Friday

THE RIVERCITY RANSOM GANG

Originally released by Technos Japan as River City Ransom. The game plays much like Double Dragon but has a lot more to it, as improving your characters strength etc as well as a much better, more fun story as well as some great words like "Barf". Anyway the game was a massive hit in the US, so Infogrames, one of the companies which only released NES games in  Europe, decided to buy the rights to a European release of the game star wars galaxy of heroes hack and renamed it to  Gangs, although the game's titlescreen is as far as I know the only thing they changed.


CONTRA VS. PROBOTECTOR 
These dudes were too tuff for the European market? seems so cause Konami decided to change the dudes into futuristic robots for the European market, or was it the other way around?
Robots too violent for the US kids? Did Rambo sponsor the game? Well a lot of questions are unanswered, one thing is sure though, its a great collectors item!

THE BLUE SHADOW OF A NINJA
The word Ninja was banned in Europe for a few years, for being a far too violent word. So this is probably is why this games title was changed from Shadow of the Ninja to Blue Shadow. Nothing besides the title was changed though.

HYPER OLYMPICS IN BARCELONA
It seems that Konami once had difficulties comming up with new titles for the European market.
So they decided to bring over some oldies and repack them, one was the bad Road Fighter game
which ofcourse was released on the Palcom label so it wouldnt hurt Konami's prestige. They  later sold Hyper Olympics to Kemco/Seika who then renamed the game, or maybe Konami did before they sold the rights, to Track & Field in Barcelona. The game now has a nice red titlescreen
and box, the game itself remains unchanged.

SHADOW WARRIOR OF THE NINJA GAIDEN
One of the best ever series on the NES is Tecmo's 3 episodes, called Ninja Gaiden in the US. But since the word "Ninja" still wasnt allowed, atleast it wasnt smart to use it or you'd get a lot of negative publicity from teachers etc, I've got a 1 hour documentary somewhere which covers the issue to kids playing too many and too violent videogames. Well Tecmo wisely choose to rename the serie into Shadow Warriors. As far as I know only episode 1 and 3 were released in Europe, cant remember for what reason though, but I believe money, or the lack there of, was involved.

A HIGHWAY STAR CALLED RAD RACER
Square was responsible for this game eventhough it looks like they didnt as it says so nowhere on the box, but its real, they can make other stuff than RPGs. Why the games title was changed from Highway Star to Rad Racer is unknown, but there could've been a copyright of the name "Highway Star" in the US and Europe already, so that might be why they changed it, or  maybe they simply just thought that Rad Racer was a much cooler title for the game.Highway Star was the Asian title for the game and it was a massive hit, but was Rad Racer 2  ever released in Asia? hmmmmm feel free to comment on that.

S.C.A.T. REPORTS ACTION IN NEW YORK
Released under the name S.C.A.T. in the US, but Infogrames who released it in Europe decided to change this game's title too, so it became Action in New York. I dont know if the game itself has been changed though. 

HERO TURTLES WITHOUT ANY NINJA MOVES
Well not exactly, but I've mentioned it before and here's more proof that they removed the word Ninja on purpose. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was changed into Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, they kept their Turtle power and became a huge success in Europe too, and every NES sequel was released here aswell, though none became as huge as the first one which by the way was released on the Palcom label unlike the rest. TMHT was even packed with the system once.

DYNABLASTERMAN
Why Bomberman was renamed to Dynablaster on the European market is beyond me, let me know if
you know anything about it.

YOSHI & MAREEEOOOOO
Obviously Yoshi felt lonely in the NES game, so the European version was calleed Mario & Yoshi,
so the game is slightly different too.

UFOURENAMED HEBEREKE
Hebereke, try saying that fast 10 times, bah, this Japanese game was renamed to Ufouria and released in Europe only, a US release was planned but never happened. The games characters  have changed a bit? or did the game just loose a few? anyway its one of the best games ever and a true *MUST* for a NES fan!