Athena (NES/Famicom, Arcade)

Study #3: Athena (SNK, NES/Famicom, Arcade)

SNK has, over several years, been one of the leading forces of the unification of anime and gaming with their multitude of fighters, shooters and action games. In fact, I'd argue SNK is one of the first companies to truly embrace the combination! However, as we will see, SNK was not exempt from the common practice in the 80′s of recasting their games, art and press materials with a more Western flavor for their overseas products. Let’s start with one of their most obvious.

Action/platformer Athena itself wasn’t the world's greatest game, but it did introduce one of their leading female characters, the titular goddess. She became popular enough to be spun-off into Psycho Soldier, which in turn gave rise to the schoolgirl/pop star Athena that we see in the fighting franchise King of Fighters today. The original arcade title was released in Japan with these ad materials (click to see them in full):

Athena doesn’t drift outside of the 80′s “cute anime girl with crazy colored hair and as little in the form of clothes as we can manage to get away with” stereotype too much (Lum Invader from Urusei Yatsura, Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair, etc.), and was thus perfectly suited to catch gamer’s attentions over in Japan. The game was a moderate success, and SNK began considering Athena for an overseas audience. Their focus groups in Europe must have given them some interesting results gauging by the European poster art. This is about as far away from anime caricature as one can get:

While European Athena is somehow wearing the same clothes (minus the purple hair) as her Japanese counterpart, the art style is distinctively targeting a different crowd than the average Japanese otaku. Athena is quite muscular, and her ears give off some elven vibes. This fantasy makeover is quite the transformation from her cutesy anime roots! The funny thing is that SNK didn’t bother to update the sprites to reflect the radical changes made to the art design abroad, so the purple hair and original sprite style remained intact.

Here's the arcade title screen. Nothing much to comment on, although there will be once we get to the NES and Famciom ports.

Here's an in-game shot. Colorful, at least!

When SNK ported the title to the Famicom, they reused the first arcade flier above as their box art. North America never saw the arcade original, so their first introduction to Athena was on the NES with this box:

This isn’t terrible like the majority of NES box art tends to be, but it again eschews the original anime artwork for something more fantasy-oriented, a "Clash of the Titans" motif, perhaps, to woo American audiences. It also kind of got away with some nudity, as the topless mermaid attests. The overall artistic style is fairly unique, actually. The healthy use of color that seems to speak ’70′s mystery pocket-book more than the usual fantasy tone of the 1980's (like the European poster above).

As for the game itself, SNK once again left the game’s spritework alone, so the anime origins are quite obvious (Famicom/NES):

The title screen doesn’t even try to hide its stylistic roots (especially when contrasted against the more sterile arcade title)! It mirrors the arcade flier's rendition of Athena…minus the inexplicable hair color change to blue. The big difference is that SNK's logo is removed in favor of Nintendo of America's licensing notice, and that SNK trademarked the title in North America.

In-game, Athena looks pretty close to her arcade sprite, although the meters and colors are rearranged.

Since ye olde NES days, Athena’s original Goddess form has seen a bit of a resurrection, popping up in SNK vs. Capcom Chaos and Neo Geo Battle Coliseum as a playable fighter, and the game has had a remake come out for Japanese mobile phones. With this, SNK Playmore (their modern-day name) played up her character design proudly, going for a more kawaii-like appeal:

Ultimately, Athena's cutesy anime look was kept in-game, but localization teams for Europe and America felt that a different artistic approach would be better for their Western game players.

Thoughts on Marvel Heroes

I recently had the good fortune to be able to get in on the Marvel Heroes open beta a couple of weeks ago through Steam. I jumped on to Steam and went to my library to figure out what I felt like playing. As I perused my list, I came across “Marvel Heroes – 2 days left”. I was confused. I didn't remember downloading a demo or getting a gift or anything. So I went and checked it out on the Steam store. Ah ha! An open beta for the weekend. I looked at the in-game photographs and description and thought, “It looks okay, maybe I’ll check it out later.”

At this point, one of my best friends and most excellent gaming buddy, Trevor, jumped online. He wanted to do some gaming, but wasn't sure what he wanted to play. I mentioned that the Marvel Heroes open beta was available and we were off!

