Every weekend here at Nintendo Life we take a look at regional box art variants for retro video games and run a poll on which one is best. It's a fun, light-hearted exercise; really just an excuse to look at fantastic (and some not-so-fantastic) old-school cover art, which is steadily taking a back seat to menu icons in the digital age.
Finding candidates that make for a good contrast between regions is not as easy as you might think. More often than not, two regions use near-identical art (typically North America and Europe) and for the past 10-15 years companies have tended to use the same art across regions. Still, it's an odd thing to stumble on a candidate where each version features not only a totally different cover, but a totally difference licence.
The games seen above were made by Kemco, a developer and publisher probably most recognisable to Nintendo fans for publishing the Top Gear series. Kemco has a history that reaches back to the Famicom era and, as we'll see, the company has form when it comes to switching sprites, re-skinning games between regions, and even borrowing an idea or two.
The story of how one game ended up with three different, beloved licences around the world starts way back in 1989 when the Crazy Castle series debuted on the NES with The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. This game birthed a substantial set of side-scrolling platformers where the player negotiates simple maze-like levels, nabbing items on the way and avoiding prowling baddies. The original game didn't feature a jump button and, with its roaming enemies and collectibles, you might compare it to a side-on platforming version of Pac-Man. Progress is 'saved' via a password system that returns you to the level you last played.
The Crazy Castle series is a solid, inoffensive (if unremarkable) set of games with generic levels that could easily be spiced up with a sexy sprite or two, and Kemco (then known as Kotobuki System) was quick to realise this. The company re-purposed these games with different licences in different regions, depending on the rights they held in each territory. Bugs Bunny was already a replacement for another animated rabbit originally in the frame back in Japan...
From rabbit to wabbit
The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for NES was itself a straight sprite swap of the Famicom Disk System original Roger Rabbit. Kemco had acquired the Japanese game rights to Robert Zemeckis' 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was produced by Disney-owned Touchstone Pictures. In the West, however, publisher LJN had acquired those rights and another game--an action platformer based more closely on the film--was developed by Rare in the UK (not the venerable developer's finest work, it must be said). Wishing to release its Crazy Castle title abroad, Kemco resolved to purchase the rights to Looney Tunes characters from Warner Bros. and transform its headliner from a rabbit into a wabbit.
So far, so convoluted, but that wasn't the final switch for the first Crazy Castle game, either. Kemco went down another licencee rabbit hole with a Game Boy port which became the Disney-licensed Mickey Mouse in Japan. In the West, the Game Boy version retained the Bugs branding due to Capcom having the international rights to Disney properties (resulting in classics suck as DuckTales and Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers). Jeremy Parish's excellent Game Boy World video (above) concentrates on that Game Boy iteration of The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle--apparently the first licensed game ever to come to the handheld--but also compares the other versions, so give that a watch if you're curious.
From the beginning, then, the Crazy Castle series was a tangled web that snagged some of the most popular animated characters ever created, and there was plenty more confusion to come.
Hugo gonna call?
Kemco's approach to getting maximum mileage from its rather basic game design continued unabated with the 1991 Game Boy sequel known in North America as The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2. Mickey Mouse once again took the reins in the Japanese version (named, quite logically, Mickey Mouse II). Unfortunately, things would get complicated in Europe where two versions of the game released: one starred Mickey Mouse (although remember that the first game with Disney's mascot was Japan-only, so in Europe this sequel was simply called Mickey Mouse).
You'd be forgiven for thinking that the other European version of this game would star Bugs again. You would, of course, be wrong. Instead, Laguna Video Games threw ITE's Scandinavian troll and children's property Hugo into Crazy Castle 2, retitled it Hugo, and yet another licence got stirred into the Crazy Castle mix.
Apparently, Hugo, a Danish character and multimedia franchise, has an impressive catalogue of games, although we confess to never having heard of him.
