Left in Japan 14 - Games with Western IPs that were Only Released in Japan - Game Sack -

hello and welcome to game set time for another left in japan episode but this time i thought i'd take a look at some intellectual properties that were created here in the west but only ever released in japan does that not make a lot of sense well i think it will once you see this first game so let's begin

this is die hard for the pc engine from pack and video released in 1990. this one's an overhead run and gun based on the 1988 movie you play as police officer john mclean and just like in the movie you have to fight your way through the woods taking out bad guys as you make your way to nakatomi plaza then you take your flamethrower and make your way through the swamp that's naturally in front of the tall building in los angeles once you get into the building you of course start at the very bottom basement level which itself is a very large and discombobulating maze after that you start working your way up the floors you even get minor cutscenes from the movie here and there like here when mclean gets ready to go into the air ducts at least that's what he thinks instead it's a giant room filled with water this scene though is slightly different from the movie as i don't remember this guy here all of these other guys were in the movie though you can collect a few different weapons  in the game and all of them have limited ammunition if you run out you resort to  using your fists this can be bad in some boss fights but sometimes they'll toss you another gun and health items which is quite considerate of your enemies you can also grab a vest which will let you take a few hits without draining your life as well as a couple of different items which will restore your life you can also jump and you'll be jumping over lots of gaps in the game you can also jump over bullets but be careful as you can actually jump into the bullets as well there really isn't a large variety of

enemies in the game so it can feel a bit repetitive but honestly it's not too bad but there are only three boss fights in the game's nine stages the last boss is the helicopter on the roof at least there's glass on the floor in one of the stages but mclean is wearing shoes through the entire game seriously it's like they didn't even watch the movie before they designed this one the graphics are okay and there's not much here that's tremendously special though i do like how mclean gets more bloody the lower his health is if this were a western developed game his bloodiness would be your only indicator of life thankfully pack and video was thoughtful enough to give you an actual life bar as well which i appreciate very much there's no need to reinvent the life bar this game never came out in the west because well it's the turbo graphics 16. i don't think the us arm had a large budget certainly not enough to license die hard for a game that probably wouldn't have sold all that well still i think they could have stripped the license since it barely resembles the movie anyway overall this one isn't awful and i think it's worth a play or too

data east presents or presents donald land on the famicom now just what in the heck is donald land why it's a game based on all the mcdonald's characters like mayor mccheese the fry guys grimace birdie hamburglar big mac police and of course captain professor and uncle i don't remember them but that's okay and of course let's not forget donald mcdonald yes that's actually what ronald mcdonald has called in japan the reason is they don't really have a good r sound over there now you can impress your friends with that fun fact this is a platformer where you play as ronald or sorry i mean donald you toss bombs in order to end the lives of your foes you can literally attach a bomb to them and then it explodes pretty brutal that's what they get for messing with mcdonald's the controls are very awkward and i was never able to fully get used to them if you hold down the b button you can run faster but this can make some weird things happen especially when you jump the physics here are just really bizarre you can get a bomb icon so you can toss up to two bombs in a row if you get hit you lose some life and you go back to being able to only toss one bomb until you find another bomb icon a heart will increase your life and the hamburger icons act as your currency in the game between levels there's a shop that you can spend all your hamburgers at you can use the bombs to help you jump higher but i was never able to come anywhere near mastering this the arc of the bombs that you toss is particularly odd you can control it somewhat with a directional pad in your speed if you're moving but it rarely did what i wanted it to do this makes things like boss fights pretty tough not only that but there aren't any checkpoints if you die it's back to the beginning of the level for you at least there are unlimited continues though that makes grabbing the various one ups here and there seem kind of useless there are also some very precise jumps that you'll need to make while moving at high speeds oops you can jump on most of the enemies and sometimes you'll actually need to do that to get across a bottomless chasm or something however i think the game wants you to jump on your own bombs more than anything the graphics are pretty awesome for the console there's lots of detail in many of the areas and plenty of color even a couple of the bosses are damned impressive if i do say so myself and i just did so there the music is cute and fun though it can start to drone on and on as you try each level a thousand times before you get past it even with the weirdness of the controls i still found it pretty fun and i wanted to keep trying i'm surprised they never released this one in the west all i know is that this game makes me crave a double quarter pounder with cheese no onion all right i think everyone gets the idea of what this episode's theme is about at least i hope so if not well then just treat it like any old left in japan episode anyway let's continue  nintendo turned the comic strip popeye into a video game wait that was released outside of japan on the nes right yeah of course it was but popeye no i go a sobe wasn't this roughly translates into popeye english play or popeye's lingo game this is basically a spin-off of the actual popeye game on the famicom which helps teach kids english you first choose a category olive oil is at the top of the screen tossing down hearts that form boxes of the word that you're going to spell out it's kind of like wheel of fortune except that there are no turns and every letter is free however if you get a letter wrong brutus or bluto depending on which era of popeye you prefer will punch sweet pea down the line wow punching babies is kind of mean if you get too many guesses wrong sweet  ea falls and you fail as a human being i'm not really sure why bluto brutus cares so much about these words but hey i guess he needs a hobby too the game will give you the name of the word in japanese there's a translated version which will form these words with roman letters but if you don't know japanese this won't help you much all in all it's pretty easy and honestly i kind of enjoyed it there's also a mode where olive is tossing down letters and you need to catch them in a specific order i don't like this one very much i'm not the least bit surprised that this was never brought out in the west there's not much more to say about this one except that it might be fun with  your kids if you've got one of those

