Game development & publishing has, more or less, long become a rather standardized thing over the decades. If you see a game released on a piece of hardware, especially a home console (i.e. "Not a PC"), then you know that it was likely developed by a single team of people, likely for multiple consoles. Prior to the new millennium, however, that wasn't quite as standardized, so you'd see the same game being released on different hardware, and there was a chance that each version was developed by a different team, ideally due to one team knowing one piece of hardware, while another was better with different hardware; this still exists today (see: Panic Button's Switch ports), but is nowhere near as common as before. On very rare occasions, though, one console would see multiple versions of the same game. Usually this was because of major updates that the developer & publisher felt were needed to be done, and usually would be done if the first version sold well; remember, this was before the days of downloading patches. The Lost World: Jurassic Park for PS1 is a perfect example, as the "Greatest Hits" version is actually an updated release & pretty much considered superior to the original version; Saturn owners got screwed over, though. However, even rarer are the cases where one game got ported over to the same hardware more than once... and by completely different developers. This was pretty much exclusively due to differing regions, namely Japan vs. North America/Europe, so let's take a look at six(-ish) such examples.
Myst on PS1
Alfa System vs. Visual Sciences
Generally considered the game that made the CD-ROM drive an essential part of any home computer setup, and was literally the best-selling PC game of all time until The Sims in 2002, Cyan Studios' Myst from 1993 is an all-time adventure classic. Therefore, when CD-based consoles started becoming a thing, you'd better believe that almost all of them had a port of Myst in the works. The Saturn, 3DO, CD-i, & even Jaguar CD all saw ports, with even a Sega CD port being in the works but never released, but the console we'll be focusing on here is the PlayStation. While the Saturn port by Sunsoft was a 1994 launch title in Japan, Soft Bank made sure that a PS1 port wouldn't be far behind, coming out January of 1995. This PS1 port was handled by Alfa System, which at the time was still just known as a for-hire studio & porting house, and it's a solid enough port of the game, complete with fully dubbed over Japanese dialogue in place of the original English voice work by the Miller Brothers, who co-founded Cyan. However, for whatever reason, Myst wouldn't see international release on the PS1 for a long time, September of 1996 to be exact (November 1996, for Europe!). When it finally did, by way of Psygnosis, what came out wasn't even the same exact port!
Yes, the North American & European port of Myst to the PS1 is a completely different product than what Japan got... Well, as "completely different" as a port of a still-image-based first-person adventure game can really be, at least. Regardless, this second PS1 port was handled by Visual Sciences, a Scottish developer founded by Russel Kay, co-creator of puzzle game icon Lemmings. To be quite honest, the differences between the two PS1 ports are rather minor, though notable if you literally have them side-by-side. For example, while both ports utilize letterboxing, likely for space saving reasons, "Alfa System/AS Myst" does offer a larger image compared to "Visual Sciences/VS Myst"; however, "VS Myst" arguably offers a sharper overall image. Both do offer "Zip Mode" & varying degrees of screen transitions, though "AS Myst" offers four transition options, while "VS Myst" only offers two. Obviously, neither port's d-pad controls are a proper replacement for a mouse (& both ports do support the PlayStation Mouse), but "VS Myst" offers a faster cursor than "AS Myst". Finally, "VS Myst" features ever-so-slightly faster load times when compared to "AS Myst"; also, "AS Myst" needs 2 blocks on a memory card, while "VS Myst" only needs 1. To be perfectly honest, due to its reliance on CG-rendered stills, CD-audio, & live-action "actors" (even if it's just the Miller Brothers themselves), there really isn't much one can do when porting Myst to other hardware, so it's understandable that these two ports' differences would come down to the finer details. In the grand scheme of things, this is easily the least notable pair of ports of the same game on the same system we'll see on this list, but it's also a prime example of how a previously existing port done in Japan will just get outright ignored when it comes to North American (& European) release.
At the very least, each region got its corresponding PS1 port digitally on the PS Store for the PS3, PSP, & Vita during the 00s, so the NA & EU stores got "VS Myst" as a PSOne Classic, while Japan got "AS Myst" as part of the PSOne Archives, and currently they are both still available to purchase & download on their respective regional digital storefronts, though only via the PS3 & Vita directly now.
