All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.Devil WorldFamicom Detective Club Part 2Famicom Detective Club Part I: Keita KoukeishaShin Onigashima: Second Part
These are our picks for just 10 of the Nintendo titles that might have shaped our childhoods too – if we'd only been born in Japan.
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Before we get started, though, take a few minutes to check out Colin and Sam's Famicom Anniversary Celebration video (if you haven't already). It'll bring you up to speed on the territory we're about to explore further:1. Family Basic
First up is Family Basic. It's common knowledge that the name "Famicom" is a shortened form of "Family Computer," but less well known is the fact that Nintendo actually embraced its game console as a legitimate home computing solution in the early '80s. Nowhere was this more in evidence than with Family Basic, a game that let you program your own games.If you could understand the interface, that is. The Family Basic cartridge was nebulous to navigate, and worked in concert with two rare peripherals to make its programming experience possible – the Famicom Keyboard and the Famicom Data Recorder, which saved hobbyist programmers' game project on official Nintendo cassette tapes.
Nintendo made the likely wise call not to bring this set-up out of Japan, as the NES was billed entirely as an Entertainment System throughout the rest of the world. Still, though, it would have been fun to see what America and Europe's often brilliant hobbyist game developers of the '80s could have crafted with these tools in hand.
2. Devil World
Most of the titles we'll feature in this list are examples of games that never left Japan at all, giving neither American or European fans a chance to play them – Devil World, though, is the exception. This one only bypassed North America, as Europe got it without any trouble.The trouble in the States seemed to be a religious one – Nintendo of America was notoriously wary of anything even remotely spiritual in tone back in the NES era, and Mr. Miyamoto had pushed iconic elements of the Christian faith into several parts of this game design. There was the titular Devil himself, who stood at the top of the game's maze-like levels, shifting walls around by pointing in different directions. There was the Bible, which our little hero Tamagon would pick up to gain fire-breathing powers. And there were Crosses, which also inspired the small green dragon to breathe out balls of flame.
Had these elements been visually altered for the American audience and the game given a different title, we might have been able to enjoy Shigeru Miyamoto's one take on the arcade maze genre. But Devil World's still never seen release here, nearly 30 years later – the closest we've gotten to acknowledgement of its existence was the cameo by the Devil as an Assist Trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
3. The Mysterious Murasame Castle (a.k.a. Nazo no Murasame Jō)
Nintendo fans outside Japan were recently reminded about this missed game late last year, as the Wii U launch title Nintendo Land included an event called Takamaru's Ninja Castle. It seemed an odd inclusion alongside other attractions headlined by Mario, Donkey Kong and Yoshi – but Takamaru is a character who's considered a contemporary to all of them in Japan, having debuted on the Famicom in The Mysterious Murasame Castle.This game was essentially a samurai-flavored take on The Legend of Zelda. It was a little less polished than Link's first adventure, and quite a bit more difficult too – perhaps two contributing reasons for why it never escaped Japan. And, unlike some others that we'll get to down further on this list, Takamaru's original outing never inspired any sequels – so there was never a chance for America or Europe to jump in late on any later console either.
Perhaps with his new recognition through Nintendo Land, though, there may yet be hope for Takamaru to emerge from obscurity and make more of an impression on a global audience. He did sneak into a cameo role in Samurai Warriors 3 a few years ago – but that game earned a review score equivalent to the numeral in its title, so it's safe to say that wasn't going to be his break-out moment.
4. All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros.
NES players were no strangers to cross-promotion, as several companies unrelated to video games managed to make their mark regardless – McDonald's had M.C. Kids, Domino's Pizza brought us Yo! Noid and there was even a Pizza Hut coupon included when bought a couple of TMNT II for the 8-bit console. That practice never seemed to touch any first-party releases here, though.But in Japan, it did. All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. was a Famicom-exclusive cross-promotional edition of the Big N's most cherished and celebrated game of all time – the kind of game you'd think would never be associated with any kind of marketing maneuver like this. But, somehow, some way, Japan's long-running All Night Nippon radio show managed to score their own official, modded version of the classic to give away as a contest prize to a few lucky listeners.
It was mostly a visual overhaul of the first game, switching the first world to take place at night and shifting some of the enemy characters to look like goofy caricatures of the DJs who hosted the show back in the mid-'80s. It's not a game that I'm personally lamenting for never having had the chance to buy here in America, but it another example of an odd piece of the nostalgic picture that Japan's Famicom fans still hold in their minds, and that we don't have a real equivalent for – maybe if Metroid had been given Coca-Cola product placement?
5. Yumi Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic
Everybody knows the story of how Super Mario Bros. 2 came to be by now – Nintendo of America thought that Japan's Super Mario Bros. 2 would be way too difficult for American players, so they took a different game, switched the graphics to feature Mario, Luigi, Toad and the Princess, and brought us the game we know and love today. (And the game that just recently got re-released on both the Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console services.)Less well known is that the game's original cast of characters were another example of cross-promotion with media company Fuji TV – and on an even more dramatic scale than All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. Doki Doki Panic was made to feature Fuji TV characters from the start, not just an existing game modified visually to include their mascots.
