why do they change the names

[superspudz2000]

it seems funny looking back at some of the odd choices
made by companies to change certain parts of games
for localization.

like how Street Fighter II characters had names changed.
the boxer is supposed to be M.Bison, its a clever jib at Mike Tyson.
and the "Spanish" guy is supposed to be Balrog, a spanish name.
and "Vega" just sounds like an evil overlord name.
we will never know why they thought an American Boxer should
have a Spanish name, and a Badass boss would name himself after
the Dumbest Animal on earth. who knows.

and CONTRA.
so they wanted to avoid a connection to the Iran-Contra affair, sure.
ok so lets rename the NES to Operation C, and Gameboy Super C.
okay, so were supposed to pretend the first game never existed.
as if a game about 2 Guys shooting and killing hordes of enemies
would offend somebody...BECAUSE OF THE TITLE! LOL.

but then just one year later they went right back to the
old Naming system with Contra III. i guess they realized
that renaming a game based purely on an insignificant
event that nobody cares about or remembers is just silly.

and the Europeans went even further, renaming it Probotector.
or sometimes Gryzor, and changing all characters to ROBOTS.
but again a few years later they reverted back to Contra.

and now the latest installment is "Hard Corps: Uprising".
what? no Contra anymore?

the most famous is Super Mario 2. Japan had a completely different
game, they just Re-Did Super Mario with different levels design.
but some reason the american executives thought Super Mario 2
wasen't good enough, so they just hacked a completely unrelated
Famicom Disk System game with Super Mario Sprites.
then later they decided they wanted to release it, so now
SMB 2J is forever called "The Lost Levels".

Rare ware games are even more confusing. instead of releasing
Diddy Kong Racing on GBA, they released Banjo Racing instead.
but then on DS they released Diddy Kong Racing, but missing
all the good characters. and there even was a Beta version of
Donkey Kong Racing GBA leaked on the internet, Exactly the same
as Banjo Pilot, but Donkey Kong Characters included.
And then they also changed Donkey kong Coconut crackers,
to, "its Mr.Pants".

and Dinosaur Planet got released as StarFox Adventures

and Resident Evil, was originally called Biohazard in japan.
what the heck is wrong with BIOHAZARD! i think Biohazard
is a perfectly fine name for a game.

and why is Megaman a better name than Rockman?
i always liked the name "Rockman". his sister is "Roll",
as in "Rock and Roll". get it?
but just to be confusing they changed the characters
Forte to Bass and Gospel to Trebel
ummm... ok, so NOW you want the music theme?

and in F-ZERO Maximum Velocity, the vehicles:
Dirty Joker and Crazy Horse, were renamed to
Sly Joker, and Wind Walker.

But the most confusing Localization of all is Advance Wars 1+2.
it seems Japan got the game after Americans did. its confusing
NOT in the fact that they got both games on 1 cartridge and USA dident.
NOT that it was renamed Gameboy Wars Advance 1+2.

No, the weird thing about Advance Wars Japan is the amount of
Unnecessary changes they made to it.

first they decided "Nell needs to show more skin".
so now Nell sports a sexy sleeveless Stewardess outfit.

-Andy is now Ryo...
-Sami is now Domino...
-Olaf is Santa Claus...

-Kanbei now has quite an elaborate Samurai getup...

-Grit is Daisuke Jigen from Lupin the 3rd...

-Drake lost the title of Captain and is now
just a lowly Japanese Fisherman.....

-Sonja has Glasses....

every other aspect of the game is exactly the same.
no idea why they wanted to change the characters so much.

 

[superspudz2000]

other games that made the list

Jerry Boy for SNES
This game came out in the US, but under the name Smart Ball.
Well, pretty much the whole story was cut out in the US release,
such as the intro and towns

Contra / Gryzor
There’s a flimsy plotline in the Japanese version of Contra. make you
wonder why Konami took that stuff out of the U.S. release.

 

[gamefan5]

... I see so much wrong in your post. But I won't even bother. I'll just wait the mods to close this thread. Seems like it's the same rant as, (why do we say GBA when it isn't allowed).

 

[superspudz2000]

at gamefan5, why do you say its a rant when nothing harsh is said?
there is nothing angry or vocal about this at all. merely a neat observation.

its as perfectly valid topic for discussion as Obama vs Romney

 

[Gahars]

Because they hate you.

 

[superspudz2000]

i hate tapioca pudding. dosent mean i go to the tapioca forum just to derail someone elses thread.

seriously, where do all these hate-filled trolls come from.

 

[Hells Malice]

There's a few "wat"s in there, but some of it's rather interesting if true.
Random pointless facts are always fun.

y so mad guise.

 

[Taleweaver]

Nice rant. A bit incoherent, though.

It's simply a fact that different regions have different tastes and preferences. Hence the differences: to make it sell better.

That's obviously not a huge reason to you, but you're not a publisher.

Arguably, some mistakes were made (megaman covers, to name one). And in some cases, you can't really avoid it (final fantasy has different numberings in the regions because the first one released in the west wasn't the first one).