Rampart on NES
Konami vs. "Jaleco"
Moving on, we have a downright odd little combination of three different companies: Atari (Games), Konami, & Jaleco. Debuting with a limited release at the end of 1990, followed by a proper release in early 1991, Rampart by Atari Games & Midway was a three-player arcade game in which players aimed to destroy each others' fortifications & capture enemy commanders, while also featuring short repair phases to prevent that from happening to themselves; it's commonly cited as a precursor to the tower defense genre that exists today. Understandably, Rampart would receive a number of home console ports, including the SNES, Genesis, Master System, PC, Lynx, etc., but the console we'll be focusing on is the NES, or Famicom in Japan. While Namco was the company responsible for releasing the arcade original in Japan, due to its good relationship with Atari, it was actually Konami that managed to get the rights to port Rampart to the Famicom in Japan, where it'd see release in 1991. Rather than being a straight port, Konami added some neat touches, like creating a proper single-player campaign that takes you to various environments, including ancient Japan, and even includes different objectives to succeed, rather than simply conquering all your opposition.
However, when it came time to release the game in North America for the NES, it was decided that instead of simply licensing Konami's port, Tengen (Atari Game's home console division) decided to produce its own port, which saw release in 1992. Developed by a group called Bitmasters, which also handled the SNES & MS-DOS ports, "NES Rampart" is a notably different beast from "Famicom Rampart", particularly in that it's essentially a straight arcade port. It's not considered a bad port by any means, but when compared to what Konami did to expand Rampart out into something more, it is a bit disappointing that Tengen & Bitmasters went with such a comparatively simple product, and one wonders if it would have been cheaper to just license Konami's port instead. Probably most bizarre, however, is the fact that, despite producing the port, Tengen wasn't the company that actually released it. Due to Tengen being an unlicensed supporter of the NES, which I'll get to later on, the company instead licensed this brand new port to Jaleco, which was a licensed supporter of the NES, so "NES Rampart" is kind of both unlicensed-yet-licensed. Come 1992, Tengen was pretty much done with releasing games on the NES, so whatever titles it still had in the works were instead put out by other companies, including Jaleco.
In the grand scheme of everything on this list, the NES/Famicom being home to two different ports of Rampart is relatively minor, but things will only get complicated when it comes to Tengen, I can assure you that.
Maniac Mansion on NES
Jaleco vs. Lucasfilm Games & Realtime Associates
Speaking of Jaleco, our next example comes solely from the inner workings of that company alone, which honestly just makes things all the more... maniacal. Originally released for the Commodore 64 & Apple II in 1987, Maniac Mansion by Lucasfilm Games was the game that truly set George Lucas' video game studio offshoot of Lucasfilm onto the adventure game streak that would largely defined the company up until just before the dawn of the new millennium, with its iconic SCUMM game engine going on to be used for another 11 games, before being replaced with the 3D polygon-supporting GrimE for 1998's Grim Fandango. Still, while the game was designed with computers in mind, the success of it still resulted in there being interest in porting it to console, specifically Nintendo's 8-bit sales juggernaut. In the end, Jaleco wound up getting the rights for home console, and developed a port in-house that saw release on the Famicom on June 23, 1988. Likely for making it look more appealing to Japanese players, the character designs have been altered to be more cute than before, while the game features no scrolling whatsoever, so larger rooms are split up across multiple swapping screens. Most notably, though, is that there is no battery for saving, instead requiring players to jot down passwords to continue their progress later on. Unfortunately, the passwords are 104 characters long! Beyond that, there are some understandable localization changes, like money being in yen instead of dollars.
For whatever reasons, though I imagine it'd be ones of quality, Jaleco's Famicom port of Maniac Mansion would not be what was localized for English release. Instead, staff at Lucasfilm Games itself teamed with Realtime Associates to produce a brand new port themselves, resulting in the English NES version not coming out until September 18, 1990, though Jaleco would still be the publisher; meanwhile, Europe wouldn't get this second port until October 22, 1992! However, with staff at Lucasfilm Games being rather busy, this new port wouldn't really get major work done until Douglas Crockford volunteered to direct, with his team creating a modified "NES SCUMM" engine to accomodate everything; Tim Schafer also got his first professional credit by being a playtester for this port. Crockford would later recount his time directing this port, & Nintendo of America's annoying censorship requirements, in what he called "The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion". In comparison to the Famicom port, "NES Maniac Mansion" is by far the superior version, with improved visuals, faster-moving characters, a new soundtrack that gives each character their own theme, and shirking some larger rooms into a single screen for easier navigation, among other things. In fact, since this port uses a modified SCUMM engine, people have even ripped the rom & imported it into the ScummVM emulator, which gives you proper mouse controls & easier saving, though the NES' unique color palette gets messed up.
Without a doubt, though, while Jaleco's Famicom port of Maniac Mansion is probably decent, if heavily flawed, the later NES port remains an interesting way to play the game, and Nintendo of America's bizarre & contradictory censorship requirement (arguably) only add to the uniqueness.
