Video Games That Got Weird Name Changes In Other Countries Sometimes it’s censorship. Sometimes it’s unfortunate implications. And sometimes it’s straight- up unexplainable. But whatever the justification may be, games get renamed all the time when they’re released across different regions. This piece originally appeared 4/6/1.

Let’s look at ten particular cases of video game name changes: Bully. Edited Title: Retitled to Canis Canem Editin the United Kingdom. The Reason? Bully, a game about high school life that was presumed prior to release to be all about, well, bullying, attracted a lot of controversy in both the U.

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S. In the U. K., specifically, where Rockstar changed Bully’s title to Canis Canem Edit, anti- bullying organizations campaigned against the game’s release, and even the country’s rating board came under fire for giving it a 1. Strangely, the game’s updated version for the 3.

Game artist Ramón Nuñez actually had his work featured on Fine Art earlier this year, but this new round of Game of Thrones caricatures was too good to pass up sharing.

Sometimes it’s censorship. Sometimes it’s unfortunate implications. And sometimes it’s straight-up unexplainable. But whatever the justification may be, games. You have not yet voted on this site! If you have already visited the site, please help us classify the good from the bad by voting on this site. Search metadata Search full text of books Search TV captions Search archived web sites Advanced Search. This is the official website of MARCOA Media, LLC, a Department of Defense Contractor and Civilian Enterprise Publisher. Unauthorized attempts to use this site or.

Wii, Bully: Scholarship Edition, was allowed to keep the “Bully” title when it came out two years later. It still caused controversy though. The Reason? Contra—specifically, the first arcade game—came to PAL regions as Gryzor, and nobody knows the exact reason why. One theory posits that it was to avoid referencing the Iran- Contra affair, a political scandal from the late eighties. The new title “Probotector,” meaning “Robot Protector,” reflected that. The first uncensored PAL Contra game to come out was Legacy of War in 1.

Contra” title intact. Elebits. Edited Title: Known as Eledees in Europe and Oceania.

Elebits was a series of games from Konami that featured the titular, electricity- based creatures. The publisher never gave an official reason for the rename, but some speculated it was for a pun (LEDs, Eledees, geddit?), while others thought it was to avoid lewd jokes about bits. Metal Gear: Ghost Babel . However, it ended up a completely different game—a non- canon followup to Kojima’s first Metal Gear on the MSX2, its story taking place seven years after that game’s events—but the Metal Gear Solid name was kept anyway, for, according to Metal Gear fan site Snake Soup, “marketing purposes.” Mortal Kombat: Deception. Edited Title: Known as Mortal Kombat: Mystification in France. The Reason? In Summer 2.

Mortal Kombat game, subtitled Deception, would get a name change in France. Initially, then- publisher Midway Games denied these rumors, but they eventually confirmed that the game would be renamed to Mortal Kombat: Mystification. Free Software To Remove Drm Protection. Midway cited “translation issues,” and Google Translate reveals that in French, “d. Toru Iwatani, the developer of Pac- Man, originally named his game Pakkuman (. This was romanized to Puck Man, a name which did end up on the very first arcade machines, including the ones used at the game’s first location test in May 1.

Namco decided to change the name to Pac- Man—which is still a correct romanization of Pakkuman—putting that on later machines. Ratchet & Clank. Edited Title: Nearly every Ratchet & Clank sequel got a different name in Europe and Oceania. The Reason? In some cases, it’s clear—Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal got renamed to Ratchet & Clank 2: Locked and Loaded and Ratchet & Clank 3, respectively, to get rid of the innuendo in the names.

But at the same time, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, arguably the most innuendo- y of the bunch, did not get a different name in Europe, while Full Frontal Assault did: Ratchet & Clank: QForce. And then there are the seemingly totally random changes: Ratchet: Deadlocked got changed to Ratchet: Gladiator, and the Ratchet & Clank Future series had the “Future” subtitle removed from all three games in PAL regions.. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles .

In some parts of Europe, ninja were considered a taboo subject, and so in a couple places, the TMNT franchise was renamed to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. The video games weren’t edited beyond their titles, but the TV show was hit harder—for example, in the UK, Michelangelo’s nunchaku were edited out completely and replaced with a grappling hook beyond season three. The Reason? V- Rally was a three- part rally racing game series for the Play. Station, developed by Eden Studios from France. In North America, it was published by Electronic Arts, who decided to market V- Rally and V- Rally 2 as Need for Speed games, even though they had nothing to do with that series. Coincidentally, EA also published a game that ended up losing the “Need For Speed” label: Motor City Online was meant to be a full- fledged Need for Speed title until the single- player portion was dropped at some point during its development. Unknown (heh). Not only was UFO renamed X- COM when it was brought over to North America from Europe, but “UFO” was promptly dropped globally in favor of “X- COM” for each subsequent game in the series, making the very first title of the very first game a bit of a red- headed stepchild.

At least the “Enemy Unknown” bit was vindicated with the release of the remake, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, eighteen years later, in 2. That’s ten cases of weirdly renamed games. Have you heard of any others? Share in the comments below if you have.

Top image via Wikipedia. Questions? Contact the author of this post at andras- AT- kotaku- DOT- com.