Enter Kid Klown
The next entry in the Crazy Castle series jettisoned the established gameplay in favour of a more conventional 2D platformer 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 altered to star Kemco's own character Kid Klown and released the following year as Kid Klown in Night Mayor World. This game never saw the light of day in Europe, presumably because they were still confounded by the whole Mickey/Hugo situation.
Kid Klown would return to the series in the future and also star in other spin-offs, including an isometric platformer for SNES called Kid Klown in Crazy Chase. However, the Klown sat out the next couple of Crazy Castle games and Kemco enlisted new licences for the fourth game in the series.
Mickey ain't afraid'a no... lasagne
Evidently feeling that its licencee portfolio needed diversifying, Kemco added not one, but two totally new famous faces into the mix for the next entry, along with its ongoing agreement with the House of Mouse in Japan.
Japanese Game Boy owners received Mickey Mouse IV: Mahō no Labyrinth (above). However, in the US Kemco had got its hands on the rights to The Real Ghostbusters (by joining forces with Activision, it seems) and decided to switch out Mickey Mouse for Peter Venkman.
The Ghostbusters IP rights were a tangled mess before Kemco joined the party, and it was this which led to two NES versions of Ghostbusters II: the HAL Laboratory-developed good one with 'New' added to the title which never released in the US, and the horrible Activision one inflicted on Stateside fans. US gamers did get the decent Game Boy version of HAL's title, though, which hopefully made up for Kemco's lacklustre effort.
In Europe, it was decided that the Monday-hatin', lasagne-lovin' Garfield was the cat to host the fourth Crazy Castle title, and the game got yet another sprite swap in the retitled Garfield's Labyrinth. Make no mistake, despite appearances it's the same painfully average game.
Film and animation buffs will no doubt enjoy the serendipity of his unusual 'crossover'; actor Lorenzo Music provided the dulcet tones of both Garfield and Peter Venkman in animated form, while Bill Murray played both characters on the silver screen.
If this situation wasn't already murky enough, the confusion from this confluence of characters is compounded thanks to various elements and level designs in this Mickey / Ghostbusters / Garfield game being lifted wholesale from a totally unrelated title - 1991's P.P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon for Amiga and Commodore 64. If you watch the opening section of the videos above, you'll see that the broom-like object Mickey and Garfield pick up is actually a jackhammer much like P.P.'s (Venkman doesn't need one as he uses his proton pack to blast holes in the ground).
Surely this was just another acquisition Kemco put to use in typically economic fashion, no? Unfortunately not, according to the developer of P.P. Hammer, Gunnar Lieder. In a tweet on the topic several years ago, he confirmed there was no collaboration with Kemco whatsoever:
So, a cloud of suspicion now surrounds this impenetrable tangle of world-famous characters trapped in Kemco's Crazy Castle. While it seems none of the other games 'borrowed' elements from elsewhere, the series certainly wasn't through with licence-hopping.
More Mickey Mousecapades
Kemco kept things relatively simple for the follow-up, and after acquiring the rights to release a Mickey Mouse game in the US, Mickey Mouse: Magic Wands! was a straightforward localisation of 1993's Mickey Mouse V: Mahou no Stick, albeit one which released five years after the Japanese version with Super Game Boy support.
The game also saw release around Europe, although oddly with the Roman 'V' still attached. Presumably, European gamers were supposed to infer the 'V' referred to a number of magic wands rather than the fifth entry in a series they had only seen once before with Mickey Mouse at the helm.
The return of Bugs Bunny, and one final licence...
Kemco rolled out Kid Klown again for the Japanese Game Boy title Soreike!! Kid: Go! Go! Kid in 1997, although that game received a Game Boy Color makeover two years later and returned with Bugs' Looney Tunes crew as Bugs Bunny: Crazy Castle 3 in all territories, followed by Bugs Bunny in Crazy Castle 4 for GBC one year after that.
For the final console game in the series on Game Boy Advance, Kemco turned to one more licence after gaining the rights to Universal Studios properties (they also published the quite terrible Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure on GameCube).
Bugs got the boot and Woody Woodpecker stepped in for Tantalus Interactive's Woody Woodpecker in Crazy Castle 5, the final console entry in this most confusing of series.
