Games That Were Rebranded For Ports or Localisation

[excelsior]

I'm looking for games that received a rebranding for a new audience - I've written for ports or localisation, I ran out of room in the title. It may happen due to the need for a licensed game worked quickly for instance, but any reason will do. For this thread I'm looking for more than a simple name change only, those are ten a penny. I want to see games that also received a visual change within the game itself, for instance a change to the main player character.

A couple of examples that we've covered in the SNES thread to start us off. 

Firstly, Rat Trap for the Amiga was reworked into Krusty's Super Fun House. 


    

The Jetsons: Invasion of the Planet Pirates was localised in Japan as Yokai Buster: Ruka no Daibouken

  

[Apollo Chungus]

The first thing that immediately popped into my head was the Crazy Castle series of puzzle games Kemco put out from 1989 to 2003 (best known for Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle on NES). Nearly every game in the series got rebranded to feature a different character internationally, and some games even got Europe-specific reskins unique from their American counterparts.

According to Wikipedia...

-The first game, a Disk System game originally based on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, got reskinned into a Looney Tunes game for its NES release - Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle.

-The first two Game Boy releases were Mickey Mouse games in Japan, and became Looney Tunes games when they came to America as "The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle" 1 & 2. Bizarrely, the European release of the first game was a Looney Tunes game, but the second game is reported to have had two different releases - one that kept the Mickey Mouse branding, and another that reskinned the game to be based on the prolific 90s gameshow troll Hugo.

-Crazy Castle 3 on the NES was another Mickey Mouse game in Japan, but its American release instead adapted it to an original property instead of another cartoon as "Kid Klown in Night Mayor World". This in fact became the debut title in the Kid Klown series of games Kemco would produce throughout the mid-late 90s.

-Crazy Castle 4 on the Game Boy has the distinction of being based on a unique license in every region: Mickey Mouse in Japan, The Real Ghostbusters in America, and Garfield in Europe!

-Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 3 on the Game Boy (just go with it) is the American rebranding of the Kid Klown spin-off with the amazingly ridiculous name of "Go! Go! Kid! Soreyuke!! Kid: Go! Go! Kid"

Thankfully that's as far as the nonsense went for international rebranding. Mickey Mouse V, Bugs Bunny in Crazy Castle 4, and Woody Woodpecker: Crazy Castle 5 all kept their licenses when going overseas, though the fact that the series messes up the numbering on several occasions showed someone at Kemco had a deeply cruel sense of humour.

[dsparil]

Wonder Boy feels like the canonical series for this considering how many forms various games have had. There's all the Brazilian version turned into Monica's Gang games, Saiyūki World and Bikkuriman World for Monster Lair, Dynastic Hero for WB V, and others I'm probably forgetting.

Kato-chan & Ken-chan on PC Engine got turned into JJ & Jeff which also had a gameplay change in making the backwards facing fart attack a forward facing aerosol spray.

The PC Engine port of Heiankyo Alien clone Kid's Horehore Daisukusen got turned into a Doraemon game which then lost the license when brought to the US as Cratermaze.

[JDarkside]

I would argue the Like A Dragon franchise has this in mild form, but mainly the first game.

The switch to the Yakuza title in 2005 had a very clear and obvious goal - sell this to the Grand Theft Auto audience. This meant they also made a ton of localization changes to completely change the tone of the game into something more GTA like, with a bucket of swears dropped on every sentence, and a ton of bafflingly out of character dialog decisions. To understand how bad it was, they had Nishiki make prison rape jokes in his boss battle. They tried hard to make the experience more in line with the crassness of a GTA game, and while main story translations from 2 and on would be more faithful, side dialog or text would end up still getting similar treatment at points until 0.

[retr0gamer]

The Japanese thugs you met on the street talking like they came from a rap video was awful and hilarious.

[excelsior]

As admiral as the goal of steering conversation towards Yakuza is hopefully I can encourage further examples by providing more of my own:

Puyo Puyo was localised as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Machine and Kirby's Ghost Trap on Sega and Nintendo platforms respectively.

Panel de Pon became a Yoshi themed game under the name Tetris Attack.

The home computer game Fury of the Furries was rebranded as Pac-In-Time.

[condroid]

A few more examples off the top of my head:

Turrican 2 became Universal Soldier on Mega Drive and Gameboy and received a lot of content changes to better tie it into the movie license
Doki Doki Panic was converted into a Mario game for the Western releases
Sleepwalker was using the Eek the Cat license for the SNES version

A lot of sports games were released with different licenses depending on the market, e.g. the original NHL Hockey became EA Hockey in Europe and featured national teams.

