franchise minded rewrites

[abigsmurf]

What's everyone's opinions on heavy rewrites, late into games that are designed to shove what was an original game into an established franchise.

Most obvious example is Mario 2 (which has been covered extensively everywhere so I won't bother explaining it)

However there are more recent examples. Silent Hill 4 was originally a non-silent hill project but obviously late into development they decided it wasn't different enough for it to be worth while losing the Silent Hill name and wrote in a few Silent hill refferences (and put in staples like health drinks).

There's Apollo Justice which originally didn't feature Phoenix Wright. Instead he was written in late, hence the huge huge plot holes

->Open Spoiler<-

caused by the absense of Maya and Edgeworth who would've been supportive when he lost his badge.

There's also a counter example in The World Ends with you. I'm utterly convinced this was meant to be a Kingdom Hearts spin off. The EU box art even has a KH copyright notice on it and the design parallels (logos look a lot like heartless, as do the noise, Neku and Shiki both bear a strong resemblance) go a lot further than just having the shame character designer. I half expected the bonus ending

->Open Spoiler<-

to show the two angels put on black robes

It's a bit cheap but often this kind of rebranding when done well, helps promote originality in a franchise, as well as get people to experience games they otherwise wouldn't have. But then, for every Mario 2 there's a Dr Robotnik's mean bean machine which was incredibly shameless.

[Dogg Thang]

I've never found a good official source on what happened with SH4 except for people on message boards saying the same thing. While I have little reason to doubt it, it was developed by Team Silent as far as I can find out and that would make it more a SH game than Origins and Homecoming in my opinion no matter what its original intention.

But as for my general opinion on what you're asking - it doesn't matter to me if the end product is good. If it's good, it's good. I don't really care how it got there.

[sj33]

I think it says a lot about the nature of the industry (or rather, the purchasing habbits of the average gamer, myself included) when an original title has to be altered to fit into an established brand to sell. You just have to look at the biggest titles this Christmas to see how people are so attached to franchises. Far moreso than Hollywood, I'd argue.

[EvilBoris]

Dinosaur Planet on the N64 turned into StarFox Adventures, although I really enjoyed it I much preferred that RARE look that it originally had opposed to the Random Starfox characters put into a plot about dinosaurs.

[fuse]

Apollo Justice just seemed like cowardice to me - I liked the game, and I respect them for trying to bring in a new character, but the way that Phoenix was shoe-horned in so hard just seemed like they didn't want to put off die-hard Phoenix lovers.

I always felt that if you took the Disney paint off Kingdom Hearts it would've been the next Seiken Densetsu game. Think that's partly why I hold such a grudge against it.

[saif]

Take the disney out of KH and you won't have seiken denstetsu, you will have nothing. KH would be nothing (as a sales machine anyway) without disney imho.

I think gaming is more series/franchise led than other things but i feel it is in part due to the immaturity of both the market (gamers) and the industry. I think the thing that needs to change is for creators to be better known (and not just in gaming circles) such that games can be linked to certain developers and so gain interest from that.

But, films have been doing it for a while - famous one is die hard with a vengance.

[Stormtec]

There's also a counter example in The World Ends with you. I'm utterly convinced this was meant to be a Kingdom Hearts spin off. The EU box art even has a KH copyright notice on it and the design parallels (logos look a lot like heartless, as do the noise, Neku and Shiki both bear a strong resemblance) go a lot further than just having the shame character designer. I half expected the bonus ending

->Open Spoiler<-

to show the two angels put on black robes

Well, the design parallels could be attributed to everything in the game being drawn and designed by the same artist as KH. I would be surprised if it was meant to be a Kingdom Hearts spin-off, as it has no hint of anything to do with Disney (isn't that the KH modus operandi?), and you'd spot things like that if they just cut it out last minute, you'd think. Though it is odd about the KH copyright notice. I would say having the same character designer has a lot more influence on the way the game looks than you seem to be presuming. Some artists, notably this one, have a very distinct style and are very easy to spot. Think about the character artwork in Chrono Trigger and then look at Dragonball Z (or any other anime/game featuring Akira Toriyama's artwork) and you'll see that the resemblence is so strong that it's almost like they just swapped hairstyles and colour palettes.

Though apparently the development of the game was inspired by Chain of Memories, I really doubt this was a case of a last-minute rewrite of what was meant to be a Kingdom Hearts game.

Ofcourse, this is just my humble opinion =)

[abigsmurf]

To me there are just too many coincidences. The noise essentially being the heartless, the player/red pins having logos incredibly similar to the heartless and nobody designs. Neku = Sora, Shiki = Kairi, the fact it could easily

->Open Spoiler<-

be an experiment like the prologue of KH2 is

.

Aside from his love of belts and zips, Nomura does produce fairly distinctive character designs for each of his games which is why to me it seems to be a consious decision to have so many design parallels to KH.

[eastyy]

dont know if this counts but the 2d fighter rage of the dragons was supposed to be a double dragon game....but they could not get the licencensing for it

[Skull Commander]

There is the classic case of universal soldier for the megadrive. A turrican game with changed sprites to 'cash in' on the film.

[MattyD]

There is the classic case of universal soldier for the megadrive. A turrican game with changed sprites to 'cash in' on the film.

And some years before that, on the Master System, there was that Commando clone they re-released with a new title screen and main character sprite as a Rambo tie-in (can't remember if it was II or III though). Though both are more of a case of rebranding that ret-conning a game into an existing story arc.