Beyond a mobile game in 2004, we haven't heard from the Crazy Castle series since Woody Woodpecker's stewardship. Looking back over the games, it's a strange and convoluted web, for sure, and probably not one worth playing through unless you're a die-hard Crazy Castle fan.
Still, it's tough to name another series with quite such a complex history, certainly not involving luminaries from the world of animation - the Wonder Boy / Adventure Island melange didn't mix in famous licences like this. The games themselves might not be classics, but you can't help but marvel at Kemco's licence-wrangling around the basic Crazy Castle premise.
Let us know below if you've got any of the above games in your collection.
Comments 59
An article on this topic pops up every year or so, I never knew about the plagiarism in the Mickey/Ghostbusters/Garfield game(s) until now through!
I got the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle for my 4th birthday back in 89'. I played that game so much the music is ingrained in my brain.
The original game on NES. Is a great game. Beat it with my mom pretty much 30 years ago and did so again about 10 years back. Miss you mom
Ever compared the McDonalds and the Cool Spot gameboy games?
So happy to see a Jeremy Parish (Gameboy Works) call-out here. His YouTube videos and Retronauts podcasts are a must for any fan of retro games. I full recommend giving both a try if you have not before, you will learn a lot!
Hugo was a fun little character for kids but mostly forgettable. The other characters definitely had more marketing power. The only one I knew of was Bugs Bunny's crazy castle, but as I was in UK I probably just didn't notice.
I loved these kind of games as a kid.
I had Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 3 and 4 on GBC back in the day. Average games but I played the heck out of em.
I take it this is the same Kemco that churns out all those budget JRPGs on the eShop? Looks like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I had the first two bugs bunny crazy castle games on game boy in NA. I liked them. The second was better than the first.
So who should they get for crazy castle 6? Shonen Jump characters? Snoopy and the Peanuts gang? Some dead nicktoon like the angry beavers?
Ghostbusters licensing was crazy. The animated series was called "The Real Ghostbusters" because there was already an animated series called Ghostbusters. I seem to remember it had a haunted car and a scarecrow dude and it was something like Scooby-Do but with monsters doing the investigating.
Also, did anyone else ever play the original Ghostbusters game on the ZX Spectrum? I loved that when I was a kid and sunk so many hours into it.
@Roam85
Ren and Stimpy get my vote.
I spent hours of my childhood playing the real ghostbusters on gameboy, I didn’t know about this until now, I still consider the game still playable today
Hugo was featured in a French "interactive" TV show from the early 90s named "Hugo Délire" ("Hugo Craze").
Contestants would call the hostess (cheesy pop singer Karen Cheryl) in order to play video game stages starring Hugo. The character could be controlled live by pressing certain keys on the telephone (4 for left, 6 for right, 2 for up, you get the picture). Here's what it looked like :
https://youtu.be/Y7EpznT57lI
(actual gameplay starts at 2:04)
At the time, it was quite something.
Loved Hugo back in the day, there was a pretty decent skateboarding game although starting it up nowadays would probably have me screaming in hate over the controls or the framerate.
That must be the craziest region-changed game ever...
@RogerFederer in Spain too. It was the future! THE FUTURE!!
I love Crazy Castle! Bugs Bunny on GB is classic!
I'm curious just how profitable these games were considering how little effort is required to do an art-swap.
"and the horrible Activision one inflicted on Stateside fans."
https://www.nintendolife.com/games/gameboy/ghostbusters_ii
The link shows a 7.9 user rating, I think people would object to that. Such a user rating score would've put it in the Game Boy Top 50, but for some reason it's not on that list.
@RogerFederer and @granhalcon I remember that game being on UK TV too. It was everywhere. Analogue controls killed the future of TV show based gaming!
Hugo even had a tv show where kids would call in and control the game with their phones. Hugo himself would talk to the hosts.
The games would also be available for PC, but with a different voice actor for Hugo.
I owned a copy of "The Real Ghostbusters" back in the day! It wasn't a particularly great game, but I wish I'd hung onto it now.
