Today it came to my attention that Ms. Pac-Man’s sprite was altered for Pac-Land’s re-release. Due to a copyright dispute she’s no longer Ms. Pac-Man, but in fact a new character.
Before
After
Situations like these have happened in the past and will keep happening in the future, so I thought it’d be an interesting topic to discuss.
Also, let’s share some examples!
One game that immediately comes to mind is The Revenge of Shinobi. It’s notorious for being constantly revised, even way back when it made the jump from Japan to Western territories. Here’s a good summary of all the changes: The Revenge of Shinobi (Genesis) - The Cutting Room Floor
That is disgusting. Capcom sucking off Xi Jinping and pleasing the CCP. How dare they change the Hong Kong flag to China. Are they also going to do the same with Taiwan? And they removed their own countries naval flag image from e-hond’s stage? Unbelievable!
PSP brawler Akiba’s Trip got rereleased on modern systems with all the store licenses stripped out last year. Not such a huge deal considering the low-tech nature of the original visuals and the game focusing more on the subculture vibe to Akihabara and the characters within it.
However the sequel seems to be getting new content and a Switch port, and if the same thing happens there it’ll be a huge loss. Developer Acquire did a great job at capturing the “vibe” of walking around the streets in modern Akihabara and a big part of that was the presentation and how they integrated the licensed stores into the game.
Well… I’ll likely skip that collection, but glad they did the right thing and are “finding a way” to make the release work. I’d prefer that to holding games back.
By the way, Waverace 64 on Wii VC had Kawasaki logos removed and Super meat boy’s modern release has a different soundtrack. Just thought I’d add those two to the list while they were top of mind.
I’ve heard mixed things about this on a technical basis because apparently Jun Senoue didn’t do a great job with the synth in Sonic 4, should be interesting to see what comes out of it nonetheless. Sonic 4 was a long time ago, after all.