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[FYC]

I recently played through Naruto Uzumaki Chronicles(I wouldn't recommend it) and I noticed something that caught my interest.

At about the 0:30 mark in this video, Naruto is clearly using a Rasengan...But in the bottom left, the move is called "Power Strike". I was rather confused about this, especially since Naruto is definitely using Rasengan on the box art.

I looked into this and quickly found out why. This game was released in Japan on September 18, 2005. At this point, the anime series had hit Episode 151; the final Naruto vs Sasuke fight had finished long ago. However, the NA version was released on November 16, 2006, and the dubbed anime series was still showing the Chunin Finals, so to avoid spoiling future content for the American audience, a lot of content in the game was edited. On top of changing Rasengen to Power Strike, the NA version completely removes Itachi, Kisame and Tsunade from any cutscenes / fights. For example,

Japanese Opening

NA Opening

As I mentioned before, they even changed some of the fights.

Originally in this mission it seems you fight Kisame. (I think the video uploader kept the cutscenes and edited out the gameplay judging by the cut at 1:25)

But in the NA version, you fight Gaara. Also, for some reason the portraits during ingame cutscenes aren't present at all in the NA version of the game.

Lastly, Gaara and Shikamaru's costumes were changed.

Thought it was kinda neat. Interested in reading about other games that had their content changed.

 

[BumbleChump]

Ranma 1/2 on snes. Oh my god from JP to US it's unbelievable.

 

[KDash31987]

Ranma 1/2 on snes. Oh my god from JP to US it's unbelievable.

Heh, I was about to post about this. The first SNES Ranma ½ game became...Street Combat, full of incredibly generic characters. At least the sequel actually got released with the original license intact. It's too bad that the third game didn't get released, as that one is easily the best of the bunch by a whole lot.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Battle_(video_game)

The entire game pretty much aside from the story.

 

[RiderKairuu]

Mystic Defender (Genesis)

vs the JPN version

Very minor, not sure which skin I like better. Then my god there was this

Edit: GreatCharleston beat me to it.

 

[mrjohill]

What's that nes dragon ball game that they changed called?

 

[Tohsaka]

What's that nes Dragon Power.ball game that they changed called?

Dragon Power.

 

[Pepsiman]

I've only ever played the series in Japanese, but the two Disaster Report games that came over for the PS2, Disaster Report and Raw Danger, sound like they got morbidly interesting localizations for the North American and PAL releases. My understanding is that the plotlines remained the same, but character and place names were westernized and more humorously, every character in the games I believe is blonde, without the rest of their physical appearance being altered to make them look more plausibly Caucasian. Some characters make the transition pretty okay, but a lot of them look like members of visual kei bands with how much their hair stands out. I'm probably biased since I'm a translator anyway, but I always found those changes to be intriguingly unnecessary since none of the content in the original games is particularly foreign to western audiences from a cultural perspective from what I recall.

Actually, while I'm in this subject, I have a question for anybody who played Raw Danger in English: can you still listen to the car radio when you're playing as the taxi driver? It was a nice touch to go between stages and have the topics being discussed on the news and talk shows change as you progressed through his story, but I've always been curious if they bothered to dub it or not since those localizations otherwise looked like they were pretty cheaply made.

 

[joffocakes]

There were some pretty drastic changes to Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure for it's western release as DecapAttack:

http://www.gamesasylum.com/2013/10/29/from-magical-turbo-hat-to-decapattack/

 

[Moff]

german half life

german turok

 

[Phediuk]

Decap Attack (Genesis)
Whomp 'Em (NES)
Universal Soldier (Genesis)
Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle (NES)
Mickey Mousecapade (NES)
BioMetal (SNES)
X-Kaliber 2097 (SNES)
Probotector (NES, SNES, Genesis)
Dragon Power (NES)
Last Battle (Genesis)
Black Belt (Master System)
Die Hard Arcade (arcade)
Power Blade (NES)

 

[MrCunningham]

Doki Doki Panic? I actually like the Super Mario Bros 2 version of the game better, TBH, and I think Nintendo made the right call changing it to a Mario game.

Contra III:

Probotector III:

 

[Eusis]

Yeah, it's really hard to top some of those older games in regards to just how much they changed (though surprisingly Fist of the North Star wasn't radically altered it seems on NES and Game Boy, the latter of which is how I first even knew about the anime), although that Naruto example might actually be the stupidest of them all. The series got crazy big in the US half due to fansubs, they were better off just leaving stuff alone, and I guess it looks even dumber now with the likes of Crunchyroll and near simultaneous Jump publishing.