Tetris on NES
Bullet-Proof Software vs. Tengen vs. Nintendo
I originally had the title of this B-List just say that it was about games ported over "twice", but then I remembered this whole mess. Yes, you aren't seeing things, there are literally three different games called "Tetris", all developed & published by three different companies, all released on the Famicom/NES... and all within the span of just two years. If you want the fully story regarding Tetris & the Gordian knot of licensing that initially came from it, I highly recommend watching The Gaming Historian's hour-long documentary about Tetris. For the (not really) short story, Andromeda Software's Robert Stein wound up making a sort-of deal with Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov & his supervisor Victor Brjabrin via fax to get the license to Tetris in 1986, as the Soviet duo did not realize that an agreement via fax could be seen as a legal contract in the Western world. This resulted in Stein then sublicensing Tetris out to Spectrum Holobyte & Mirrorsoft (for North America & Europe, respectively), with Mirrorsoft sublicensing its Japanese arcade & console rights to Atari Games, which then sublicensed the console rights to Bullet-Proof Software, while Spectrum Holobyte also sublicensed its Japanese computer rights to BPS. BPS, in turn, was run by Henk Rogers, a Dutch immigrant who at the time was best known for creating The Black Onyx, which helped popularize RPGs on Japanese PCs.
With this sublicense-of-a-sublicense-of-a-sublicense-of-a-license-via-fax in hand (during which Stein managed to solidify his initial rights with the Soviet government), BPS then developed Tetris for the Famicom in 1988, which did really well in the country. It did so well, in fact, that it let Nintendo trust Henk Rogers with the task of getting the company the handheld rights for its upcoming Game Boy. After a bunch of nowhere talks with both Atari Games & Stein, though, Rogers decided to go to Moscow & get the rights from the Soviets himself, with a copy of "Famicom Tetris" to show his history with the game. What resulted was a massive bit of miscommunication (the Soviets thought that "Famicom Tetris" was an illegal port) that made the Soviets & Rogers realize that Robert Stein never actually had the rights to ANYTHING EXCEPT COMPUTERS (& arcades, too), so Rogers managed to convince the Soviets to license the home console & handheld rights to Nintendo exclusively; trust me, I am still grossly simplifying how convoluted this whole situation became. This resulted in both the eventual Game Boy version of Tetris, which would be the pack-in release for the system outside of Japan, as well as an NES version of Tetris done in-house by Nintendo, lead by the legendary Gunpei Yokoi, that came out in November of 1989 in North America & later Europe; BPS' "Famicom Tetris", though, remained the official Japanese version. Both ports would become massive hits for their respective hardware, helping turn Tetris into even more of a pop culture institution, & Rogers' initial trip would mark the beginning of a friendship between him & Pajitnov, which eventually lead to Pajitnov finally getting rights (& royalties) to his game in 1996.
While all of this rights unveiling & negotiating was going on in Moscow, though, Tengen was in the middle of working on its own NES version of Tetris, with development headed up by Ed Logg (Centipede, Gauntlet). Tengen was already in the midst of a legal war with Nintendo, after having gone rogue & becoming an unlicensed publisher by way of illegally getting the schematics to Nintendo's lock-out chip technology; again, just watch Gaming Historian's video about that whole thing. Once Nintendo had the actual home rights to Tetris, it sent Tengen a cease & desist letter, but Tengen ignored it, feeling that its sublicense-of-a-sublicense from Mirrorsoft was still valid. "Tengen Tetris" would then come out in May of 1989, only to be removed from store shelves a month later, after the courts ruled in favor of Nintendo regarding the legality of Tengen's rights to Tetris, with all unsold stock being destroyed; Atari Games's arcade rights, however, were still considered 100% legal. As for the actual comparison between the three versions of Tetris for Famicom/NES, the general consensus is that "Tengen Tetris" is the best & is the only one that features simultaneous competitive multiplayer. "Nintendo Tetris" is still extremely solid on the whole, however, while BPS' "Famicom Tetris" is the most basic one of all, but not bad; BPS would go on to develop much better versions of Tetris on other consoles.