@Dog I linked to the GB game (the HAL-developed good one) rather than the US NES game, which isn’t actually in our database yet. I’ve removed the link now.
The reason it may not show up in the Game Boy list is that games need a minimum number of user scores to become eligible.
Glad I am not the only one who instantly feels like this could be a Kingdom Hearts like thing haha. Never gonna happen of course, but it WOULD fit the title. Crazy Castle indeed.
Just try to imagine how this went down inside Kemco HQ from the perspective of a common employee
My favourite part of Crazy Castle 2 on the GB was putting in random 4 letter word passwords to go to different levels.
@RogerFederer Same in Germany and according to Wikipedia in 38 other countries. I wonder how no one at NL evert heard about that franchise. Was quite big on TV and PC games...
I had one of the Bugs Bunny ones and hated it. It was just so frustrating to play. Then again, I was like 7 when I last played it.
The music of the first two games is still in my memory to this day. I never owned them personally but it seems a lot of people did. In this case, it was my cousin. i guess they were nothing exceptional but to young me, not having access to a lot of cartridges, they felt like decent puzzle platformers. They got me thinking, and I felt smart when I got past another level (I was like... 7 or 8 years old, so don't judge).
@RogerFederer We watched Hugo in Belgium too, I remember it well / On regardait Hugo Délire en Belgique aussi, je m'en souviens très bien.
I think Kemco is mostly known for the massive pile of snes-style turn-based rpgs they are constantly putting out.
Some of them are even okay? Just the eXe Creates ones, though...
@DevlinMandrake I watched both cartoons of Ghostbusters. The original Ghostbusters(not sure if it's one or two words in that case) had two guys and an ape and it was much more zany as you describe. But it was actually a live-action show some time before that which is something I only learned about a couple of years back.
@mazzel
Probably because they were too young at the time.
@RudyC3
Was it the exact same program or was it hosted by someone else ? Axelle Red maybe ?
I loved Crazy Castle 2 on the game boy. They should bring this series back!
Crazy Castle 3 was my first ever GBC game, so this has a special place!
Switch needs these Mickey Mouse/Disney games:
Castle of Illusion (2013 and 1992 versions, Also World of Illusion and legend)
Disney Afternoon Collection plus Ducktales Remastered
Epic Mickey 1&2 Remastered
Kingdom Hearts 1,2 and 3 and the rest
Donald Duck: Going Quackers (that could be part of Disney Afternoon Collection Volume 2).
@sdelfin
I did not know that. My only exposure to the "other" Ghostbusters was one of those kids books that are made from stills from the cartoon with some (not very) explanatory text. I remember the ape dude (that was the scarecrow thing, thinking back on it), and a really old-style car that had a face on it.
Had no idea it was a live-action show. Must have been mental.
Glad to see more attention coming to this tangled series. I had a heck of a time finding good sources in it when writing a article on its history last year (https://the-avocado.org/2019/05/03/franchise-festival-53-crazy-castle/) so I know how hard this piece was to write. Jeremy Parish's video is a great piece of work!
@Dog I think that's the Hal game, not the Activision one.. The Activision one is for the NES.
Quick! Someone send AVGN this article!
@NESlover85 I remember the level theme songs too even though I probably didn’t play it as much as you! That goes something to say about the chiptune composers if we are STILL remembering 30 years later!
One other difference is that the Japanese version (Mickey Mouse IV) had passwords with vowels, but both of the western versions followed one of Nintendo's censorship policies: removing vowels from passwords to be sure there were no naughty words. (Kemco did one solution to that problem: rearrange the available character set used for passwords by shifting out the vowels and adding other characters such as numbers)
if nothing else, it really lives up to the "crazy" part of the name.
Well...that does explains a lot...
@Magrane My brain will queue up a song from a game I played 30 years ago then I have the fun task of trying to remember what the game was.
The first Crazy Castle game is so awesome, it's one of the very first games I've ever played and I still own it. Straightforward and filled with content.
