Chris Newman wrote:
>
> That leads to an interesting, but infrequent, phenomenon. Why ARE some games
> renamed when ported to another platform? My guess is they were unpopular on the
> initial platform; a rename might give the game a fresh start.
Many reasons, all of them marketing. It has nothing to do if the game itself
was popular on its target platform; rather, it has to do with how well the game
sold. Note that units sold != "popular" (which I am assuming for the sake of
argument is "how much the game was played by people") because we all know that
a game that sold terribly can be one of the most popular thanks to pirating --
Bilestoad, for example.
Many times a euro game is given a name native to the developer's language for
release in that country, and the English translation of it may be known to not
market well in the US, so it's changed by the US publisher. "Dragon's Breath",
which you mention below, doesn't actually describe the game premise, only the
setting. This is a known "no-no" in marketing in the US, so the name change to
"Dragon Lord" is completely understandable, since it does describe the game's
premise (you play a controller of dragons, hatching and breeding them to
conquer your rivals' in an effort to take over the kingdom).
It's also harder to please American audiences. E-Motion was the name for a
"bounce similar balls into each other to eliminate them from the playfield
using a ship controlled ala Asteroids" game that wouldn't appeal to most US
consumers, so the name (and theme) of the game had to be retooled to "The Game
of Harmony".
Some marketing changes are done without any sort of premise that I can put a
finger on. Battle Sword was marketed in the US as Deathsword for no reason
other than "Deathsword" probably sounded cooler.
It's really quite fascinating, if you think about it. I almost got into
Marketing and Advertising instead of computers, but when I learned about how
over the the line between psychological profiling and outright manipulation is
crossed, it soured the entire thing for me.
> This would make a good list -- game renames. I have an addition: Dragon Lord for
> the PC (dist by CinemaWare in 1990) was released under the name Dragon's Breath on
> the Amiga.
I agree: Sarinee has already done this with scans of graphical box covers on
the excellent www.theunderdogs.org archive. The box covers rotate very fast,
though, so it's hard to catch the names exactly (they're thumbnails).
--
http://www.MobyGames.com/
The world's most comprehensive gaming database project.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to
the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect'
Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/swcollect@oldskool.org/