However, stuff like Rampart & Tetris are only scratching the surface when it comes to Tengen!
 |
| It was the 90s, and there was time for... a whole bunch of Klax by different companies! |
Klax on Genesis & Game Boy
Tengen vs. Namco & Hudson vs. "Mindscape"
No, you aren't seeing things. That is indeed four versions of Klax, released across just two pieces of hardware, and all within (more or less) a single year. "What is Klax?", you might be asking? It's an arcade puzzle game by Atari Games from 1990 in which the player is taxed with catching & dropping tiles as they come down a conveyor belt, with the goal being to line up at least three tiles of the same color, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, in order to remove them from the 5x5 drop field & achieve a quota to finish a stage, before any column in the drop field fills up, or the player misses catching a tile enough times when it falls off the conveyor belt. Since Atari Games was still in legal trouble regarding Tetris (see the previous entry), it really tried pushing Klax as the next big puzzle game addiction, and while Klax is an enjoyable enough puzzler, it certainly is no Tetris. Still, push it Atari Games did, resulting in it appearing on all manner of gaming hardware at the time, including two systems receiving two different ports in different regions!
First up is the 16-bit port for the Sega Mega Drive, or Genesis in North America. Oddly enough, on almost the same exact day in September of 1990, North America/Europe & Japan received two different ports of the same game. Tengen's NA/EU port seems to have come out first, on Sept. 6, and was done by co-creator Dave Akers himself, resulting in a rather accurate arcade port, though there is only one (extremely short) piece of music to listen to, and it's a single-player affair. The following day, Sept. 7, Namco's Japanese port came out, with no one at Tengen realizing that it was even in development until they started looking into licensing their port for other regions. In the end, Tengen just chalked it up to the Japanese division making its own deal with Namco, to prevent clones. In terms of content, "Namco Klax" offers a very similar game, if moving ever-so-slightly slower, but with redrawn visuals & new audio, as well as a proper two-player competitive mode. If you have to choose which port is superior, it seems to really come down to what you prefer: A more arcade-accurate experience, or competitive multiplayer.
After that we have the 8-bit port for the Game Boy, though in this case the different ports didn't see such close release. First was the Japan-exclusive port by Hudson Soft in December of 1990, which simplified the visuals to make for a very basic, though highly playable, port for hardware that was really never meant to play a color-focused game like Klax. Meanwhile, Tengen would develop its own port that saw release in North America in July of 1991, with Mindscape handling the publishing. Where Hudson went for gameplay over visuals, though, Tengen did the exact opposite, resulting in a game that looks rather remarkable, but is much harder to play, due to the Game Boy's monochromatic limitations. Overall, while it's now the 20s, & there doesn't seem to be anymore time for Klax, you at least have a surprising amount of options to choose from, even considering just the Genesis & Game Boy, should you feel the urge.
 |
| Seriously, did Tengen just have a vendetta against everybody?! |
Fantasy Zone on NES, Ms. Pac-Man on NES, & Marble Madness on Genesis
Sunsoft vs. Tengen, Tengen vs. Namco, & EA vs. Tengen Japan
Finally, we end with a triple-pair of same-console ports, because when Tengen was involved, stuff would seemingly just constantly get ported & re-ported; the only exception seems to be Pac-Man on the NES. Since the lawsuit between Nintendo & Tengen regarding the way Tengen took info regarding the lock-out technology wouldn't be settled until 1994, Atari Games' home division continued to operate as an unlicensed NES supporter up through 1991, though it'd still produce games for release in 1992, which were published by the likes of Jaleco (see: Rampart) & Mindscape (see: Klax). However, as we can see already from numerous examples, Tengen generally seemed to not be interested in simply licensing any pre-existing ports, instead deciding to produce its own for release; whether or not this was actually cheaper to do is just beyond me. Therefore, I've just decided to put three pairs of same-console ports together for this last entry, in an attempt to preserve any bit of sanity I still have. First up is Fantasy Zone, a Sega icon at the time that still managed to find itself on non-Sega hardware, including Nintendo's own 8-bit tech. In 1987, Sunsoft worked with Sega to produce a port for the Famicom, but when Tengen decided to release the game on the NES in 1990, it simply produced its own port... and for the worse. While "Sunsoft Fantasy Zone" manages to actually reach a decent par with the excellent Master System version, "Tengen Fantasy Zone" looks, sounds, & even plays much worse by all accounts, resulting in another case where it likely would have just been easier (& cheaper) for Tengen to simply license Sunsoft's port, instead.
