The game with Mickey Mouse, Ghostbusters or Garfield, depending on your region – Functionality

Every weekend, here on Nintendo Life, we look at regional variations of box art for retro video games and see which one is the best. It is a fun and joyful exercise; really just an excuse to look fantastic (and some not so fantastic) the old school cover art, which keeps coming back to the background for menu icons in the digital age.

Finding candidates who make a good contrast between regions is not as easy as you might think. In most cases, two regions use almost identical art (usually in North America and Europe), and in the past 10 to 15 years, companies have tended to use the same art in all regions. However, it is strange to come across a candidate where each version has not only a completely different coverage, but a completely different license.

The games previously viewed were created by Kemco, a developer and publisher probably the most recognizable of Nintendo fans for having published Higher speed series. Kemco has a history that dates back to the Famicom era, and as we will see, society has a form when it comes to exchanging sprites, redefining games between regions and even to borrow one or two ideas.

The story of the end of a game with three different and beloved licenses around the world begins in 1989 when the Crazy Castle series debuted on the NES with Crazy Bugs Bunny Castle. This game has spawned a substantial set of side-scrolling platforms where the player negotiates simple maze levels, catch objects on the way and avoid bad enemies. The original game didn't have a jump button, and with its enemies and moving collectibles you can compare it to a side platform version of Pac-Man. The progress is "saved" thanks to a password system which brings you back to the last level you played.

The Crazy Castle series is a solid and harmless (if not remarkable) play set with generic levels that could easily be spiced up with one or two sexy sprites, and Kemco (then known as the Kotobuki System) got it. quickly realized. The company has reused these games with different licenses in different regions, depending on the rights they had in each territory. Bugs Bunny was already a replacement for another animated rabbit originally on the frame in Japan…

From rabbit to wabbit

Bugs Bunny's crazy castle for NES was itself an exchange of straight sprites the original Famicom disc system Roger Rabbit. Kemco acquired Japanese playing rights for Robert Zemeckis' film in 1988 Who Killed Roger Rabbit, produced by Touchstone Pictures, property of Disney. In the West, however, the publisher LJN had acquired these rights and other The game, an action platformer based more on the film, was developed by Rare in the UK (not the best work of the venerable developer, it has to be said). Wanting to release his Crazy Castle title abroad, Kemco has decided to buy the rights to the Looney Tunes characters from Warner Bros. and transform his headliner from a rabbit into a wabbit.

So far so complicated, but it also wasn't the last change for the first game of Crazy Castle. Kemco went down another licensed rabbit hole a Game Boy port which became Disney's license Mickey mouse In Japan. In the West, the Game Boy version retained the Bugs brand because Capcom had international rights to Disney properties (which resulted in the sucking of the classics. Duck tales y Chip & # 39; N & # 39; Dale Rescue Rangers) Jeremy's parish is excellent Game Boy World Video

(above) focuses on the Game Boy version of The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle, apparently the first licensed game to hit the handheld, but it also compares other versions, so check it out if you're curious.

From the start, the Crazy Castle series was therefore a tangled web that tied some of the most living popular characters ever created, and there was much more confusion to come.

Hugo will call?

Kemco's approach to making the most of its fairly basic game design continued unabated with the 1991 Game Boy sequel known in North America as Bugs Bunny 2's crazy castle. Mickey Mouse has once again taken the reins of the Japanese version (logically called Mickey mouse ii) Unfortunately, things got complicated in Europe where two versions of the game were released: one with Mickey Mouse (although remember that the first game with the Disney mascot was only for Japan, so in Europe, this sequel was simply called Mickey mouse)

You would be forgiven for thinking that the other The European version of this game would once again feature Bugs. Of course, you would be wrong. Instead, Laguna Video Games launched Scandinavian ownership of ITE children's trolls Hugo in Crazy Castle 2, he renamed it Hugo, and another license has been added to the Crazy Castle mix.

Apparently Hugo, a Danish character and multimedia franchise, an impressive catalog of games, although we admit we have never heard of it.

