japanese versions I hear you can buy "drugs" for your characters. In the EU version you go into that shop and they say "welcome" (or some such) and that is all. Speaking of that game. The EU versions run on the sequels engine and include all the characters from the sequel too (though I believe to a standard player this data is inaccessible). Due to this extra data they could only fit one language per cartridge (making it very hard to get an English version...until August 26th when it finally comes out in the UK).
 
Tranced Shadow said:
Hmm, I guess you're talking about Wild World? Because I had the Aus GC version and it ran on my EU GC...
Oops yeah, forgot about the N64 one and thought that Wild World was the Wii one. What I meant was that the Aus Wild World on DS wouldn't transfer to the Aus Let's Go to the City (aka City Folk in US) on Wii at first.
 
Starwolf_UK said:
*-Inazuma Eleven features this. In Japanese versions I hear you can buy "drugs" for your characters. In the EU version you go into that shop and they say "welcome" (or some such) and that is all. Speaking of that game. The EU versions run on the sequels engine and include all the characters from the sequel too. Due to this extra data they could only fit one language per cartridge (making it very hard to get an English version...until August 26th when it finally comes out in the UK).

So thats why the fucking pharmacies did nothing?
Motherfucking censorship. Change the name of the medicine to energy drinks or something like that, but dont fucking take them out of the game.
 
Mortal Kombat 2 had some differences.
Normal red blood in EU/US, while green in JP version.
Also fatality screen darkens in EU/US and goes black and white in JP.

1.png


2.png


Also there was no blood in SNES version of MK1, but that's different story.
 
SpacePirate Ridley said:
In another note, i always thought that in Ilussion of Time, you started in Spain.

Considering that the South Cape is in the same continent as Inca, it is obviously Chile.
 
Ushojax said:
I find this kind of thing incredibly annoying as well. It's just so arbitrary. There is no reason that Link's village in Spirit Tracks should be called Outset in the EU version and Aboda in the US version, along with all the other name changes. Then there are things like the script for AW Days of Ruin. They should get the character names and locations set in stone for all English translations at the very least. Most of these things come about because of stupid delays or uncoordinated localisation schedules between the US and EU that mean Treehouse hasn't got round to doing a script when the EU releases are being prepped.


Maybe it is not .... diferences of EU and USA from japanese games must be because there were 2 teams working in the translation and the original name could be translated from more than one way ...

Or maybe changes from japan to usa with names can be to fit the amount of characters in the textbox...

...just ideas
 
cj_iwakura said:
Not to my knowledge. Which console version are you referring to, SCD or PSX?

Not sure. I thought I read somewhere that the bosses were modified to scale with Alex's level and you originally didn't
have to play Alex's harp/ocarina to approach Luna safely
at the end. Could be wrong, though.
 
sn00zer said:
Nintendo (America) had a strict policy about not allowing any religious symbols in their games during the NES/SNES era

That didn't stop crosses from appearing just fine in Zelda 2 and Castlevania 3.
 
NES
Gun-Nac: The intro and ending were severely cut short for the USA version.

Chou Jinrou Senki - Warwolf: Japanese version of Werewolf: The Last Warrior. Story was changed in the USA version and the ending was "americanized".

Juuryoku Soukou Metal Storm: Japanese MetalStorm. The USA version had the cool intro cut out and the last boss says some stuff while you fight him which was also cut out. The ending is still in English, but the credits were cut short in the USA version too.

Moero Twinbee: Japanese Stinger. The USA version cut out all traces of the 3 pilots intro and ending text.

Mad City: Japanese Bayou Billy. Most of the story in the USA game is faithful to the Japanese version (as far as I could tell), but the USA version completely cut out 3 extra endings found in the Japanese version.

Mickey Mouse 3 - Yume Fuusen: Japanese Kid Klown. This one is pretty well known. Due to licensing issues, the USA version changed all the story and characters to some stupid clown.

Hao Kun no Fushigina Tabi: Released on the NES as Mystery Quest, but it removed all the story and even a bunch of levels.

Gyruss: The Japanese version has a cool intro and ending that was cut out from the USA version.

Dragon Ninja: (Japanese Bad Dudes), has short story intermissions between the stages. The USA version didn't have that.

SNES
Super Aleste: Japanese Space Megaforce. The USA version cut out all the awesome story intermissions and endings from the game.

