Worst domestic game changes

[NeoZeedeater]

I hate to see any game butchered from its original form. Far too often Japanese games have been altered for their Western releases. Sometimes it's the other way around(Crash Bandicoot for example).

What games do you consider the worst cases of butchering?

One example that sticks out for me is Sega's Quartet. Altering a character isn't the end of the world but in this case, it's pretty much racism. There's no reason to change Mary into a white chick. At least today they probably wouldn't change a character for that reason.

[bbobb]

Everything that Working Designs has done... with special emphasis on their destruction of Silhouette Mirage.

[Jeremy]

The first one that pops into my brain is Toukon Retsuden, which Activision just slaughtered when they released it here as Power Move Pro Wrestling. The game was stripped of the New Japan Pro Wrestling license, which meant that most of the folks in the game had to be recolored, Hiroshi Hase looks more or less the same, but nearly everyone else suffered greatly. They removed Jushin Liger from the game entirely, and removed blood as well. On top of that, the front cover (and for a while, the back cover) featured graphics and screenshots respectively of the original Japanese game. Luckily, the game is still fun despite the heavy changes. From the looks of things, the second game wouldn't have suffered much had they chose to bring that to the states, judging by the one screen in an EGM that showed very few big changes to the game visually.

[AaronChance]

Project Justice, for removing the board game which was like half of the game and replacing it with some lame pre-made characters.

[UndeadKing]

NeoZeedeater,
A similar change happened quite recently with the game Disaster Report(Ps2) where they changed the character's hair color to blonde "to better appeal to Us gamers."

EDIT: Along the same lines, they edited the character model in Fatal Frame to make her appear "older."

[Norimake]

One of my pet peeves is the replacement of good voice acting with poorly translated cringe inducing garbage. Why did the main character in the original Ape Escape sound like he was a teen when he captured a monkey? But a kid in the cut scenes? The import at 2x the cost was well worth it.

[gamevet]

I did'nt exactly find the music in the US version of Sonic CD that appealing. It was more like elevator music. I've heard the Japanese version was much better.

[Jeremy]

Wow, that Double Target change is horrid, as it makes her head too big for her body, plus, the new face design is just God-awful.

[Green]

The changes SNK makes to US releases (no blood in Metal Slug, no bouncy Mai) makes me scratch my head. The only reason they could have for doing it is so they can sell the games to a younger audience, but who other than enthusiasts buy SNK titles? Same goes for Sega removing one of Vennessa's outfits (that reveals her midriff) from VF4: EVO, supposedly for the kiddies. I'd like to know who these kids are that are buying these games.

[Frogacuda]

Changin Anmitsu Hime to Alex Kidd was kind of screwed up, thoug I'm sure it did help propel the game to better sales. Still left alot of Alex Kidd fans bewildered though.