Enter Kid Klown

The next entry in the Crazy Castle series rejected the established game in favor of a more conventional 2D platform game that included the radical addition of a jump. In 1992 Mickey Mouse III: dream balloon released for Famicom in Japan, although for the North American NES market, the game was modified to play as Kemco Kid Klown and published the following year Kid Klown in Night Mayor World. This game never saw the light of day in Europe, probably because they were still confused by the whole Mickey / Hugo situation.

Kid Klown would return to the series in the future and also play in other spin-offs, including an isometric platform game for SNES called Kid Klown in Crazy Chase. However, Klown did not participate in the next Crazy Castle games and Kemco obtained new licenses for the fourth game in the series.

Mickey is not afraid, no … lasagna

Obviously, believing that its license portfolio should diversify, Kemco did not add one, but of them New famous faces in the mix for the next entry, as well as their current agreement with the House of the mouse in Japan.

Japanese Game Boy owners received Mickey Mouse IV: Mahō no Labyrinth (sure). In the United States, however. Kemco got the rights to The Real Ghostbusters (apparently joining forces with Activision) and decided to trade Mickey Mouse for Peter Venkman.

Ghostbusters' intellectual property rights were a mess before Kemco joined the party, and this is what led to two NES versions of Ghostbusters II: the HAL developed by the right laboratory with "New" added to the title that has never been published in the United States. USA, and the horrible Activision inflicted on fans in the United States. However, American players. USA They got the right Game Boy version of the HAL title, which hopefully made up for Kemco's lackluster effort.

In Europe, it was decided that Garfield, who hated lasagna on Monday and was the cat, was hosting the fourth title for Crazy Castle, and the game got another sprite swap in the new name. Garfield Labyrinth. Make no mistake, despite appearances, it's the same painfully average game.

Cinema and animation enthusiasts will no doubt appreciate the chance of its unusual "crossover"; Actor Lorenzo Music provided the soft tones of Garfield and Peter Venkman in animated form, while Bill Murray portrayed the two characters on the big screen.

If this situation was no longer cloudy enough, the confusion of this confluence of characters is compounded by various elements and level designs in this Mickey / Ghostbusters / Garfield game which stems entirely from a completely independent title – 1991 PAGES. Hammer and its pneumatic weapon for Amiga and Commodore 64. If you look at the opening section of the previous videos, you'll see that the broom-shaped object that Mickey and Garfield pick up is actually a PP type jackhammer (Venkman doesn't have one). need because it uses its proton pack to explode holes in the ground).

It was surely fair otherr acquisition that Kemco has implemented generally economically, right? Unfortunately not, according to the developer of P.P. Marteau, Gunnar Lieder. In a tweet on the subject several years ago, he confirmed that there was no collaboration with Kemco:

Thus, a cloud of suspicion now surrounds this impenetrable tangle of world famous characters trapped in the mad castle of Kemco. While it looks like none of the other items have been borrowed from other games, the series certainly didn't end with the license jump.

More Mickey Mousecapades

Kemco kept things relatively simple for follow-up, and after acquiring the release rights for a Mickey Mouse game in the United States, Mickey Mouse: magic wands! was a direct location from 1993 Mickey Mouse V: Mahou no Stick, although it was released five years after the Japanese version with support for Super Game Boy.

The game also came out in Europe, albeit strangely with the Roman "V" still attached. Presumably, European players were supposed to infer that the “ V & # 39; & # 39; was referring to a series of magic wands rather than the fifth entry in a series they had only seen once with Mickey Mouse at the helm.

The return of Bugs Bunny, and a final license …

Kemco Releases Kid Klown Again For Japanese Game Boy Title Soreike !! Child: Go! Let's go! Boy in 1997, but this game received a Game Boy Color makeover two years later and returned with Bugs' Looney Tunes team as Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle 3 in all territories, monitoring Bugs Bunny in Crazy Castle 4 for GBC a year later.

For the last console game in the series on Game Boy Advance, Kemco resorted to an additional license after obtaining the rights to the Universal Studios properties (they also published the very horrible Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure