What games do you know about that were released in Japan but actually made harder in their international releases?
The two that come to mind for me are Contra Hard Corps and Castlevania 3. (And the PS2 version of Zone of the Enders 2, but only the PAL version)
Contra Hard Corps came out in the US first
anyway Ninja Gaiden 3 and ActRaiser 2. In both cases the JPN versions are a joke.
>Contra Hard Corps came out in the US first
Hmmm, I'm getting some conflicting information on it's release dates.
Wiki is wrong, what a shock
Every site that had release data has a different date, but only one I could find showed the Japanese version was more than a day after the US version.
Did games back then routinely even have release dates? Lots of times games just shipped out whenever and stores would put them on the shelves whenever they came in. It was very common for there to be a window when you could buy something at store A but not store B.
I can't speak for non-vidya stuff, but Wikipedia is notorious for being wrong about some video game factoid but the editors there refusing to change it out of pride. You have to get a consensus on the talk page for any change you make to stick. It'll get reverted in 10 seconds otherwise. But getting a consensus is impossible because there's always one at least one guy who treats the page as his own personal kingdom and refuses to budge. I'm not sure what options there are in such a situation. There doesn't seem to be a higher authority to appeal to.
Are there any sources for that august release date? Wikipedia has at least a shitty scan of a ad
Kinda related, but i fricking hate how some systems full games lists on Wikipedia splits into multiple pages, like A-L. Was trying to look at a chronology of PS3 games by release date and the list is split into 4 different pages.
My favorite is the PAL version of Luigis Mansion. Every room has much harder waves of ghosts and its genuinely really difficult even if you're good at the game. It encourages you to learn the game mechanics in a way the original never asks you to, for example theres rooms where there are mice moving around on the floor in specific patterns and as you're sucking up the ghosts you have to actively steer away from them so you don't trip. Also the only way to recover health is to suck up 2 or more ghosts at the same time which is pretty fun. All of that ontop of some other nice touches like a higher treasure requirement for the A rank, changes to the boss battles, dark rooms being even darker, and the entire mansion layout being mirrored make it a great way to replay the game.
Its too bad its PAL exclusive, I would have loved to have it back in the day instead of the "Hard Mode" we got which doesn't change fricking anything except spawn hearts slightly less and make the vacuum stronger which just ends up making it a lot easier overall.
Resident Evil and Legend of Legaia for PS1
Castlevania Bloodlines as well. Japanese Expert is American Normal and Japanese Normal is American Easy.
also Streets of Rage 3.
Western reviewers praised SoR2 but complained that it was too easy and it was too easy to spam specials. Then, SoR3 was made more difficult and specials now had a recovery bar.
Never forget that the main reason why the games were made harder was because players and reviewers wanted it, it was a different time.
>Never forget that the main reason why the games were made harder was because players and reviewers wanted it, it was a different time.
Yep, prior to everyone having the internet and access to tens if not hundreds of thousands of videogames, you were limited to the games you owned. If those games were easy, you would smash through them in no time and then be stuck playing the same piss-easy game over and over until you got something new. It was important that a game be challenging enough to keep you from waxing it, so the game could last you for 3-6-12 months until you got a new one. And a really challenging game could possibly last you for years.
You could only replay the same game you can easily beat so many times before you get bored. But it was always worth it to take another stab at "that" part of "that" game and see if you could finally pull it off.
That's because people who played video games back then wanted video games, not interactive movies.
DMC3 changed all the difficulties (except dante must die which stayed the same iirc) so that japanese hard became us normal and they made a new hard mode. Then special edition changed it all back so that new hard mode became very hard.
DMC1 also gave enemies 20% more health and damage in the US release
Battletoads 😀
Bayou Billy is the prime example, I think.
This game is fricking torture in US version
as far as I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Bayou Billy is one of the first game ever to change difficulty depending on the region, so they hadn't quite figured out how much it should differ yet.
Streets of Rage 3 suffers this syndrome. The game is insanely harder in the USA version
And you can't even beat the full game on the Easy mode.
Western versions of 3rd and 4th gen games were either the same or harder. I can't think of any game that is harder in the Japanese version.
Rush'n Attack
Double Dragon 3
Laser Invasion
>I can't think of any game that is harder in the Japanese version.
Dragon Quest 2 (in the US version some enemies stats changed to be easier, priest in Rhone revives party members) and 3 (you gain more exp and gold in the US version)
Double Dragon 2 has a hard mode not present in the western release
Mr Gimmicks makes you start with more lives in the EU version
Mega Man 2 US adds an easy mode and defaults the game to that, calling it "normal"
Gyruss (NES) has a 30 lives Konami code in the US version, not in the JPN version
JPN version of S.C.A.T is vastly different and iirc harder
JPN version of Zelda 2 lowers your levels of all your stats to that of the lower one of the bunch on game over
that's just what I can think of on one platform; yes it happened, less than the contrary did, but more often than you'd think
>JPN version of Zelda 2 lowers your levels of all your stats to that of the lower one of the bunch on game over
Japanese Zelda 2 is way easier. You need way less exp to level up so you will never hit a game over there.
>In US Zelda 2 you need 19700 exp to max your sword level.
>In Japanese Zelda 2 you only need 1850 exp to max your sword level.
>After maxing out everything you get an extra life every 4000 exp as opposed to every 9000 exp in the US version.
Some RPGs were dumbed down on the US release, notably FF 4 (US 2).
Panzer Dragoon
Lunar series (originals and remakes)
A lot of difficulty increases were done so that people couldn’t beat games on a single rental.
This reminded me that Gaiares had the difficulty upped because of how afraid SEGA was of the game being finished as a rental. Raystorm also got it's difficulty increased because Working Designs held a competition but didn't want to make it too easy to win.
Most genesis games.
Dynamite Headdy starts you with less continues in US release, and some bosses has more health i believe
Almost every Working Designs game.
The classic. I tried the Japanese version a coiple years back and it's baby easy, made me think they probably wanted to fix it but took it too far
examples of games that are easier in the west?
fantasy zone on pc engine gives you 5 lives instead of 3 in the american version
Metal Gear Solid 2 with European Extreme difficulty.
Haven't read the thread yet but every game that I'm aware of:
>7th saga/Elnard
Your character's stat gains are basically halved in the US version, leading to much more difficult duel battles in the game.
>DMC3
In the US release, the default "Normal" mode was actually Japanese hard mode
>Mega Man 11
Same thing as DMC3. The game's default mode was hard mode in Japan.
>Resident Evil 1
RE1 in the US removed a significant number of ammo caches. The US release has roughly 66% of the ammo that the Japanese version does.
>Resident Evil 2
Same thing as RE1 but to a much less significant degree. There are a handful fewer ammo caches in RE2 in the US.
Evil 1
>RE1 in the US removed a significant number of ammo caches. The US release has roughly 66% of the ammo that the Japanese version does.
No it didn't. I don't know why people keep repeating this. All supplies count and placement are identical, what differs is enemies HP, the damage they deal, the amount of ink ribbon, and the lack of auto aiming.
Evil 2
>Same thing as RE1 but to a much less significant degree. There are a handful fewer ammo caches in RE2 in the US.
No, there is more ammo in the US version. The difference however is that in the US version a lot of ammo is hidden, you have to look for it; whereas in the JPN version most of it (everything but one pick up iirc) is in plain sight; for instance the US version will have supplies you can't see on screen that you have to find by pressing the action button on a shelf, whereas in the JPN version it will be sitting on a desk in the middle of the room, impossible to miss. But the US version added a shit ton of handgun ammo hidden all over the intro segment so there is actually more ammo. Plus there is a bit more healing supplies in the US version.
US version is still harder however because of the health/damage system. In the JPN version there is a leniancy system: if your health is in yellow or red, enemies will deal less damage; but in the US version that system is gone and enemies always deal the same amount of damage. And again, less ink ribbons. Also some enemies have more HP, and some enemy placement differ which make them a bit harder to dodge in the US version; and some rooms have more enemies.
Huh, interesting. I admit I never played RE1 in Japanese so it was something I just heard from people who played it, but I'm legitimately surprised to hear that about RE2 because I did actually play the Japanese version of that and didn't know the US one just had hidden ammo everywhere. I wonder why they made it all invisible if they were trying to help the players at the start.
> I wonder why they made it all invisible if they were trying to help the players at the start.
I think the hidden and extra supplies are just extra polish. The JPN version was released a week after the US version, but I actually believe it's an older revision, there are a couple of clues hinting at that like the fact that controls option screen is missing some information in the JPN version, that are present in the US version, but the JPN Dualshock re-release would then update that option screen to that of the US version.
So I think it's extra polish and to make the game more "adventure like" and more like RE1, which had a lot of hidden supplies.