As we began to play and get our feet beneath us, my fiancé wandered over to see the game. (She is a Marvel fan-girl from way back.) When I mentioned the game to her earlier she didn't seem excited at all. And, truth be told, she hasn't been very excited about gaming for a long time. (I blame Blizzard. What they did to WoW broke her heart.) However, once she saw Deadpool and Wolverine clobbering waves of bad guys, she got a gleam in her eye.

Hulk smash!

“This is free to play?” she asked.

“Yup. This is the last open beta before launch,” said I.

And then she was gone. Downloading the beta on Steam.

Marvel Heroes is an MMO ARPG. Think Diablo meets super heroes and you're in the right neighborhood.  In fact, the game is being developed by Gazillion Entertainment. The president and COO of which is David Brevik of Diablo and Diablo 2 fame. Knowing this put me at ease straight away.

The game is done in the same top down isometric perspective as other games in the ARPG genre. The environments are lush and well done within the confines of the genre's style. Much of the scenery is destructible, which is a practical necessity when you deal with heroes like the Hulk, Thing, and Colossus. Speaking of which, watching one of those guys throw a car at a group of baddies is AWESOME!

The heroes that I’ve played so far seem to all be rather different in play style and hold true to their iconic powers as found in their respective comic books. Some definitely seem over powered and others under powered, but it makes sense in the setting and keeps characters from becoming too homogenized.

Another interesting and FUN decision by Gazillion was to make the iconic characters playable. Nothing puts a smile on your face like playing the Hulk and smashing. The only problem I had with playing the actual heroes from the books is that it can be a bit jarring when you see 3 or four of yourself running around on screen.

Avengers assemble! Or at least some of you...The biggest issue I have with the game currently is that it seems like the main story line is pretty short. I don't know if this is really the case, however. The day that I played the game with Trev and my fiancé, it seemed like we made it through two thirds of the story chapters, but there could be more in the full release of the game. That being said, the real fun of the first two Diablo games was leveling your characters and destroying hordes of enemies in the pursuit of better loot as it is here with Marvel Heroes. Plus Marvel Heroes will have endgame content in the vein of raid bosses, it sounds like.

So what do I think about the game? I think it's a great start that can really be built upon, and I think the proof is in the pudding.

Trevor, my fiancé, and I played the beta for an entire day together with us settling on the Hulk, Iron Man, and Thor. Honestly, it was the most fun I've had playing a video game in a while...

... And we've all bought one of the Founders Pack options available on Steam.

Marvel Heroes will be available in the U.S. June 4^th.

“Remember the Athenians.”

Dragon Power/Dragon Ball: Shen Long no Nazo (NES/Famicom)

Study #2 – Dragon Power/Dragon Ball: Shen Long no Nazo (Bandai, NES/Famicom)

Mangaka Akira Toriyama’s original Dragon Ball manga is one of the most popular ever created. The initial series, which highlights the adventures of an alien boy named Son Goku, has spun off into Dragon Ball Z and GT in more recent years, which became huge in America in the late 1990′s. When the manga was originally published in Japan, Bandai, a Japanese toy and video game manufacturer, decided to capitalize on the popularity of the license and make a NES game based on the series. The game did well enough in Japan for Bandai to consider bringing it overseas in 1988. However, America would be completely in the dark about this whole "Dragon Ball" thing. Beyond the very (very) early adopters of anime and manga in the States, the license simply could not be a selling point.

That didn't deter Bandai at all. The localization department decided to simply excise any significant trace of the license, instead catering to the martial arts market that did exist in North America with its localization with the rebranded Dragon Power. Their ultimate success wasn't all that hot, mind, which we'll get to momentarily. First, let's take a look at the boxes.

The Famicom original puts Toriyama's artwork front and center. It's a pretty showy box for the early days of the console.

Dragons and balls still appear on the NA cover, but the license itself is no longer present. It is trying really hard to appeal to the aforementioned martial arts crowd, or perhaps those interested in kung-fu flicks. Bandai was also notable for putting screen grabs on the front of the box, a somewhat rare practice.

A comparison between the Dragon Ball (left) and Dragon Power (right) protagonists can be seen above. Son Goku (on the left) lost his pointed hair and open mouth during localization, gaining a far more generic martial arts stereotype makeover complete with headband and a constant, giant grin. His gi has also lost its orange flair for a more subdued pink color. The enemies appear to be unchanged. I suppose that these goons were original foes built for this game alone, otherwise we’d be seeing some sort of modification to them.

Other Dragon Ball characters who appeared in the original game were also altered to fit in with the new motif. Master Roshi, one of the progenitors of the perverted guru trope in anime, has been modified into a wizard-esque appearance:

As you may also suspect, the whole "panty" element is eliminated from Dragon Power; sandwiches were instead substituted. Also, the dialogue is brutally maligned, as you can gather here. Bulma managed to make it into Dragon Power pretty much unaltered outside of name; she is called Nora in America:

The Dragon Balls became Crystal Balls, and there's plenty of other "cameos" from DB characters in Dragon Power; even the programming was shoddy enough that occasionally the game reverts to the original Japanese sprites!

The most curious thing to me about Dragon Power is that Bandai took such pains to remove the Dragonball essence from the NA release, but then decided to make the game's narrative all about The Journey to the West, which is one of the four great novels of Chinese literature (and the inspiration for Dragon Ball, for that matter). While that book has been translated and has seen success abroad, I find it a little odd that Bandai would resort to using a Chinese myth to drive their game's marketing over creating some other plot that may have better suited their desired American customers. And, while they did strip out a lot of the Dragon Ball elements, it still retains a flair of the Toriyama style in its final form. Such pains to remove the anime from the game, yet it didn't really accomplish that goal at all.

Blaster Master/Chou Wakusei Senki: Meta Fight (NES/Famicom)

Anime/manga and video games have been hugely popular forms of entertainment in Japan for decades, and have often merged. In the last several years, North America has seen more and more games highlighting this combination. However, it wasn't always this way. An interesting cultural development occurred in the early days of video gaming where many Japanese developers hid or disguised their anime influences and licenses during the localization process. Why? Was there apprehension that the anime style would turn away American gamers used to action films and Saturday Morning cartoons? A possible bias, intentional or not, against displaying Japanese culture in the American branches of Japanese companies? Maybe it's something as simple as skipping a licensing fee and transforming a game into an original creation? Regardless of why, several Famicom games were modified to remove their original graphical trappings, and were replaced with more “American-looking” sprites. Game difficulties were adjusted per region. Box arts were drastically changed to match up with comic books and gritty films, or otherwise deemed appropriate for American consumption. This is what I want to explore in this series.

Study 1: Blaster Master/Chou Wakusei Senki: Meta Fight (NES/Famicom, Sunsoft)

Blaster Master is a well regarded classic from the NES era. Its blend of sidescrolling action and overhead maze/shooter gameplay styles are both well implemented, and is backed with an astounding soundtrack and solid visuals. Despite some unfair respawning moments, potentially burning out the Hover power on mistake, and punishing the player in the overhead segments with the loss of gun power upon taking a hit, Blaster Master is worthy of its legendary status.

The game we saw here in America was significantly different from the earlier Japanese release, Chou Wakusei Senki: Meta Fight. The original starred a young man named Kane Gardner, the brilliant pilot of the tank “Metal Attacker.” His goal was to defend his homeplanet Sophia the 3rd from the evil Goez’s Imbem Dark Star Cluster army. A young woman named Dr. Jennifer Cornet, who was the creator of Metal Attacker, joined Gardner on his deployment to Sophia the 3rd by the Nora Satellite of the Science Academy. Together, they are its only hope for survival.

That plot line was disgarded for American audiences for...well, one of the kookier explanations for a young man to get into a tank and shoot aliens. Gardner was renamed Jason, Cornet vanished completely, and an entirely new intro was whipped up explaining how Jason ended up in this mess:

It was because of this frog. Yes, for those of you unfamiliar with Blaster Master, you did just read that correctly. Fred the frog escaped from Jason's terrarium, hopped into radioactive waste curiously scattered about Jason’s yard, becomes bigger, and promptly plunges down a pit nearby. Personally, I would totally sue Jason’s landscapers. 

