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Post by Malev on Mar 13, 2015 20:34:57 GMT -5
By the way, Mad City is more accessible, for sure. I played and beat both earlier this year. Yes, I actually beat Bayou Billy legit, something I never thought I'd be able to claim. The driving stages are definitely the hardest thing about it. It's the typical cheap difficulty boost added to the Western release to combat potential rental weekend completion. I wonder if the amount of work done for these international versions back in the day were half-assed, like they fine-tune what they can for Japan, then just go "um, just tweak the parameters to make it harder" and crap out the changes in short order without rigorous playtesting.
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Post by r0ck3rz on Mar 14, 2015 9:28:22 GMT -5
While we're on that subject, who else aside from Konami complied with rental stores anyway? It almost always seems like it's Konami. Weakening the spirit helpers in Castlevania III, while also removing the check point at Dracula, ditching the hit points in Contra: Hard Corps, etc.
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Post by derboo on Mar 14, 2015 9:57:31 GMT -5
Tecmo with Ninja Gaiden III, one of the most extreme and infamous cases.
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Post by alphex on Mar 14, 2015 12:32:32 GMT -5
Double Dragon 2 originally allowed access to all levels on all difficulty settings, had continues and more platforms during the j&r passages. Likeweise, part 3 is also easier in the Japanese version.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Mar 14, 2015 15:00:32 GMT -5
I feel like it goes beyond just making rental times longer. Even many of Konami's arcade games in general are more difficult in the US than they are in Japan (Aliens and X-Men come to mind). And the US version being made harder has persisted with Metroid Prime series, Devil May Cry, RE4, etc. With arcade games I can understand it. Gauntlet was the biggest thing for a while, to the point where good players could game the point values/levels on which food showed up so that they could effectively play forever, so it got a notoriously more difficult to the point of being unfair arcade revision. I'm sure when that happened it inspired a lot of late eighties arcade games to follow suit when they made it to the US.
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Post by Malev on Mar 14, 2015 17:34:33 GMT -5
If you want to go the arcade route, it might also be pricing structure per game. Back in the 80s, arcades in the US were normally priced at 25 cents a go while Japan was 100yen. roughly 4 times the price depending on exchange rate. I also don't know if even non-dedicated kits for Western cabs cost more in general than the interchangable Japanese candy cabs for the typical title (assuming beatemups were usually placed in candy cabs). Gotta bump up the challenge to get the same money's worth.
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Post by alphex on Mar 14, 2015 23:17:46 GMT -5
It's actually quite a shame that a ton of classic NES are pretty much bastardized versions. Of course you could just play the Japanese versions on emulators, or even get translation patches for those (I know such things exist for some games, for example, for Streets Of Rage 3 - yes, that's not an NES game), but convenience really favours the English language versions (at least for people not knowledgeable enough in Japanese. If I wanted to play games with German screen text, I'd have to stick with 50Hz versions!)
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Startling
Banned
A better gamer than all of you plebs
Posts: 54
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Post by Startling on Apr 15, 2016 12:33:36 GMT -5
It wasn't just NES games, it was also their arcade games that were made excruciatingly harder. Their beat em ups were some of the hardest hit; you could write an entire article about it. The Japanese versions (and usually the European versions) of the TMNTs, X-Men, The Simpsons, Metamorphic Force, Thunder Cross, Xexex, and Crime Fighters are all so much better than the US versions. Konami beat em ups don't really get the respect they deserve. Everyone's stuck with these super hard versions that they just credit-feed through, so the games themselves might as well not even exist. Half of them get ignored in favor of the stalwart TMNTs, X-Men, and The Simpsons. Games like Metamorphic Force, Crime Fighters 2, and Gaiapolis are easily in the top 10 of beat em ups ever. Weakening the spirit helpers in Castlevania III, while also removing the check point at Dracula, ditching the hit points in Contra: Hard Corps, etc. The hit points in Hard Corps were apparently added later, as the Japanese release was later. This seems reasonable as hit points go against Contra tradition, and Hard Corps isn't so difficult as to really warrant a lifebar. Contra Spirits, on the other hand, definitely could have used a block or two.
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Post by zargon on Apr 15, 2016 18:58:24 GMT -5
I don't get why, with all the examples showing the opposite, people will say the Japanese version is usually harder. Who's responsible for this stuff anyway? Is it just a misunderstanding by Japanese developers/publishers who think we westerners like torturing ourselves, or corporate meddling by the localization team?
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Post by derboo on Apr 15, 2016 19:40:25 GMT -5
US publishers not wanting people to beat the games by rental.
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Post by alphex on Apr 15, 2016 19:43:32 GMT -5
Does this explain making Arcade games harder, though?
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Lord Dalek
Full Member
WHY DOES HE HAVE A SECOND/THIRD/FORTH/ETC. FORM?!?!
Posts: 249
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Post by Lord Dalek on Apr 16, 2016 7:26:16 GMT -5
Painfully hard difficulty translates to more quarters.
Doesn't help that arcade operators usually futzed with the dip switch settings to make it as aggravating an experience as possible.
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Startling
Banned
A better gamer than all of you plebs
Posts: 54
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Post by Startling on Apr 16, 2016 12:31:00 GMT -5
I don't get why, with all the examples showing the opposite, people will say the Japanese version is usually harder. Who's responsible for this stuff anyway? Is it just a misunderstanding by Japanese developers/publishers who think we westerners like torturing ourselves, or corporate meddling by the localization team? Some of it is US video game arms trying to cater to the rental market, some of it is the belief of a developer, and some of it is just plain mysterious. It's actually pretty random as to whether there's a change at all, what regions get these changes, what kind of changes are made, and whether or not they're positive or negative for these other regions. Toaplan, for example, liked to make their games easier for world release. Most of the few CAVE games that were released outside of Japan are also easier in certain ways. A fantastic example is CAVE's Donpachi: the original Japanese version works well enough, the Korea version is almost exactly the same but changes a few patterns ( ??), the US version gives you a full bomb stock at the end of every stage making the game a bit easier, and the Hong Kong version is much harder than any other version. It really is quite random!
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