Welcome to the first installment of System Shock! This issue, we'll be taking a look at (gasp!)...
Er... at what?
Bastardization is when a creation of any form, be that art, animation, a song, or a game, is perverted by someone aside from its original creator, usually for money. We're not talking fan art, dojinshi, or satire... we're talking about down and dirty ripping apart of a person's intentions and whistling like nothing is going on. For prime examples of bastardization, see DiC's U.S. release of Sailormoon (or for you health, don't see it), which is nothing like Takeuchi ever intended with its gender and name changes, and ghastly story omissions! Closer to home for us, we have bastardized video games.... such as Sega of America's taking the adorable Puyo Puyo and turning it into Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Oddly enough, Nintendo of America bastardized Super Puyo Puyo into Kirby's Avalanche. Now, I'm pretty sure if the original creators of Puyo Puyo had wanted the characters to be giant eggs or flying, sucking cloud-things, they probably would have made them that way themselves. Below are the title screen and a shot from Puyo Puyo, which may look familiar if you've played the other two games.
Puyo Puyo
This issue, we'll be taking an especially close look at a series on the Mega Drive, called the Genesis in the United States and U.K.
Spotlight: Bare Knuckle Mega Drive, 1991-1994
This time, we take a look at a well-known series which only got more awesome with each game! That is, until Sega of America went too far and demolished it! But not to worry... we'll get it all fixed in good time. :)
Bare Knuckle / Streets of Rage I really like the name Bare Knuckle, thank you very much, Sega of America. Aside from the name change being unnecessary, only one stage takes place on a street anyway... so there! The company wasn't quite as evil back then, so they just changed the name and redid the text to English (most of it could even be considered a translation!)
Though an original Bare Knuckle cartridge will likely be hard to find, purists like myself will be glad to know that if one can obtain a ROM image of Streets of Rage, you can use your emulator to force Japanese hardware settings, causing it to run just like Bare Knuckle. In fact, you won't be able to tell a difference! :) Also, with some minor surgery to your Genesis cartridge port (namely, the removal of the inside corners up there with the cover flaps), most Japanese games including Bare Knuckle are perfectly playable.
Bare Knuckle II / Streets of Rage 2
By this time, Sega of America had begun using obnoxious international hardware lockouts, which means millions of American gamers awaiting new games would have to settle for the watered-down, edited poop SoA produced or would license. Not much was changed about the American release.... the name was naturally changed to Streets of Rage 2 to follow up their changes to the first game. The character Sammy's name was changed to Skate and bad guy names were fidgeted with a bit (Erectra to Electra and so forth... no big deal considering the ambiguous nature of Romanized Japnese r's and l's.)
The U.S. game is pretty much intact, which is a good thing, since trying the Bare Knuckle 1 trick above on an emulator will just cause the game's international lockout to kick in. Frustrating! If anyone does have a copy of Bare Knuckle II and would be so kind as to send it to me, I will attempt to make an IPS patch that will restore Streets of Rage 2 games to their original versions. :) I'd dump it myself, but my BK2's not in such great condition since being run over by that Buick. :(
Bare Knuckle III / Streets of Rage 3
This is the good part, where I get to start ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth. Sega of America's fetish for angry pavement hit the third and best game in the Bare Knuckle series and this time, completely obliterated it. In the three years since
Streets of Rage
, Axel hasn't changed his pants and he's all smelly because he's urinated all over his shirt. Blaze hasn't cleaned her cool red leather and so it's all covered in dust -- they put her in grey! Also, the cool bad girls which we've grown to know and love even in the American games have been bastardized. Couldn't have an inch of exposed flesh on the girls, but SoA saw no problems leaving the buff, cut guys in the game completely bare-chested... hubba-hubba! (Blecch!) See the pics below.
BK3 is on the left while
SoR3 is on the right. Even more silly, the attacks our main characters announce have been totally changed in the U.S. (different even from SoR2's). The color pallette on many characters, including the main ones, are thoroughly WHACKED. Just about every baddie has had their name changed to something goofy, and the bosses all have been given stupidly long life gauges, with the exception of
Ash
, who was removed entirely.
The merry fellow above was totally wiped out of the U.S. game and the guy you fight at the end of the boat scene is a nubbly called Bono. This was obviously before his skiing accident, since his life bar is longer than yours! (Even more fun, you can play Ash in BK3 by holding A + B + C as soon as you beat him, and release them once the next screen begins.)
This isn't to even mention the horrible butchering of the storyline... Augh! A military general gets turned into a chief of the local police and the White House becomes City Hall.... also, Sega's taken every opportunity to cram out-of-character dialogue into every pixel of unused space. Don't count on it for accuracy.... According to Sega of America, "Well, well, well. If it isn't the old gang in trouble again." is an accurate translation of "Yo!"
Streets of Rage 3 is just fragging horrible! A waste of space! If someone gives this game to you as a gift, it is an insult which is only punishible
by having them hunted down and executed! The only real use I got out of the game was I had this bookshelf that was leaning really really badly to the left, and I needed something to prop it up on.
There's not enough left of Bare Knuckle III that one could fix it by emulating Japanese hardware even if it wasn't for the international lockout Sega uses to keep us from enjoying uncut games. But not to worry! I've created an IPS Patch that will totally de-bastardize your Streets of Rage 3 ROM image and make it into a full, uncut Bare Knuckle III! Download it here!
Here are some other games, along with their Japanese and American names. You can use an emulator forced to Japanese hardware settings to play the original game, or at least most of the original game. The following are all for Mega Drive / Genesis.
Axis / Final Zone Bare Knuckle / Streets of Rage Daimakaimura / Ghouls N' Ghost Ryuko No Ken / Art of Fighting Tatsujin / Truxton Thunder Force II MD / Thunder Force II V-5 / Grind Stormer
Gaiares's characters' names were changed to silly things in the U.S. version, though the title remained the same. Run it on Japanese settings and all will be normal. :)
Most of the Sonic the Hedgehog games will be partially restored (mostly, you may notice Tails referred to as Miles). I'll have an IPS patch available soon that will turn the American Sonic the Hedgehog to the Japanese version, which has no Japanese text but does have extra parallax and graphics that were missing from the U.S. game.
Another good one is the game Mercs, which was actually Senjo No Ookami II. It may be of interest to you that the first Senjo No Ookami was called Commando in the U.S., so Mercs is in essence Commando II.
Here are a few more games I'm working on IPS patches to fix up back to their original versions. If you have any requests for debastardization patches, just let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Contra: Hard Corps to Gryzor: The Rude Corps (Mega Drive/Genesis) Cybernator to Assault Suits VALKEN (Super Famicom/SNES) Final Fight 2 (U.S.) to Final Fight 2 (Japan) (Super Famicom/SNES) Last Battle to Fist of the North Star (Mega Drive/Genesis) Street Combat to Ranma 1/2 Part One (Super Famicom/SNES) Next issue!
Patches Currently Available
Just a couple to start off with, since this page is brand new. I hope you like them. :)
Streets of Rage 3 to Bare Knuckle III (Mega Drive/Genesis) Download
Fixes the bastardizations in the article above. Yippee!
El Viento (U.S.) to El Viento (Japanese) (Mega Drive/Genesis) Download
Turns your domestic El Viento (starring Annet!) into the hard-to-find Japanese original. Puts Al Capone back in the game. :)
The above is a non-profit link we've taken as part of a banner exchange program we've joined to get fast word out about our site (we're pretty serious about our cause). If it interests you, why not pay them a visit? :)
ENJOY THE REAL GAME!
(K)1999 Chaotic Fox Press Maintained by Annet Evans