Anyway, he follows Fred and stumbles upon the tank Sophia the 3rd. After a quick costume change…

…the game begins proper.

As you can see, Meta Fight and Blaster Master took their own unique paths towards developing their individual identities. Meta Fight aligns with dystopic anime storytelling at its finest, complete with cute chibi anime character designs. Americans...get a teenager chasing after a mutant frog. The mythology of Meta Fight was reworked for the American release as well. In Meta Fight, Sophia the 3rd was the planet, while Nora was the company who built MA-01, aka Metal Attacker (which was also called Nora). In Blaster Master, the tank’s full name was Sophia the 3rd Nora MA-01.

The boxes also reflect the changes in design focus quite nicely:

 

Blaster Master's box screams "1980's", doesn't it? That lovely glow and faux-3D effects take me back. Sprite rips of one of the bosses and some key background elements round out the “dynamic” look. Here’s another look at the Famicom box (yanked from the ad above) for Meta Fight:

 

Sunsoft was obviously relying on anime designs to sell its product back home.

In terms of in-game content, Sunsoft left it alone for the most part. The gameplay is relatively untouched. Only plot elements were altered. Meta Fight lacked an intro, so Jason and Fred’s escapades were exclusively added to the American release. The ending has some changes, which we'll examine below. The American version is on the left, the Japanese on the right:

 

The headquarters of the Plutonium Boss/Goez are different in both.

Jason (complete with Kane’s blue hair…whoops!) and Fred are reunited, while Kane alone stares into the tranquil peace he helped return to Sophia the 3rd (remember: in Meta Fight Sophia is the planet). The cliff is also lower in Meta Fight. I do wonder why Sunsoft so heavily altered the colors, though.

Here's the "The End" screen, with Kane and Jennifer’s chibi busts smirking at the player, in contrast to the EXTREME THE END Blaster Master gave Americans. Luckily, the Engrish was left alone. Sunsoft left the badge on the left alone beyond its colors, and you can see the origins of Meta Fight lurking in it.

In an interesting side note, Blaster Master received a Worlds of Power novel in the US, which were licensed books based on video game properties. It basically regurgitates the plot of the game, with a few additions. A character named Eve, a shapeshifting alien, plays a major role, having been the original pilot of Sophia the 3rd. The Plutonium Boss decimated her home planet, and now are coming to attack Earth. Jason and Eve successfully conquer the threat and settle down together. Years later, in the PS1 sequel Blaster Master: Blasting Again, Sunsoft adopted the Worlds of Power plotline as canon! Eve and Jason had two children, Roddy and Elfie. The Plutonium Boss returns to rain further havoc, and Roddy must pilot the modified Sophia J9 to stop them. Blaster Master's prior sequels kept up the Meta Fight premise in their home country, but Sunsoft decided to retcon all of Meta Fight's history and released the game in Japan as Blaster Master.

Thus, this kind of severe game alteration is not a one-way street. Meta Fight’s anime dystopia lost out in favor of continuing Blaster Master’s sci-fi oddity…at least for that particular game. The latest title in the two franchises, Blaster Master Overdrive for WiiWare, skipped Japan altogether. Perhaps the PS1 rebranding failed to garner any interest, so Sunsoft decided to just focus on furthering Blaster Master in the West? All and all, fascinating stuff.

Tropes vs Women in Video Games is Live!

Anita Sarkeesian's video series for Tropes vs. Women in Video Games has launched! I've included the Youtube clip of the first episode here, figuring it was relevant to our mission here at Game on Girl. I for one think she's done a very good job introducing the "damsel in distress" trope here, and look forward to part 2. I'm also glad to see the series come to fruition; Sarkeesian received a grotesque and disturbing amount of misogynist rebuttal and belittling (and I'm putting it mildly) for this project. The ugly reality of the divide, at least online, of male gamers who seemingly are incredibly ignorant about women playing games and that they too have a right to contribute to the medium is dumbfounding to me. However, I'll save that for another time (next week, maybe?). For more of Anita's work, check out her blog Feminist Frequency, and she has further examples of damsels on her Tumblr.