Post by wafflerevolution on Sept 7, 2013 22:21:17 GMT
The PAL Perspective, Part I
by totalgridlock
Part One of a series covering gaming and collecting from a European perspective.
I've decided that this place needs some more international flavour, so without further ado I present to you 'The PAL Perspective', a short series that will (hopefully) take you on a whistlestop tour of the deepest, darkest recesses of European gaming from retro to modern. I won't get started on the many games that never saw release in Europe, nor will I bemoan the lack of timely PAL releases for many games. That's a rant which serves no purpose other than to get people all hot and bothered. I also won't deal much with Australian releases; although we share a television format my knowledge of retro gaming in Australia is limited beyond knowing that it's likely an even worse state of affairs than in the UK.
I'm beginning by focusing on the Nintendo NES console for two main reasons: firstly, it's probably the system I know the most about and what kickstarted my collecting for real; secondly, the era in which the NES saw release was a particularly interesting one with regards to issues such as censorship in the media. The first section of this short series is all about the differences between some major NES releases in North America and Europe. Some of these are as simple as name-changes, others are much more interesting...
Ninjas vs. Pirates
First off, some basic information about the state of affairs surrounding Nintendo in Europe in the late 80s and early 90s. The NES first arrived in Europe in 1986, with local distributors debuting the console in Germany and Sweden. In 1987, Nintendo signed a deal with Mattel to distribute the game in Italy and the UK (as well as Australia and New Zealand), while distribution in France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Benelux was handled by Nintendo themselves. Nintendo took over UK distribution in 1990, but by that time the damage was done. Mattel provided little advertising push and treated the console like a toy, which when combined with the mish-mash distribution greatly reduced sales when compared to Nintendo's near-total saturation of the North American market. In many ways, leaving the European marketing of the NES in Mattel's hands was like Sega entrusting the Master System to Tonka in America. Exact sales figures are hard to track down, but the general consensus is that Nintendo's success in Europe and in the UK in particular was like the popularity of the NES over the SMS in North America, only reversed.
A major issue with European NES games was the introduction of regional lockout on the carts themselves, an unusual step in tackling gray-market importers and pirate copies. There are two regions to which a PAL game cartridge may belong: 'A' comprising the UK and Italy (and Australia), and 'B' covering everwhere elese in Europe. A game bought in region A will not work on a console from region B and vice versa, with a 'lockout chip' on the console checking the 'key' of the inserted cart when the console is powered up. This also prevents any kind of unofficial or pirated cart from working - although there are some exceptions such as the Codemasters and Australian HES releases (which may be covered in a later section). Needless to say, this can all cause no end of confusion and frustration on the part of a European retro gamer. Thankfully there are any number of adaptors out there to deal with this, or you could just open up your console and snip a pin on the chip.
Now, onto the games themselves. I will begin with a well known example. Everyone here has heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Some of you may not be aware of the controversy surrounding the franchise upon it's introduction to Europe and specifically the UK and Germany. Firstly, the title was altered to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and the theme song altered to remove all references to ninjas, as the word 'ninja' was deemed to have excessively violent connotations. This was carried over to every aspect of the franchise including all video games. The animation in the show was altered to remove use of Michaelangelo's nunchaku for the same reason the BBFC went through a phase of cutting out nunchaku from every decent martial arts film ever made; at the time depictions of nunchaku were prohibited even in 18-rated movies, let alone a children's TV show. Bizarrely, way-cool nunchaku are still present and correct within the game itself. The anti-ninja naming convention was carried over to a significant number of other titles, from big-name franchises such as Ninja Gaiden (titled Shadow Warriors here) to lesser-known games like Shadow of the Ninja (re-titled Blue Shadow). Oddly enough, the underrated prehistoric platform game Joe & Mac was gifted with a wholly unnecessary subtitle in Europe, becoming Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, and the title of beat-em-up Bad Dudes was changed to Bad Dudes vs. Dragonninja!
Where's the world's most fearsome fighting team now?
As bizarre as that all sounds it's not nearly as odd as the huge number of games that had their titles changed in a seemingly arbitrary manner. I'm sure there was some reason why River City Ransom became Street Gangs, or why Bomberman II became Dynablaster, or Kiwi Kraze became The New Zealand Story. I'm sure that a bright spark somewhere thought that Solomon's Key prequel Fire 'N' Ice would be better-off named Solomon's Key 2. Licensing issues prevented Evert & Lendl from releasing their Top Players' Tennis as anything but 'well, duh' Four Player Tennis. The already questionable M.C. Kids became the less-than-cool McDonaldland. On the other hand, I personally think that S.C.A.T. was a whole lot better off going by its European moniker, Action in New York.
Some good, some bad, most unnecessary.
It wasn't all mere title changes that European gamers had to deal with in the 8-bit era. Perhaps most famous of all is the extreme virtual castration that one of the NES's most-loved titles was subject to. I'm talking about Contra and its sequel Super C. Now, we all know Contra. Two beefy Rambo-esque guys on a near-impossible mission to free the world from an alien menace. Nothing too bad about that, right? Two righteous good guys kicking evil alien behind? Obviously someone in PAL-land thought differently. Replace most evil aliens and all human foes with the bastard offspring of Robocop and a lesser-known Transformer, check. Replace Sly and Arnie with the two bastard offspring of Robocop and a lesser-known Transformer, check. Replace short, snappy title with not-as-short, not-quite-as-snappy title resembling a brand of lavatory cleaner, check. The result: Probotector and Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces.
First Blood it ain't.
It's actually all supposed to be based on the anime Patlabor, but I smell a bit of a rat. As much as I hate to point the finger of blame, it all boils down to the German federal censorship policies which, at the time, did not allow depictions of humans killing each other in video games. The name change was likely due to either Konami's European branch, Nintendo of Europe or both wanting to avoid appearing affliated with Nicaraguan jungle fighters, known as contras. As such, all further Contra titles received similar treatment in Europe until the release of Contra: Legacy of War on the PlayStation in 1997.
As bad as all this sounds, some in-game differences between Europe and North America weren't all for the worse. One example which springs to mind is the first Dragonball game to be released outside of Japan. Titled Dragon Power in North America, it was stripped of most of its plot, censored to remove sexual references, subjected to graphical changes and on first glance rendered almost completely unrecognisable as a Dragonball game. Not surprising since the series would not become popular outside of Japan for many years. However, France and France alone received an unchanged version of the game titled Dragonball: Le Secret du Dragon, which retained all the features of the Japanese release, including the panty-flashing.
No, those aren't sandwiches...
So, that's it for Part I of this feature. Look out for Part II, in which I shall taunt you with all those precious few European-only NES releases!
Note: Apologies for the small boxshots and screenshots. If you click on an image it should take you to a bigger version.
Note 2: Edited to add a game I can't believe I forgot: Bad Dudes!