here's beavis and butthead in virtual stupidity from icom simulations on the playstation that's right a beavis and butthead game that was only released in japan this is a point-and-click game that's fairly easy to figure out through trial and error anyway it's kind of funny to see everyone speaking in japanese here i'm sure you might be able to make your way through this game if you really wanted to just by clicking things at random however this game was released in north america in english on the pc so some very kind individuals took the english from that version and patched it into the playstation version so that's what we'll take a look at from here on out we're gonna do something cool congratulations this will make the game a bit easier so you can understand the clues that you need even so this game can be slightly cryptic at times in order to proceed you might need to grab an item that you didn't even know was something to grab like this gum on the water fountain i just used the water fountain once and thought that was all i could do i didn't even register the gum at the top right corner sometimes you'll need to play a mini game this one where you hock a loogie onto the principal can be pretty tough you need to hit them with a green one but you can only spit a green one after 10 successful hits with the normal spit i missed with many green ones and i'd have to work to get another until i finally did it another mini game has you frying ants and other bugs who are trying to steal candy from the ground yet another has you shooting tennis balls and trying to get high score interestingly all of the mini-games still have the japanese voices in the english patch but the game is mostly just a bunch of side quests to satisfy one person to satisfy another so you can finally join todd's gang the english voices are amusing unless you absolutely can't stand beavis and butthead go for it beavis there's like 50 naked schlongs in there no way i'm not going in there if there's 50 naked schlongs in there uh how about 25 no wait you're saying it's 25 but it's more like 50. whatever dumbass i used to not like them much way back in the day but eventually they grew on me that kid's a wuss yeah he only plays video games all the time because he can't score when we start scoring we're gonna be a lot cooler than this ass wipe the worst thing though is that you can't skip any of the dialogue which sucks if you accidentally repeat a long conversation or something i love the colorful graphics and it all represents the show perfectly when it comes down to it this is a good point-and-click adventure with some moderately crude humor icom simulations is a developer that you can trust when it comes to point-and-click adventures like these and i've got to say that i am totally blown away that this wasn't released on the playstation outside of japan in fact i can't understand why it wasn't my best guess is that the popularity of the characters were waning at the time the show ended in 1997 and this version came out in 1998 which was three years after the pc version perhaps publishers of the time felt that it wasn't worth investing the money to distribute it in the west but i really wish that they had i think that it would have sold decently anyway try this game if you like point-and-click stuff as well as beavis  and butthead is this squirrel dead uh do i look like a vetta the uh squirrel doctor or something star wars came to the nes from jvc in 1991. it's okay at best in my opinion it's about what you'd expect from a star wars game and there really isn't much that's noteworthy about it it's a side-scrolling platformer with dodgy slippery controls and weird level designsbut did you know that namco had theirown star wars game in japan on the famicom four years earlier yeah you probably did i mean everyone's talked about this one honestly though i think it's a much better game than the one we got remember when the jawas came to luke's house and stole r2d2 the droid they just sold to him then you had to chase them to the sand crawler with your lightsabers slicing up sand people and birds oh yeah and then inside the jawa sand crawler you encountered darth vader who turned into a scorpion that you had to fight then do you remember after that when obi-wan kenobi introduces himself to you and says that he's being held on kessel and that you need to rescue him then you're on kessel slicing and dicing your foes again everything from the movie is here man the game is actually pretty fun while it's not a slippery feeling as the game that we got here the controls are still fairly slippery they loved their slippery games back then as you massacre your enemies you collect diamonds these will give you a bunch of abilities that you can select from when you press start these can do things like let you float run faster for a short time or even skip to the next area i'm sure if this game actually got released here the instruction manual would explain them all but for now you'll just have to experiment like the gods intended this game is pretty tough if you get touched by anything you die immediately oh and there aren't any continues at all still i kept saying to myself just one more try even though i had to start back at the very beginning the worst part about the game is that you can't skip the opening cut scene dialogue come on man i just want to get back into the game i've got evil space scorpions to kill despite its less than ideal controls and difficulty it's still quite enjoyable this would be a good one to play with friends taking turns to see who can get the furthest i'm sure namco didn't release this one here because they didn't have the rights to star wars games outside of japan at the time jvc wanted to make their own game from scratch to be slightly more faithful to the movie story i suppose but this is still the superior star wars game for the console fire this one up and give it a go if you can 