 

[superspudz2000]

its not a rant because i dont really care, and have no opinion on the matter.
just some random observations.

but yeah, i totally forgot about the Final Fantasy madness,
also Dragon Warrior = Dragon Quest.

 

[Rydian]

Different laws and different products in different countries.

Star Fox was called Lylat Wars in the EU because the EU already had a different game called "star fox" there.

 

[Vampire Lied]

I actually didn't know a couple of those.
U forgot mother2/Earthbound
huge sprite/voice changes in final fight.
Rush n attack was originally supposed to be Russian attack.
Mike Tyson's punchout got a name and final opponent overhaul.
Ugh too many odd things to list lol

 

[Hadrian]

it seems funny looking back at some of the odd choices
the most famous is Super Mario 2. Japan had a completely different
game, they just Re-Did Super Mario with different levels design.
but some reason the american executives thought Super Mario 2
wasen't good enough, so they just hacked a completely unrelated
Famicom Disk System game with Super Mario Sprites.
then later they decided they wanted to release it, so now
SMB 2J is forever called "The Lost Levels".

It was actually Nintendo Japan that did this, they felt that the original wouldn't sell as well because of it's difficulty. Also That "hacked" game was actually originally intended to be a Mario game but became something else afterwards. Nintendo liked the Japanese game but felt that it wouldn't sell in the West so they put Mario on it, also it's more than just Nintendo putting Mario characters inside it.

Rare ware games are even more confusing. instead of releasing
Diddy Kong Racing on GBA, they released Banjo Racing instead.
but then on DS they released Diddy Kong Racing, but missing
all the good characters. and there even was a Beta version of
Donkey Kong Racing GBA leaked on the internet, Exactly the same
as Banjo Pilot, but Donkey Kong Characters included.
And then they also changed Donkey kong Coconut crackers,
to, "its Mr.Pants".

and Dinosaur Planet got released as StarFox Adventures

Microsoft bought Rare so Rare could no longer developer new titles featuring Nintendo characters. DK Racing DS already existed as a N64 game so Nintendo just got Rare to port it to the DS, Microsoft allowed this at the time because they didn't see the DS as competition (which is also why there is a Viva Pinata game on the DS). The "Donkey Kong characters" that are in Banjo Pilot are actually Rare's own creations and when Nintendo sold Rare to Microsoft, they also sold those characters so only Rare could feature them in new games.

Starfox Adventures, during development Miyamoto felt that the character were quite similar to StarFox characters and suggested to Rare that the game could do better if it was a StarFox title.

Everything else is pretty much easy to figure out yourself (have you even heard of Google & Wikipedia?). It's down to different markets. What works in Japan, doesn't work elsewhere. These companies do market research to see what the public think, they put out surveys with different titles, thoughts etc and the public responds, gotta give the public what they want!

Other reasons as stated is down to trademarks, it may be fine to call a game one thing in Japan because nobody copyrighted that game over there but say when it comes to a European release they have to rename it as something else because the copyright for the name may belong to someone else. Also there are/were certain laws in some countries that state certain rules about games. Some places it's fine to have people running around shooting others in a war environment and it's fine for kids to play it, other countries that game will be rated mature...mature games means that kids can't buy them which means a game wouldn't sell as well...it's just common sense really.

 

[Just Another Gamer]

I can answer for the Megaman/Rockman change. It was because like you said in the first Rockman game the names was made based on the term Rock and Roll but when the first game I think came to America they didn't have Roll or Roll was edited out whichever one it was since I forgot so they had to change the name but after that later games released had Roll in it and I think it was too late to change the name back to Rockman. But those who enjoy the franchise usually call him Rockman anyway just cause it stuck for me plus its shorter.

 

[Issac]

I believe it was Germany that had the most strict violence policies in gaming... (with non-red blood, preferably robots instead of humans etc.) and since Germany has such a huge influence in Europe, they toned down the violence of Contra, making it probotector, with robots, in all of Europe...

Also, as Hadrian says, Super mario bros. 2 (non Japanese version) was indeed meant to be a Mario game from the start. The research and development team tried a platformer that didn't only scroll in one direction, horizontal, but in two directions. They tweaked that engine and tried it out a lot, wanting to bring the mario game to the next level. However, the demand for a new mario game in Japan was NOW, so they made more levels to the original engine, and made it harder, just to satisfy the customers while they worked on that other engine.
Then they got a contract with the Fuji TV to make a game to go along with a TV show, and thus Doki Doki Panic was born. That was actually meant to be Mario 2 all along, while "the lost levels" were more like a Mario 1.5. Now since it all was like it was, and the Japanese Mario 2 was (believed to be) a little bit too difficult for the western market (by the Japanese, or by the Western, i don't know), they changed the sprites to represent characters from the mushroom kingdom. And now many now memorable Mario characters were born. (like, shyguys for example).