I've bought Crazy Castle 3 and 5 a few years ago, and I was extremely disappointed to see these games being more like puzzle games with collectibles and less about beating your foes.
this is super interesting, great journalism
@RogerFederer Nah we watched the French version on FR3 (I think it was FR3 anyway)
New Ghostbusters 2 NES is an excellent game, I wish people focused more on it than the other NES games. We had it over here and its very accessible nowadays due to emulation. The GB one is good but I dont like how zoomed in the gameplay is.
Forgot to comment back in May, but Yume Fuusen (Dream Balloon) remains easily one of Kemco's best, as well as one of the most memorable Disney-themed games I've ever played (but should play solidly even if you're dealing with the Kid Clown doll-up). All the balloon mechanics and the stage variety sum up to one heck of a platformer, arguably in or at least not far from Capcom's Disney league. Even if they have to use clowns again, maybe Kemco and Nintendo could negotiate a landing on Switch's CGC one day?
Ha, crazy article, lol! I have all the Game Boy games mentioned on here, including the Kid Klown one. There's quite a few games with palette swaps for different regions on Game Boy. @madelk mentioned the 'McDonaldLand' released in Europe which is the same as 'Spot: The Cool Adventure' released in N. America. There's also Baby T. Rex (Europe) that had 4 other regional variants including 'Bamse' (Sweden), 'Agro Saur' (Australia), 'We're Back! A Dinosaur Story' (USA), and an unreleased version for 'Edd the Duck' which recently leaked on the internet in September 2020.
I liked Mickey Mouse V Magic Wands a lot back in the day.
Honestly, this whole approach of tacking on a license on a OK Game is still better then developing terrible games directly based on a license like western developers did back then (and still do).
That Hugo TV show where people would call in and control Hugo in minigames with the buttons on their phone also exsisted here in Germany.
What do you mean, never heard of Hugo
I remember playing these games...granted I skipped anything that was Mickey Mouse related (still hate Mickey), but I also remember playing the Universal Studios game on the Gamecube...yup, terrible, but still fun for some reason...as much fun as the Magic Kingdom Adventures on NES (which I also thought was pretty terrible). NES, Genesis, Super NES and Gameboy had a lot of fantastic games that I wish could somehow make a comeback. Would be nice to be able to replay them...somehow, I wish I could go back in time and never sell the consoles or games, but since that doesn't happen that way, guess it's memories to try and hold on to.
I remember playing a game with a totally different character named Hugo, close to 30 years ago. The title of the game was "Hugo's House of Horrors" - released for DOS [which is the version I used to play] and apparently there was also a Windows version released as well. The game was kind of similar (if I remember correctly) in gameplay / setting to "Maniac Mansion". I remember that one of my friends had one of the sequels (which I had to look up): "Hugo III - Jungle Of Doom". I don't think that I ever really played that one though.
I literally just watched a fact hunt video with this in it the other day...
What a strange coincidence.
People interested in this sort of zany differences between market localizations should also read about Eggerland/Lolo and their different names for different titles and how confusing that series is (Wonderboy in Monster Land is a good topic as mentioned in the article above).
To a lesser extent, there's also Dynasty Warriors, which has a different numbering between markets due to being "True • Three Kingdoms Unrivalled" in Japan, with the original Tekken-clone game being called "Three Kingdoms Unrivalled" in Japan and the sequel thus having a 2 in the West and no number in Japan. There's also the differences between the American and Japanese titles of the Donkey Kong Gameboy titles; we've got Donkey Kong • Donkey Kong Land • Donkey Kong Land II • Donkey Kong Land 3 in the US and Donkey Kong GB • Super Donkey Kong GB • Donkey Kong Land • Donkey Kong GB: Dixie Kong and Dinky Kong in Japan. Note that Land refers to the first DK Country adaptation in the US while the adaption of the sequel in Japan.
Somebody's been watching the "Larry Bundy Jr" Youtube channel, before writing this article. Had a video on this exact thing just less than a week before this article went up.
"Such as" not suck as?
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