Up next is an interesting case of the tables being turned, as we have (what looks to be) the only time when Tengen was given a taste of its own medicine! Namco's history with the Famicom/NES is an interesting one, as Namco (alongside Hudson Soft) was one of the very first third-parties to sign up for the console, and enjoyed notable success early on. However, when Nintendo decided to not give Namco a break when time came to renegotiate things, Namco simply decided to eschew the Famicom, instead siding with NEC & Hudson Soft's PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16. This allowed Tengen to get a bit of a coup early on, as Namco was more than happy to license out its old Famicom releases to a good friend as unlicensed NES releases, so as to take a shot at Nintendo, but old wounds eventually healed, with Namco finally becoming a licensed supporter of the NES... in 1993. Regardless of the late reunion, Namco put out two notable releases for the NES that year. There was Pac-Man, which was simply a re-release of the nigh-decade-old Famicom port that Tengen had originally put out in North America in 1988, while the other was Ms. Pac-Man, which was NOT simply a re-release of Tengen's port from 1990. You see, while there was already a port of the second game in the iconic franchise, it was not handled by Namco itself, and by this point it seemed as though Namco & Atari Games' close friendship wasn't as close as it once was. Therefore, Namco produced its own NES port of Ms. Pac-Man, and the differences between the two versions are extremely notable. In short, though, "Tengen Ms. Pac-Man" has a lot of bonus content, including both two-player competitive play & co-op, while "Namco Ms. Pac-Man" is essentially a straight arcade port, only with a handful of new maps; still, Tengen's game has way more new maps. Not just that, but the Genesis & SNES ports are based on Tengen's NES version, which also makes them more expansive than Namco's NES port.
To finish up this triple threat of Tengen, we not only move from the NES to the Sega Genesis, but we also swap around the regions in which Tengen operated. In 1991, Electronic Arts released Marble Madness, a home port of the 1984 arcade classic by Atari & Midway designed by a then-20 year old Mark Cerny (a.k.a. "The Man Who Designed the PS4, Vita, & PS5"), for the Genesis; this port was handled by Mike Schwartz & features music by Steven E. Hayes. However, leave it to good old Tengen to want to do things its own way, so in 1993 a completely separate port of Marble Madness came out... but only in Japan for the Mega Drive; this port was lead by Jun Amanai & features music by Kenji Yokoyama. To be perfectly honest, the two ports are very similar, with the main differences being that EA's version features an altered color palette, some looser physics (allowing for maneuvers not normally doable), & Hayes' take on the arcade soundtrack sounding a bit shrill at points. In comparison, Tengen's version has more accurate colors & physics, a much better sounding soundtrack, & even compatibility with the Mega Mouse. While EA's version isn't terrible, Tengen's is generally considered the superior port.
-----
And there you have it! While these aren't the only such example of a game being ported to the same console multiple times by different people, these are likely the most notable. That said, I actually originally had the two ports of Keen Dreams for the Switch on this list, before I found out about Maniac Mansion, so while this kind of stuff has mostly stopped, it's still not impossible to see happen. If anything, though, this bizarre & rare occurrence makes for some truly interesting looks into the world of game development & porting, showing how two different teams, usually from completely different continents, can see the same original game in different ways.
Myst (Soft Bank) © Soft Bank, Cyan, Sunsoft, Interprog., Alfa System, Something Goo
Myst (Psygnosis) © 1993 Cyan, Inc. & Sunsoft © 1996 Psygnosis (now Sony Computer Entertainment)
Rampart (Konami) © Atari Games © Tengen Inc. © Tengen Ltd. © 1991 Konami
Rampart (Jaleco) © 1991 Tengen, Inc. © 1991 Jaleco USA, Inc.
Maniac Mansion (Famicom) © 1988 Lucasfilm Games © 1988 Jaleco, Ltd.
Maniac Mansion (NES) © 1990 Lucasfilm Games © 1990 Jaleco USA, Inc.
Tetris (Famicom) © 1987 V/O Electronorgtechnica © 1988 Bullet-Proof Software
Tetris (Tengen) © 1987 Academysoft-ELORG © 1988 Tengen
Tetris (Nintendo) © 1987 V/O Electronorgtechnica © 1989 Nintendo
Klax (Mega Drive) © Atari Games Corp., Tengen Inc., Tengen Ltd., Namco Ltd.
Klax (Genesis) © 1990 Tengen Inc.
Klax (Hudson Soft) © 1990 Hudson Soft © Atari Games Corp. © Tengen Inc. © Tengen Ltd.
Klax (Mindscape) © 1991, 1989 Tengen
Fantasy Zone (Sunsoft) © 1987 Sunsoft © 1986 Sega
Fantasy Zone (Tengen) © 1989 Tengen © 1987 Sega
Ms. Pac-Man (Namco) © 1983 1990 Namco Ltd., Namco Hometek Inc.
Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) © 1990 Tengen Inc.
Marble Madness (EA) © 1991 Atari Games Corporation & Electronic Arts
Marble Madness (Tengen) © 1984 Atari Games © 1993 Tengen Ltd.
No comments:
Post a Comment