 

[Phediuk]

Look, can we talk about Universal Soldier a bit more? They literally took Turrican 2 and replaced the main character with fucking Jean Claude Van Damme, and made all the bosses into Dolph Lundgren. I'm fucking serious here.

They made no attempt whatsoever to justify why Van Damme can roll up into a ball; he just can, apparently.

Turrican 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UW4CDWyhxLw
Universal Soldier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE2AYLPKcNk

 

[ULTROS!]

Revelations Persona:

+ The fact their names have been Westernized (Maki->Mary, Masao->Mark)

 

[Phediuk]

Revelations Persona:

+ The fact their names have been Westernized (Maki->Mary, Masao->Mark)

They also changed the setting from Japan to America but didn't bother to explain why there's Shinto stuff everywhere.

 

[alexein]

Sengoku basara to devil kings
Sos the final escape

 

[Phediuk]

Streets of Rage 3 had major changes in its localization; the plot was totally different and most characters' appearances were changed. Some enemies and bosses were censored too, and it was much much harder than the Japanese version.

 

[dosh]

Contra III:

Probotector III:

Funny thing is that in Europe, we got the japanese version. I never understood why, but it was awesome.

Are there any differences besides going from robots to human soldiers?

 

[Rarutos]

Panel de Pon turning into a Yoshi game sure is one.

 

[BocoDragon]

Funny thing is that in Europe, we got the japanese version. I never understood why, but it was awesome.

Are there any differences besides going from robots to human soldiers?

No you missed the facts. The censored/changed version "Probotector" is only in Europe. The original game stars humans in Japan and America.

 

[Eusis]

Revelations Persona:

+ The fact their names have been Westernized (Maki->Mary, Masao->Mark)

That one's weird because a lot of them had western nicknames anyway: Mark was always Mark, they just changed it from a nick name to a given name. Though it did seem kind of silly to go from the nickname Elly to the given name Ellen given Elly's an accepted name outside of Japan and was even used two years after its release in Xenogears further cementing how pointless of a change that was.

 

[Noisepurge]

and

would not know why

 

[Infernal Monkey]

Baby T-Rex for the Game Boy, originally released in most of Europe.

Was rebranded under the We're Back movie license for America.

Agro Soar in Australia (a popular kids morning show at the time).

... And Bamse in Sweden (long-running comic/cartoon series).

They're all the same game except for the character sprites and opening/ending cutscenes.

 

[duckroll]

In the original Japanese release, Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere was a 2-disc game on the PS1 with a full blown story campaign with animated movies, long briefing cutscenes, full voice acting, etc. Namco decided that was too much effort to localize for a western audience who probably only just wants to fly planes and blow shit up without having to deal with a scifi anime plot. So they cut everything out and released a 1-disc game in NA and PAL territories with just the missions. Pretty major change!

 

[Eusis]

In the original Japanese release, Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere was a 2-disc game on the PS1 with a full blown story campaign with animated movies, long briefing cutscenes, full voice acting, etc. Namco decided that was too much effort to localize for a western audience who probably only just wants to fly planes and blow shit up without having to deal with a scifi anime plot. So they cut everything out and released a 1-disc game in NA and PAL territories with just the missions. Pretty major change!

And after seeing how good AC4 was with the story stuff that seemed like an outright travesty. Namco can be a god damn joke at times.

 

[dosh]

No you missed the facts. The censored/changed version "Probotector" is only in Europe. The original game stars humans in Japan and America.

I... never knew that. I was convinced the robots were in the japanese version as well. Because, you know. Robots. Japan.

Spoiler

and now, I have to reconsider my entire childhood because of you

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

Obligatory:

 

[Eusis]

I... never knew that. I was convinced the robots were in the japanese version as well. Because, you know. Robots. Japan.

Spoiler

and now, I have to reconsider my entire childhood because of you

Probably didn't help that usually European releases seemed more accepting of anime and the like back then, just look at how quickly Mega Man covers resembled the actual Japanese artwork in Europe whereas it was only starting to be shaken off in NA with MM6/X's covers and took until 8/X4 to be thrown off entirely.