okay i've got four games left to show you today and three of them are based on mickey mouse and the disney universe this is mickey no tokyo disneyland daiboken for the super famicom released in december of 1994. we covered this way back and left in japan 4 but i wanted to mention it really quick here for a couple of reasons number one it's a mickey mouse game that was only ever released in japan number two is thatthis is the first in a series of games from tomi about tokyo disneyland which were all only ever released in japan i'll be honest this game can go straight to hell it's gotta be one of the most tedious platformers ever made you fill water balloons to attack your enemies and gas balloons to float around the levels there's quite a bit of lag in the controls especially when you want to throw something to attack an enemy mimic chests don't leave you much time to react at all so you're gonna get hit and when you do get hit you're stunned for what feels like quite a while before the control is returned to you honestly i'm amazed the gameplay was greenlit the graphics are really quite nice though for the most part i love how it looks the music on the other hand is annoying with that fake trumpet sound that's common in a lot of lower tier games on the platform i'm glad this church stayed in japan still better than fantasia on the genesis though

tokyo disneyland mickey no cinderella jew mystery tour came out for the game boy the next year this one is super game boy enhanced so it has some color but there's no graphical border around the game anyway this title is a bit better than the last one you still have balloons to float around the levels but it's nowhere near as annoying this time i assume you're throwing water balloons to attack but you no longer can hold the button to inflate them also there's less lag when you attack which alone makes the game much more playable there's still some stun time when you get hit but it's not quite as bad it can be hard to tell what you can collect and what can hurt you but here's a tip everything can hurt you the only thing you need to collect are these little round things dropped by your enemies which is your currency and french bread which restores some of your life meter there are boss fights here of course which are fun and when you beat them you can collect what i think is a potion which restores all of your life if you're ever confused about what you need to do you can just head to a mirror room for an explanation well that clears things right up the graphics are fine for the game boy and the super game boy additions basically just overlay a single color on each area at least it helps each area or room stand out a bit from the last the scrolling isn't super smooth but the game moves so slowly that it's not really an issue the music is certainly more pleasant to listen to than the super nintendo game but it can still get repetitive after a bit

this would have been a decent game to release outside of japan even if it does focus on tokyo disneyland they could have gotten rid of the tokyo part of it and no one would have been the wiser anyway i'm glad that they improved the formula with this game i wonder how the third one will shape up

in 1998 tomy released tokyo disneyland's fantasy tour on the game boy this one is also super game boy enhanced without a border so at least there's some color this one isn't a platformer at all but instead a compilation of many games at the start you choose between mini mickey and goofy they each have their own set of five mini-games around the park which you play in order before each mini-game they explain what it's about and how to play it so read carefully the minigames themselves are pretty lackluster with only a few offering any real fun for an adult player who doesn't speak japanese if you successfully clear a mini-game a flag will be planted on the map can you clear all 15 i feel that this one could have easily been released domestically without the tokyo label because most of these attractions share the same name as the stuff we have here in the states if this were in english it might be fun for kids under or around 10 years old or so

finally we have mcdonald's monogatari from tdk on the gameboy color have you ever dreamed about working at mcdonald's that's the great thing about video games isn't it they can easily make your dreams a reality you start the game by giving names faces and i assume birthdays to every employee at your local mcdonald's then you wake up in your house and you're eventually given control of your character it seems like an rpg at first with you wandering around town and talking to people at various places it seems that some places won't let you in because you don't have any money again i'm assuming here well you might as well report to mcdonald's and get to work just wander to the station that you want to work at you can run the register sling fries flip burgers or fill drinks and hot damn are these mini games tough you have to be very fast to keep up with the orders and i honestly feel that the gamecube controller that i'm using here isn't quite agile enough for the task either that or my brain isn't yes it's a real nintendo brand gamecube controller you need to pay attention to a lot of stuff going on eventually you'll be told that you suck and removed from the station and not get paid slinging fries is a little easier you constantly have to dump new fries from the cooker and the orders scroll by faster than you can make them seriously tell the customer to pull over to spot number two and wait because it's not going to happen otherwise who the hell manages this mcdonald's filling the drinks perfectly is almost impossible especially at first the cash register job just basically has you doing math in your head to make change which is pretty easy you have a limited time to do it and of course the bar gets faster and faster be sure to get home at night though and get to sleep because tomorrow's another big day for failing at your job the graphics are pretty bad with choppy scrolling and corrupted graphics whenever your character moves around on screen the sound isn't anything special either i'm thinking that working in a real mcdonald's would be easier and probably more fun than this game

there you go that was left in japan number 14. can you think of any other games that were based on western ips that only saw a release in japan there's got to be a few more anyway making this episode was pretty fun because it was kind of like a theme within a theme what do you think let me know in the meantime thank you for watching game sack

have you tried cleaning your cartridge with game juice no tell me more absolutely nothing clean's cartridge is better than game juice's hyper secret formula spend less time cleaning and more time playing with game juice thanks game juice now i can play

it worked now to play beast wrestler bring those dead games back to life i think my life might have been a little bit better before i could play this play your games like it was the first time every time thanks game juice