In Games

Did anyone know that in parts of Europe they changed some of the NES game titles b/c some were considered too violent.. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Ninja Gaiden became Shadow Warriors, and Contra became Probotector. And in the name changed Contra you are fighting as robots not humans. Here are some pics...

as far as I know, Probotector is the Japanese name, not the european one. and gameplay is unchanged. the other two seem accuate though.

It was called Gryzor in Japan I'm pretty sure.

'Gryzor' is like an upgraded version of 'Contra'. It has extras in it like cinema displays and more music.

'Contra' was also called 'Gryzor' on MSX (different version of the game though).

So what was it called in Japan? I can't find the Japanese NES ROM. I know they changed the story when they brought it over; maybe they dropped the cinemas as a result?

EDIT: Here we go. From a MAME site:
"In 1987 Konami released Gryzor, a platform shoot-em-up with two familiar-looking heroes. In the same way that Nemesis updated Scramble, Gryzor could be regarded as an evolution of Green Beret. In the US, the game was renamed Contra, presumably to cash in on the publicity surrounding the Iran-Contra scandal."

From Wikipedia:
"In Japan, third-party developers of Famicom games were allowed to use their own custom chips for their games in addition to the standard ones given by Nintendo (in Contrast to the U.S., in which only Nintendo's first-party mappers were used). Konami took advantage of this situation and developed the VRC (Video Resource Chip) series of mappers for the Famicom. The Famicom version of Contra made use of the VRC2 chip and its added effects are quite noticeable when compared to the American NES version with the presence of animated backgrounds such as palm trees and snowfalls. The Famicom version also included additional cut-scenes between stages, a map displaying the player's progress and extended opening and ending scenes (including a secret message after the closing credits) which serves to narrate the game's storyline to the player (in Contrast to the US version, which had no in-game narrative at all)."

I noticed when playing Gryzor that the palm trees in the background were animated. I wonder why Nintendo only allowed first-party mappers in the US. I bet we got a LOT of inferior ports of Japanese games. I wonder if there were cool effects like that in other Konami Famicom titles that got cut in the states.

It was definitely called Probotector in europe. The gameplay itself is unchanged but it's all robots rather than humans like Vermilion said.

Another game with the word 'ninja' in the title that got changed was Shadow of the Ninja, which was renamed to Blue Shadow.

In a strange twist of logic, Bad Dudes was renamed to Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja. Go figure.

Oh god, yes, it does lead to some slight confusion sometimes

That picture of the Shadow Warriors box is from the Swedish version. In thes rest of Europe we got the same box as the US, only Ninja Gaiden replaced by Shadow Warriors (although Ninja Gaiden was put in a smaller font on the box).

And Probotector is the European name, it's pretty clear too because that picture is of a NES box and not a Famicom box.

Other famous name change: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles => Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. On is a list of these name changes.

Is this implying that 'Green Beret' is a prequel of sorts to 'Gryzor'?

That would mean that Konami's 'Rush 'N Attack' is the prequel to 'Contra' (since those are the North American titles).


Most likely the U.S. got several crappier versions of Famicom games. I would be interested in searching for a list of ported titles that had custom mappers in Japanese version.

Yeah I have known about these for a while now.

Thats funny because i always thought proboprotector was a hack. Well it turns out it wasnt. Learn something new everyday.