 

[BocoDragon]

I... never knew that. I was convinced the robots were in the japanese version as well. Because, you know. Robots. Japan.

Spoiler

and now, I have to reconsider my entire childhood because of you

Europe's Probotector legacy is neat though. You can obviously play the original version if you wish, but but we have this cool alternate reality where the Contra dudes are robots.

 

[Lapidus' Beard]

Super Mario Bros. 2 was altered a bit...

 

[BocoDragon]

Probably didn't help that usually European releases seemed more accepting of anime and the like back then, just look at how quickly Mega Man covers resembled the actual Japanese artwork whereas it was only starting to be shaken off with MM6/X's covers and took until 8/X4 to be thrown off entirely.

I'm not sure I agree with that. You seem to be going off the Euro Mega Man 4 and 5 covers, which were the same as the Western-drawn art but with more anime faces. That's a 1-2 year period and (as you say) by MM6/X the American art embraced the anime look.

The West in general was more accepting of anime as we moved into the 90s... I don't think there was a huge disparity between North America and Europe.

But I will concede the core of your point: I do think Europeans (the French in particular) clued into anime earlier than America. It just wasn't reflected in games much.

 

[panchos]

Squaresoft's action-RPG Dew Prism became Threads of Fate for its US release, reportedly because the original title sounded like 'Jew Prison' in English...

There are loads of examples of Final Fantasy and Zelda games losing religious imagery in the trip from Japan to the US during the NES and SNES era too. The third dungeon in Legend of Zelda was shaped like a manji, which to western eyes looks like an inverted swastika.

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

Squaresoft's action-RPG Dew Prism became Threads of Fate for its US release, reportedly because the original title sounded like 'Jew Prison' in English...

There are loads of examples of Final Fantasy and Zelda games losing religious imagery in the trip from Japan to the US during the NES and SNES era too. The third dungeon in Legend of Zelda was shaped like a manji, which to western eyes looks like an inverted swastika.

Zelda lost one religious description (the Bible was retranslated to the Magic Book, iirc) and it was also the only item to lose it's christian cross. Link's shields retained the cross, though.
The Manji shaped dungeon was never changed thuogh. Not even in rereleases.

 

[Piccoro]

On the left, Decap Attack on the Genesis. On the right Magical Hat no Buttobi Tabo! Daibōken for the Japanese Megadrive:

Japanese Bare Knuckle III, with the gay boss:

Streets of Rage 3, boss removed, main characters colors changed and the entire story altered:

 

[cj_iwakura]

and

would not know why

They also completely excised the story from Shikigami 1, which is the most damn convoluted thing on the entire internet.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

God Hand:

The Japanese version has a roulette move (super moves that require orbs to use) called "Pan Drop". It is unique in that it costs no orbs and is always in your roulette move selection. When it is used, a pan drops out of the sky and hits you, which causes a tiny amount of damage but also grants you some invulnerable frames. This move was removed in the US version.

Also, a roulette move that was called Hurricane Chop in the Japanese version was changed to Head Slicer in the US version, where it can decapitate weak enemies.

Devil May Cry:

A lot of people complain about the odd control scheme in the US version (jump is mapped to triangle? wtf) but the controls were perfectly sensible in the original version.

Resident Evil 4:

The section where you play as Ashley has old Resident Evil-style fixed camera angles in the original version (this was changed to the game's standard over-the-shoulder camera in the US version).

The Japanese version (which came out after the US version) also has rebalanced weapons and (I think) item drop rates.

Sin and Punishment 2:

The US version has a lot of small enemy pattern changes that I can't recall offhand. The biggest one is that the Japanese version has a boss called Wheel Keeper that you fight near the end of stage 4. In the US version, this boss was downgraded (its health bar and name were removed) and it was placed before the Ninja Keeper boss about haflway through the stage.

Earthbound:

There were a lot of cosmetic changes. The Happy Happyist cultists had the letters "HH" removed from their hoods, and their hoods had pompoms added so that they would look less like KKK members. Most of the hospitals in the game had red crosses removed from their signs. Near the end of the game, in Magicant, Ness is naked in the Japanese version, but wears his pajamas from the start of the game in the US version.

Zelda: Majora's Mask

Skull Kid has a black face in the Japanese version (like the Skull Kids in Ocarina of Time), but was changed to resemble wood in international versions. You can still see the original version in paintings in the oceanside spider house, though.