[Snake]

Yes! Doki Doki Panic into Super Mario Bros 2!  They definitely stream lined things down for Super Mario 2, not forcing you to beat the game with each character for the complete ending.


Golgo 13: Kamigami no Tasogare  (Twilight of the Gods) --->  Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode

While a mild "rebranding," they cut out the actual stripping frames of the women into nudity.  A resurrected Hitler was changed into "Smirk."


Okay, okay, a more rebranded port:

Hitler no Fukkatsu (Hitler's Resurrection): Top Secret ---> Bionic Commando
Another NES game where Hitler's name gets censored out, and turned into Master D!!!! Cut out all the Nazi references.


Pandemonium  ---> Magical Hoppers
Early Playstation 1 jumping platformer, making use of 2.5 action and shifting camera angles.  The export localization to Japan saw the characters redesigned with anime likenesses.  

Contra ---> Probotector
No knock-off Schwarzenegger Commando nor Stallone Rambo for Europe.  Bipedal robots are sent into defeat Red Falcon. Probotect and Serve!!!!

Ganbare Goemon ---> Legend of the Mystical Ninja
From Goemon and Ebisumaru to Kid Ying and Dr. Yang. Aside from translation, most of the game is the same.  There are a few scenes/store fronts that do get cut out from the Japanese original, where Ebisumaru/Dr. Yang puts on a stage performance.

Power Blazer ---> Power Blade
This one is a pretty significant rebrand from Taito.  Power Blazer's short SD-type designed character gets switched out for the taller, sunglass wearing Nova.  The cut-scenes are all swapped out, the map gets a revamp, as do the level design and some of the bosses.  The hopping cyborg gorillas and such do seem to make more sense in Power Blazer's setting. The awesome, kick-ass soundtrack remains awesome and unchanged.  

Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun ---> Renegade
From a high school delinquent beat 'em up, fighting off bancho, sukeban, bosozoku, and eventually a yakuza with a gun; it gets switched out for like a outer burrough NYC gang motif out of The Warriors.  Similar deal but more subtle was the popular follow-up game Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari ---> River City Ransom.

Captain Tsubasa ---> Tecmo Cup Soccer
The game mechanics are all there, for what many say is essentially a soccer simulation made up of Ninja Gaiden quality cut-scenes. The story and plot and characters have been switched up from the legendary manga/anime original.  The whole roster of Japanese characters have been switched out for blondes. The final match against Karl Heinz Schneider and West Germany (yes, this game was that old) has been replaced with Ayrton Piquet (a Formula 1 fan must have came up with these names) and Brazil.  The 8-bit renditions of Moete Hero have been replaced, as well as many of the special kick shoot animations. 

[Natalie]

I love cases like this. A few more I can think of:

Kamen no Ninja Hanamura -> Yo! Noid

Rather infamously, the game's original premise was stripped out to make way for Dominos Pizza's Noid character. There were few if any material changes but the graphics were all redone.

Magic John -> Totally Rad

A game whose presentation and tone was punched up pretty significantly for US audiences. I'll defer to the sadly defunct flammie dot net and its great line-by-line comparison of the two: web.archive.org/web/20110207214157/http://www.flammie.net/vse/things/rad/

Dragon Ball: Shenron no Nazo -> Dragon Power

A Dragon Ball Famicom game that had its license scrubbed and replaced with generic kung fu stuff for Americans. Graphical changes to various characters.

[blackdrazon]

There's Decap Attack, which was originally a game called Magical Hat no Buttobi Tābo! Daibōken, with a completely different theme.

There's no less than three Wonder Boy games that were reskinned into tie-ins for Monica's Gang in Brazil. Likewise, Bikkuriman World and Saiyūki World, both mutating off of Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

[spanky]

There's a Ranma 1/2 fighting game for the Super Famicom that got a total conversion for the SNES. There's even an article about it on this very site!

Ranma has been changed into 90s cool tough guy "Steve" and the male/female variations are handled by having Steve having a version in just street clothes and one in some sort of power armor. All the other characters have been changed into a variety of street punks, cyborgs, army men, uh...clowns and a guy named "Mr. Happy."  I rented it once as a kid...it's not very good. Just something rushed out in the wake of Street Fighter 2's massive success.