 

[Sop]

it seems funny looking back at some of the odd choices
made by companies to change certain parts of games
for localization.

like how Street Fighter II characters had names changed.
the boxer is supposed to be M.Bison, its a clever jib at Mike Tyson.
and the "Spanish" guy is supposed to be Balrog, a spanish name.
and "Vega" just sounds like an evil overlord name.
we will never know why they thought an American Boxer should
have a Spanish name, and a Badass boss would name himself after
the Dumbest Animal on earth. who knows.

and CONTRA.
so they wanted to avoid a connection to the Iran-Contra affair, sure.
ok so lets rename the NES to Operation C, and Gameboy Super C.
okay, so were supposed to pretend the first game never existed.
as if a game about 2 Guys shooting and killing hordes of enemies
would offend somebody...BECAUSE OF THE TITLE! LOL.

but then just one year later they went right back to the
old Naming system with Contra III. i guess they realized
that renaming a game based purely on an insignificant
event that nobody cares about or remembers is just silly.

and the Europeans went even further, renaming it Probotector.
or sometimes Gryzor, and changing all characters to ROBOTS.
but again a few years later they reverted back to Contra.

and now the latest installment is "Hard Corps: Uprising".
what? no Contra anymore?

the most famous is Super Mario 2. Japan had a completely different
game, they just Re-Did Super Mario with different levels design.
but some reason the american executives thought Super Mario 2
wasen't good enough, so they just hacked a completely unrelated
Famicom Disk System game with Super Mario Sprites.
then later they decided they wanted to release it, so now
SMB 2J is forever called "The Lost Levels".

Rare ware games are even more confusing. instead of releasing
Diddy Kong Racing on GBA, they released Banjo Racing instead.
but then on DS they released Diddy Kong Racing, but missing
all the good characters. and there even was a Beta version of
Donkey Kong Racing GBA leaked on the internet, Exactly the same
as Banjo Pilot, but Donkey Kong Characters included.
And then they also changed Donkey kong Coconut crackers,
to, "its Mr.Pants".

and Dinosaur Planet got released as StarFox Adventures

and Resident Evil, was originally called Biohazard in japan.
what the heck is wrong with BIOHAZARD! i think Biohazard
is a perfectly fine name for a game.

and why is Megaman a better name than Rockman?
i always liked the name "Rockman". his sister is "Roll",
as in "Rock and Roll". get it?
but just to be confusing they changed the characters
Forte to Bass and Gospel to Trebel
ummm... ok, so NOW you want the music theme?

and in F-ZERO Maximum Velocity, the vehicles:
Dirty Joker and Crazy Horse, were renamed to
Sly Joker, and Wind Walker.

But the most confusing Localization of all is Advance Wars 1+2.
it seems Japan got the game after Americans did. its confusing
NOT in the fact that they got both games on 1 cartridge and USA dident.
NOT that it was renamed Gameboy Wars Advance 1+2.

No, the weird thing about Advance Wars Japan is the amount of
Unnecessary changes they made to it.

first they decided "Nell needs to show more skin".
so now Nell sports a sexy sleeveless Stewardess outfit.

-Andy is now Ryo...
-Sami is now Domino...
-Olaf is Santa Claus...

-Kanbei now has quite an elaborate Samurai getup...

-Grit is Daisuke Jigen from Lupin the 3rd...

-Drake lost the title of Captain and is now
just a lowly Japanese Fisherman.....

-Sonja has Glasses....

every other aspect of the game is exactly the same.
no idea why they wanted to change the characters so much.

Not really sure why they do this, but just commenting on your post style, it's very different, it reminds me of poems.

 

[ii-c-going]

Different laws and different products in different countries.

Star Fox was called Lylat Wars in the EU because the EU already had a different game called "star fox" there.

Not meaning to be a title-nazi here, but wasn't starfox called starwing here?
Could be wrong though.. I'm all used to the US title now...

 

[Clarky]

For Street Fighter, the reason for the name changes, the boxer character we know as Ballrog was originally called M.Bison, which was a bit too close to the boxer Mike Tyson so the names got shifted around

As for that one about Mega Man/Rockman, I believe the president of Capcom USA while he liked the game didn't think people would like the name Rock Man and said "Can't we come up with a name kids would like...like...Mega Man?" and so it stuck

 

[Clarky]

Not meaning to be a title-nazi here, but wasn't starfox called starwing here?
Could be wrong though.. I'm all used to the US title now...

the Snes one was called Star Wing yes, the n64 one was called Lylat Wars

 

[Clarky]

Biohazard to Resident Evil now..apparently Capcom had intentions to called it Biohazard here but some band was using that name at the time and there was a MegaDrive/Genesis game called Biohazard. Capcom USA held a contest internally and Resident Evil won, despite the title only really applying to the first game

 

[Clarky]

the last one about Advance Wars and being called Game Boy Advance Wars in Japan, while I aint a fan of the series in Japan the game has been going as a series since the Famicom and stuck with the title, eg Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars etc, it is only outside Japan it really used rhe name Advance Wars