 

[bato]

Most breath of fire games.

Either the translation was wildly incoherent (and sometimes would just break the game by making puzzles unsolvable with anything but random guesses) or the game was butchered of everything that wouldn't be pg-13, or both.

I think BoF4 in particular had some semi-heavy rewriting and censorship, and 2 in particular was really badly translated.

 

[ryz]

german half life

german turok

oh shit, this reminds me of soldier of fortune 2..

complete with drug lord androids made of metal from a parallel universe. they deal with cocaine of course.


Return to Castle Wolfenstein was also changed: You play against the Wolf Clan; And "Himmler" was changed to "Höller" ("Himmel" means heaven, "Hölle" hell)

I hate the German regulations for video games, although it has significantly improved in the last years.

 

[Eusis]

I'm not sure I agree with that. You seem to be going off the Euro Mega Man 4 and 5 covers, which were the same as the Western-drawn art but with more anime faces. That's a 1-2 year period and (as you say) by MM6/X the American art embraced the anime look.

The West in general was more accepting of anime as we moved into the 90s... I don't think there was a huge disparity between North America and Europe.

But I will concede the core of your point: I do think Europeans (the French in particular) clued into anime earlier than America. It just wasn't reflected in games much.

Yeah, it probably wasn't a MAJOR difference, but it was probably enough of one that it may seem plausible for a few anime-styled games to get covers and artwork that actually are the same as the Japanese ones or at least are closer to their intended artwork, rather than seeing kind of ugly looking westernized attempts. Probably worth trying to dig up some of those exceptions, though there was Terranigma that hit Europe but not NA.

 

[sonicmj1]

Devil May Cry 3's hard mode in Japan became normal mode in the US. Japanese normal was US easy mode.

 

[Moon_frogger]

Elite beat agents, the thread?

 

[cj_iwakura]

Elite beat agents, the thread?

Not really the same. The devs made EBA to appeal to a western audience, it wasn't a butchering of Ouendan.

 

[sugarless]

The Capcom fighting game Rival Schools had an entire story mode where you play as a new student at one of the schools and build up a unique character who learns moves from across the standard characters' moveset. In Japan that is - it was excised from the Western release. Not that I can stand that kind of Japanese school-days fetishisation stuff anyway, but interesting to note.

 

[Castef]

Grandia.

Alcool -> coffee.

 

[Eusis]

Not really the same. The devs made EBA to appeal to a western audience, it wasn't a butchering of Ouendan.

Yeah, EBA was basically Ouendan: America Edition. Kind of like the themed Guitar Hero releases that still worked off of the last major release but were dedicated to one band or type of music.

Grandia.

Alcool -> coffee.

That's a different type of change. And I have to wonder how many of those people even sleep in that town going for all night coffee binges.

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams comes to mind.

When they made it for America, they 'rebalanced' the game by tripling the hit points of all of the enemies.

And yet another different kind of change, loads of 8-bit and 16-bit games were stupid in this way, though fuck whatever shitface at Capcom thought it was great idea bringing this back in the PS2 era.

 

[Quadraphonic]

Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams comes to mind.

When they made it for America, they 'rebalanced' the game by tripling the hit points of all of the enemies.

 

[JaseC]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Battle_(video_game)

The entire game pretty much aside from the story.

Oh wow, I vaguely remember this game. What a blast from the past.

 

[Choppasmith]

The Capcom fighting game Rival Schools had an entire story mode where you play as a new student at one of the schools and build up a unique character who learns moves from across the standard characters' moveset. In Japan that is - it was excised from the Western release. Not that I can stand that kind of Japanese school-days fetishisation stuff anyway, but interesting to note.

Speaking of Capcom fighting games. As I recall there's a lot of character dialog in Capcom vs SNK 2 that are unique to certain combinations. Completely removed in the English version with very generic dialog, some copied over from CVS1.

 

[sugarless]

Zelda lost one religious description (the Bible was retranslated to the Magic Book, iirc) and it was also the only item to lose it's christian cross. Link's shields retained the cross, though.
The Manji shaped dungeon was never changed thuogh. Not even in rereleases.

The 'Sanctuary' in Zelda III (and now Link Between Worlds) was simply called the chapel/church in the Japanese release.

Looking at it, it's pretty clearly a Christian church, but I get why they changed it.

(Amusingly, this player has called himself Udon...)