warelander
Some random guy online
Whether or not certain games have enough western appeal is a question that often comes up even today, the 80s and 90s in particular are notable in the changes in marketing they took, in the hope that potentionally risky games could be made more marketable or to emphasize aspects of a franchise a lot more, such as taking away the more cutesy elements of Sonic's classic design in favor of the assface one you see in Genesis marketing and artwork, angry/hardcore Kirby on the other hand would be an example of the former case.
And then there are reskins, games that are generally unchanged in gameplay, but have their original themes, aesthetics and characters replaced´, usually with ones from another, already existing franchise.
This is a practice that has very much fallen out favor with people, back then you could bank on consumer ignorace to get away with it, but nowadays with the internet being how it is now people will find out quick. The biggest problem with it is that while it will likely yield short term success, it can potentially cause a lot of confusion in regards to the source franchise, make it difficult for people to find out that there is more of that game they enjoyed in the reskined version and doesn't do the source franchise any favors.
This is where Wario Blast takes an interesting approach:
The game is a reskin of Bomberman GB and behold, Bomberman is still present, even with Wario taking top billing and the biggest space on the cover.
Of course, I'm aware that Wario back when the game came out didn't have enough of a estaplished series (Land 1 and Wario's Woods came out the same year) to make a full reskin ala' Pokemon Puzzle League possible, but it's still very notable, the only other reskins I can recall that keeps larger (on a relative scale) elements from the original besides raw gameplay around to a degree is Dr Robuttnik's Mean Bean Machine, which still kept a lot of music, Carbuncle and the titular Puyos from Puyo Puyo, but besides the music even those got obscured, to varying degrees.
This guy sure as heck ain't called ''Has Bean''.
Wario Blast on the other hand doesn't do that, it's in actuality the same game as Bomberman GB, just with Wario added into the mix, so in that regard it's not really a ''true'' reskin, since Wario's presence is really the only thing that's different and even then he didn't replace Bomberman either.
I know this sounds unspectacular as all get out, but I can't help but find it interesting how instead of going for the usual, then popular practice of changing the entire aesthetic the instead made a pseudo crossover out of it, of course Bomberman wasn't new to the west at that point unlike other examples, but even then I can't help but find Wario Blast's approach interesting, even if that comes from sheer minimalism when you get down to it.
So yeah, anyone else got thoughts on the matter?
And then there are reskins, games that are generally unchanged in gameplay, but have their original themes, aesthetics and characters replaced´, usually with ones from another, already existing franchise.
This is a practice that has very much fallen out favor with people, back then you could bank on consumer ignorace to get away with it, but nowadays with the internet being how it is now people will find out quick. The biggest problem with it is that while it will likely yield short term success, it can potentially cause a lot of confusion in regards to the source franchise, make it difficult for people to find out that there is more of that game they enjoyed in the reskined version and doesn't do the source franchise any favors.
This is where Wario Blast takes an interesting approach:
The game is a reskin of Bomberman GB and behold, Bomberman is still present, even with Wario taking top billing and the biggest space on the cover.
Of course, I'm aware that Wario back when the game came out didn't have enough of a estaplished series (Land 1 and Wario's Woods came out the same year) to make a full reskin ala' Pokemon Puzzle League possible, but it's still very notable, the only other reskins I can recall that keeps larger (on a relative scale) elements from the original besides raw gameplay around to a degree is Dr Robuttnik's Mean Bean Machine, which still kept a lot of music, Carbuncle and the titular Puyos from Puyo Puyo, but besides the music even those got obscured, to varying degrees.
Wario Blast on the other hand doesn't do that, it's in actuality the same game as Bomberman GB, just with Wario added into the mix, so in that regard it's not really a ''true'' reskin, since Wario's presence is really the only thing that's different and even then he didn't replace Bomberman either.
I know this sounds unspectacular as all get out, but I can't help but find it interesting how instead of going for the usual, then popular practice of changing the entire aesthetic the instead made a pseudo crossover out of it, of course Bomberman wasn't new to the west at that point unlike other examples, but even then I can't help but find Wario Blast's approach interesting, even if that comes from sheer minimalism when you get down to it.
So yeah, anyone else got thoughts on the matter?