Rushing Beat series: released in the USA as Rival Turf, Brawl Bros and Peace Keepers.

All three had their intro, endings and credits butchered or removed (even if they were in English already). The only one that at least retained a lof of its original content was Peace Keepers and even that one had a completely ridiculous translation in stead.

Actually, the Jaleco translation director said (according to a FAQ author that got in contact with them) that when they translated the Peace Keepers, they pretty much made up the whole story because Jaleco of Japan never gave them any assets to work with.
 
Natsume's awesome Shatterhand (NES) was developed for the US first, then localized for Japan as a licensed game based on the television show Super Rescue Solbrain. Aside from some graphical and character changes, the most significant change is that one of the levels is completely different for reasons I can't begin to imagine. Maybe it was based on something from the show?

Both games are underappreciated NES/FC gems, in any case.

Electivirus said:
American's love 'em angry.

He's not really "angry." He's doing the Dreamworks's face.

Nuclear Muffin said:
On the plus side, the Ashley section is much cooler in the JPN version as it uses the classic RE camera angles! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mLbIs7Uglc

Wow, I didn't know about that. That is cool.

But let it be known that I support the US version for its lighter censorship and larger sweater cows.

Nuclear Muffin said:
Hotel Dusk and Another Code: I've never seen the US versions of these myself, but I've heard that NOA Treehouse rewrote the scripts for these games in the US (I would imagine that they're much better going by their history; that and the fact that the UK script is absolute rubbish: Soooo dry and dull!)

I don't know Japanese so obviously I know nothing about the original script, but I will say that the US version of Hotel Dusk is one of the most mature and well-written games I've ever played.

I want to import Last Window badly, and I will eventually, but it hurts to know I'll be dealing with an inferior localization :/

Syril said:
The Working Designs versions of Lunar added a lot more besides the English scripts, didn't they?

Yep. They did a lot of re-balancing, IIRC. And the changes were usually for the better, though arguably not always (the save penalty in the Sega CD version of Eternal Blue has always been pretty polarizing, for example).

kinn said:
Shenmue 2

There was one character who's gender was changed....I think. Think it's name was Yuan I think.

It's been too long since I last played this game. Could someone kind enough explain the differences in this character in the Jap and euro versions?

Yuan was a man dressed in women's clothing in the Japanese release. The English language releases made him into a sorta strange woman.

ReyVGM said:
Mad City: Japanese Bayou Billy. Most of the story in the USA game is faithful to the Japanese version (as far as I could tell), but the USA version completely cut out 3 extra endings found in the Japanese version.

IIRC, the Japanese version is way easier, and the stage layouts were changed quite a bit.

Easy_D said:
No, Michiru Yamane's first Castlevania job was Bloodlines, iirc.

That's correct. Castlevania 3's music was done by Yoshinori Sasaki, Jun Funahashi, and Yukie Morimoto, according to the game's Mobygames page (I don't remember off the top of my head). Damn fine soundtrack, too.
 
drugstore_cowboy said:
We got both versions in the UK, on tape at least.

They ran out of tape for the USA one though, Thailand didn't load.

Worked fine on C64 disk drive.


Funny thing was, not many people knew about the other side of the tape. I think the Disk version only had the one version though didn't it?

And lol@theUS running out of tape. Wow.
 
Forkball said:
Censorship is silly in most cases, but I'm glad they changed it. What the hell kinda character design is this? What woman would wear that?
Yeah, that one on the right is so much more sensible.
 
Forkball said:
Censorship is silly in most cases, but I'm glad they changed it. What the hell kinda character design is this? What woman would wear that?
I know women which would wear that. Nothing wrong with it.
 
Dreamer RD said:
Mortal Kombat 2 had some differences.
Normal red blood in EU/US, while green in JP version.
Also fatality screen darkens in EU/US and goes black and white in JP.

1.png


Also there was no blood in SNES version of MK1, but that's different story.

Gives new meaning to the term "beat the SNOT out of you". Eh? EH?
 
Ushojax said:
I find this kind of thing incredibly annoying as well. It's just so arbitrary. There is no reason that Link's village in Spirit Tracks should be called Outset in the EU version and Aboda in the US version, along with all the other name changes. Then there are things like the script for AW Days of Ruin. They should get the character names and locations set in stone for all English translations at the very least. Most of these things come about because of stupid delays or uncoordinated localisation schedules between the US and EU that mean Treehouse hasn't got round to doing a script when the EU releases are being prepped.