What's interesting is that the scenario of Doki Doki Panic becoming Super Mario Bros. 2 outside Japan seems like it should have applied to Devil World's situation too – NOA totally visually overhauled the game to make it a Mario title here, but they couldn't edit out a couple of Crosses and Bibles to give us Miyamoto's maze game? Alas...
6. Famicom Fairytales: New Onigashima
While some missed localizations don't make much sense, other cases are entirely understandable – like Famicom Fairytales: New Onigashima (sometimes called Shin Onigashima). This game was a text adventure. Absolutely every bit of the "action" required the ability to read Japanese, in order to make choices for where to go and what to do as you guided the heroes Donbe and Hikari on a quest to save the kidnapped souls of the kindly couple who raised them.Though text adventures have begun to make some headway outside Japan in recent years – 999 and Virtue's Last Reward being the best examples – it would have been a herculean task to adapt this title into English back in the '80s. Especially when games like Super Mario Bros. and Metroid, by comparison, had so little text that needed to be altered.
Onigashima wasn't a one-off, though. Nintendo also published a couple of "Famicom Detective Club" text adventures, as well as a game called Miho Nakayama's Heartthrob High School. Seriously, an 8-bit dating sim! It's hilarious that that's part of the picture Japan's fans reflect on when looking back on the Famicom – it would have been great to see how a game like that would have gone over in English on the NES.
7. Famicom Wars
And now we'll step into a trio of titles that all work together to prove one major point about the Famicom – it was the ultimate franchise launcher. We fans outside Japan commonly point to the NES as being the origin of great, long-lasting series like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid – series that have gone on to define Nintendo for decades. But if you expand your scope to include Famicom titles, too, the Big N's 8-bit era earns credit for an even larger array of hit brands that are still active today.Famicom Wars is the first of our three examples, as this game was the precursor to what we know as the Advance Wars franchise today – we, of course, didn't get one of its installments localized until the Game Boy Advance era (and it's mostly stuck with the Advance name since, aside from the Battalion Wars spin-offs).
Could fans outside of Japan have appreciated the turn-based strategy war game series sometime before 2001? We'll never know for sure, but I personally could envision my eight-year-old self really getting into the action of leading Orange Star's army. (I had to wait until I was 20 instead.)
8. Mother
EarthBound is back in the public eye today, as after years of waiting, hoping and begging NOA to make it happen, the original SNES adventure returned via the Wii U's Virtual Console service just the other day. That long-awaited re-release of the 1995 16-bit adventure is a sweet victory for long-suffering fans of the series – a series that has been defined by trouble with localization from the very beginning.That's because EarthBound was originally scheduled to begin on the NES, with the planned English-language localization of the Famicom's first game in the franchise, Mother. This one isn't an example of a game not making the cut for translation – it was actually fully translated and ready to be released in English, but got postponed, pushed aside and ultimately cancel because of bad marketing timing.
The English version of Mother still exists as "EarthBound Zero," though it's never seen an official, legitimate release from Nintendo. Perhaps now that NOA is finally acknowledging the series again we'll get another chance of seeing it go on sale at last.
(And Mother 3, while they're at it... Had to be said.)
9. Fire Emblem
The final example in our Famicom-as-Franchise-Launcher trio is Fire Emblem, which is yet another on-going Nintendo brand that got its start on the same red-and-white 8-bit hardware in Japan. The series' first installment, Fire Emblem: The Dark Dragon & The Sword of Light, let fans there meet Prince Marth in 1990 – over a decade before the rest of the world would see him show up in Super Smash Bros. Melee.It would be even longer before an actual Fire Emblem game made its way out of Japan, as 2004's Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance was the first. It's a little crazy that we've yet to hit the series' 10th anniversary in America, but it's Year 23 overseas.
At least we haven't missed out entirely on Marth's first quest to save his kingdom, though, as in early 2009 Nintendo of America did release a localized version of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, a DS remake of that first Famicom game.
10. Joy Mech Fight
Lastly, I've got to toss in just a little bit more Super Smash Bros. talk here – not only because speculation for the new games is now in full swing, but because it's amazing to me that Nintendo has never reached back to their first fighting game for Smash inspiration. Yes, just as we never got Nintendo's strategy titles and text adventures in the 8-bit days, we also didn't see an English version of the company's first fighter. (Well, if you don't count Urban Champion.)Joy Mech Fight featured a goofy, limbless robot named Sukapon in a battle against other brawling bots. It was one of Nintendo's last releases on the original Famicom – it came out in 1993, when the hardware was already 10 years old. It pulled every bit of power possible out of that aging system, though, and gave fans who hadn't yet moved on to 16-bit gaming one last colorful hurrah of 8-bit weirdness.
That late debut is probably what killed its chances of coming across the ocean to us. But seriously now, why has there been no love for Sukapon in Smash Bros. since? They could at least give the guy a cameo.