Why bother?

[v85rawdeal]

Was going through my collection of games listed on IGN and noticed that I apparently had a game called Death Sword. Curious, I clicked on it. Turns out that it was Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior (The one with Maria Whittaker).

Death Sword was the name of the game in the US... Why rename it to something as sucky as that???

What other travesties do people know of when it comes to renaming games for release in another region???

[Teho]

Contra / Gryzor springs to mind. And there was another old arcade game called Bag Man on most systems that was called Bagitman on the C64 for some reason. And there's those great PS1 puzzlers called Kurushi and Kurushi Final here, they were called I.Q. and I.Q. Final in both US and Japan, I.Q. meaning Intelligent Qube. Why give the european game a japanese name when they didn't call it that in Japan in the first place?

All I can think of straight away. Well, there's always that C64 and Amiga version of Super Mario Bros that somehow got called Great Gianna Sisters...

[Demon Cleaner]

The Fatal Frame series are called Project Zero for Europe and Australia

[Harrison]

The Playstation port of the Arcade game Soul Edge (prequel to Soul Calibur) was called Soul Blade in Europe, US and Australia. Strange as it was called Soul Edge in the Arcades because the whole story of the game centres around a demonic sword called Soul Edge.

[Shaun1984]

Here is an interesting one, this is sort of related..


You've all played Super Mario Bros 2 on the Nes? well it's not technically the original Super Mario Bros 2.

After the success of the first game, a follow up was released in Japan - Super Mario Bros 2 which looked and played just like the original. However the creators thought the game would be too difficult for US and European gamers, so they went to work on something different. The Japanese Famicom had a game called 'Doki Doki Panic' which was becoming popular, so they released it in the US and Europe under the title 'Super Mario Bros 2' (the Japanese refer to it as 'Mario USA').


They replaced the original Doki Doki Panic sprites, with that of Mario related characters, as well adding a few extras (Mario theme, mushrooms and so on).


So in a way we were cheated out of the proper Mario 2, that is until it finally made it's way to US and European consoles on the Super Nintendo compilation 'Super Mario All stars' only this time under the name 'Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels'.


So two Super Mario Bros 2, but in fact different games, and the Japanese were not wrong, the game is very hard indeed.


A lot of this is off the top of my head, so please forgive if there are any inaccuracies.

[Harrison]

That instantly reminded me of a similar situation with the first few Final Fantasy games on the Nintendo systems, and it makes things quite complicated.

Many people in the west first encountered Final Fantasy with FFVII on the Playstation. Logically this means that 6 games were released before it on previous platforms. Right?

Well yes and no. If you lived in Japan then yes you got to see the previous 6 Final Fantasy games released. However in the US you didn't see all of them released, and in Europe none of the previous games had been released prior to the launch of FFVII.

But it gets more complicated. In the US Final Fantasy 1, 2 and 3 were released before 7. But these were not really the first three games of the series. The very first Final Fantasy was released in both Japan and the US. However the 2nd and 3rd games only saw a Japanese release, with Final Fantasy 4 being released in Japan and the US. However as it was actually only the second game to be released in the US they renamed it Final Fantasy 2 for the US market. Then Final Fantasy 5 only saw a Japanese release, but Final Fantasy 6 then saw a joint Japanese and US release, but again due to it not being the 6th game released in the US it was renamed to Final Fantasy 3 for the US market.

Therefore in the US:

Final Fantasy 1 = Final Fantasy I (1)
Final Fantasy 2 = Final Fantasy IV (4)
Final Fantasy 3 = Final Fantasy VI (6)

A great way to confuse.