What's even weirder is that the EU version of Spirit Tracks is clearly based off of the US script (they share a lot of dialogue), but they go ahead and just change random lines of dialogue for seemingly no good reason.

The whole Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict fiasco was a complete disaster. Who's brilliant idea was it to have the NOE UK staff translate a game that NOA Treehouse were already working on? Why didn't they get them to do Starfy or something else in the meantime? It's just completely inefficient.
 
ReyVGM said:
Rushing Beat series: released in the USA as Rival Turf, Brawl Bros and Peace Keepers.

All three had their intro, endings and credits butchered or removed (even if they were in English already). The only one that at least retained a lof of its original content was Peace Keepers and even that one had a completely ridiculous translation in stead.

Actually, the Jaleco translation director said (according to a FAQ author that got in contact with them) that when they translated the Peace Keepers, they pretty much made up the whole story because Jaleco of Japan never gave them any assets to work with.

They made a helluva lot more stupid and weird changes to Rushing Beat Shura/The Peace Keepers than just the translation.

At least with Rushing Beat Ran/Brawl Brothers you can play the Japanese one with the linear sewer stage and such.
 
randomlyrossy said:
They do talk in the European version (Lylat Wars), that is just an option you can turn out to make it more like the SNES game (called Star Wing here incidentally).
In english? They speak japanese in the JP version, so that was pretty cool back then.
 
Mailenstein said:
In english? They speak japanese in the JP version, so that was pretty cool back then.
They speak English in the western version and it's absolutely glorious. I'm on my 3DS right now and can't find you a video but Star Fox 64 quotes are the stuff of legends.
 
ElFly said:
Considering that the South Cape is in the same continent as Inca, it is obviously Chile.
How can it be anything when the world map is entirely different from ours until you beat the game? :P
 
TomcatTheLion said:
Oh lawd forbid we see underboobs from time to time among all the violence!
If this thread has taught me anything it's that Americans would rather see a girl's spine ripped out than the underside of her breasts.
 
Diprosalic said:
melee had some interesting difference, between ntsc and pal, if you were hardcore enough to notice them. still to this day i wonder why they made them.

Not really a regional difference since you can do it on the same copy, but when viewing your entire trophy collection in Melee, the background changes when you switch between English and Japanese.

Also, a Virtual Boy shows up in the background next to all the other consoles in this mode.. but only in Japanese. The VB disappears in the default English mode.
 
FyreWulff said:
Not really a regional difference since you can do it on the same copy, but when viewing your entire trophy collection in Melee, the background changes when you switch between English and Japanese.

Also, a Virtual Boy shows up in the background next to all the other consoles in this mode.. but only in Japanese. The VB disappears in the default English mode.

That does remind me of something else, though. In the Japanese version of Melee, the Motion Sensor Bomb item was the proximity mine from Perfect Dark, but in other versions it was the mine from Goldeneye instead. I never got why they changed that.
 
Sylver said:
Oh and wellknown Vega - M. Bison - Balrog mad changing name.
bAK8F.gif

What always bothered me about this was they didn't NEED to swap all three. Think about it:

M. Bison - Alright, Tyson might sue. Swap him with Dictator Vega.

Vega...from Vegas. That's the perfect kind of Japanese pun and it would've fit fine as Boxer's underground fighting nickname.
 
More Super Smash Bros. Melee: In the North American version of Melee, the Motion Sensor Bomb looks like this:

Sot36.jpg


But in the Japanese version, it's called the Proximity Mine, and it looks like this:

R2Jh4.jpg


Look familiar? That's because the Proximity Mine is from Perfect Dark.

pbQMP.jpg


The trophy text for the North American version says it's "a favorite covert weapon of spies and other stealthy operatives" and the Japanese version says it "has long been a favorite covert weapon of the Carrington Institute." (The Carrington Institute being the protagonists of Perfect Dark, of course.)

I'm not sure why they changed this one. Rare didn't go to Microsoft until a year later, and the North American version was only released less than two weeks after the Japanese version.

In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't actually remove the Proximity Mine. I think you can actually change this trophy from the generic Motion Sensor Bomb to the Perfect Dark Proximity Mine by changing the game's language to Japanese. I vaguely remember doing that but I don't have my copy of Melee handy to test it out now. :P
 
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