The sequel with no first game (and other sequel rarities)

[carlsson]

^^ Perhaps putting a year marker on it would more easily allow them to sell yearly sequels? I'm thinking about EA Sports where the first game was NHL Hockey (released 1991) followed by NHLPA Hockey 93 and eventually NHL '94 and onwards.

[Steven Pendleton]

1 minute ago, carlsson said:

^^ Perhaps putting a year marker on it would more easily allow them to sell yearly sequels? I'm thinking about EA Sports where the first game was NHL Hockey (released 1991) followed by NHLPA Hockey 93 and eventually NHL '94 and onwards.

Yeah, I figured that they would just do KOF in 1994 and then KOF '95 and then continue with that, but they didn't. I don't know. SNK is weird.

[roots.genoa]

Also note that Electronic Arts always picks the year following the release (NHL '94 was released in 1993) to make the game kinda future proof (at least for a year ?), while SNK made the choice to pick the year of release. Easier to understand for the audience, but not very clever from a marketing point of view.

[carlsson]

Regarding the NHL video games, quite possibly EA name them after the year each season will end so NHL '94 actually takes place from October 1993 to June 1994. For the case of NHL '95, EA accidentally were accurate as there was a player lockout in the fall of 1994 so NHL had to play a short season from January - June 1995.

 

The same actually is true for most of the top football leagues, which are played fall to spring, which explains why the FIFA games are named in the same fashion. Only a few leagues here in the Nordic countries are played spring to fall, and even if EA made an exclusive game about Allsvenskan, I'm sure they would push it before New Year anyway instead of waiting until February-March to release the game about a season to begin in April.

[youxia]

Anybody who wants to delve into the origins of From Software's Dark's Souls franchise has to first solve The Great Mystery Of King's Field Numbering.

 

It's well worth it thou

[mbd39]

Console rather than game, RCA Studio II

 

There was no RCA Studio I.

 

[IntelliMission]

- Hey guys, careful with games such as Lumpis of Lotis IV... Lotis IV is a planet, so the game is not a (fake) sequel!

 

A lumpy in Lotis IV... He's nervous

 

- Let's talk about soccer for a second. Jikkyō World Soccer: Perfect Eleven was released in Europe and the USA as International Superstar Soccer, while the second part was released in Europe as International Superstar Soccer Deluxe. The third part, exclusive to the N64, was renamed ISS 64 for the Western release. But when by 2000 the N64 was dead and Konami moved their series to the PS2, they had to think of a new Western name for parts 3 and 4, right? So logically, they used International Superstar Soccer, which had 2 sequels using 2 and 3 (4 and 5 in Japan).

 

International Superstar Soccer Pro'' Turbo Final Edition

 

In the meantime, World Soccer Winning Eleven was released in Europe and the USA as Goal Storm, while World Soccer Winning Eleven '97 was released in the USA as Goal Storm 97 and in Europe as International Superstar Soccer Pro. And while Winning Eleven 3: World Cup 98 was Goal Storm 98/ISS Pro 98, the fourth part was somehow renamed International Superstar Soccer Pro Evolution in the rest of the world (killing the Goal Storm name), which had a sequel the next year that was not Winning Eleven 5, but Winning Eleven 2000 (in a similar fashion as Jikkyō J-League 1999 Perfect Striker 2, released in the rest of the world as International Superstar Soccer 2000.

 

And let's not forget about the 1.5 version of many Winning Eleven games: 5 and 6, the first two for the PS2, had a "Final Evolution" that never appeared outside of Japan, while the 8th one had a "Liveware Evolution". For the PS1, Winning Eleven 3 was the only one who had a "Final Version" in Japan. These games played differently: for example, WE5:FE was more oriented to a passing style and had stats that were from 0 to 99 instead of 0 to 20, and WE3:FV added the possibility of not returning the one-two pass instantly and waiting for the other player to advance until you press the triangle button to make the "through pass".

Edited March 25, 2021 by IntelliMission

[BrianC]

21 hours ago, jhd said:

 

Well, there is the Pepper II arcade game, presumably named on the same basis as Rally II. 

 

It's a judgement call, but The Goonies II game on the NES was technically a sequel, even though the original was never released in North America.  

 

 

Not on the home system, but Goonies 1 did make it to US arcades via PC-10 and the Vs. System. I first played that game at a Chuck E Cheese on a Vs. system cabinet. 

Edited March 25, 2021 by BrianC

[mbd39]

NES Power Punch II.

 

I guess there's the "II" because it's kind of, sort of supposed to be a sequel to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out? I'd never even heard of it back in the day and I was obsessed with MTPO.

 

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

Related to this I heard Wipeout 2097 was called Wipeout XL in the US because the publisher thought that Americans would be confused on where the other 2095 games were. lol And then the third game is just called Wipeout 3. There's also a lot of cases when a game series didn't start using numbers to denote a sequel, but then randomly start using them, or flip flop between using them and not. It's really confusing.

[RT-55J]

5 hours ago, youxia said:

Metal Slug X is not really the 10th game in the series, but a revised version of MS 2. Not saying they actually meant "X" as "10", but  somebdoy unfamiliar with this series could be excused for thinking so.

Similarly, Mega Man 10 and Mega Man X are completely different games.

 

Oh, and of course there's the infamous case of there being a Mega Man and Mega Man 3 for MS-DOS, but no Mega Man 2.

[carlsson]

38 minutes ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Americans would be confused on where the other 2095 games were

Good thing that Miner 2049'er added those last two letters then, otherwise people would have been asking Big Five Software for Miner 1-2048.

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, mbd39 said:

Console rather than game, RCA Studio II

 

There was no RCA Studio I.

 

Speaking of consoles, Microsoft skipped quite a few numbers of iterations with the Xbox 360...

[Tanooki]

Ok I guess this should count since it is a strange name and has a number on it.  Waku Waku 7 for NeoGeo MVS. I don't believe it's based on some anime or manga, at least wiki doesn't point to it, so where are the other 6 before it?

 

I had to think of this a bit, was going to run in with Time Cruise II, taken, same with a couple others.

[+jgkspsx]

I still feel cheated that the Lynx only got Ninja Gaiden 1 and 3.

 

Do I recall right that the Sega CD and Turbo CD each got one but not both of the Shadow of the Beast games? I think I own both... I think the Turbo CD got SotB1 and the Sega CD got SotB2.

[Tanooki]

Probably so, and I guess if you want to get into it, if you lived in a bubble of sorts, which in that day being a no internet world, Ys III Wanderers From Ys probably had you wondering where the hell the first two were if you owned a Nintendo console for instance... and if you were that very rare Master System owner, ...where'd #2 go??

[carlsson]

The fact that game series moved across different systems is something that has been going on since the late 1970's. Take for instance Sargon Chess for the TRS-80, CP/M, Apple II and Exidy Sorcerer (possibly PET too?) in 1978-79. The improved version Sargon II came out in 1979-83 but for TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, VIC-20 and C64. The later three may have wondered where the first chess game went. The next version Sargon III was significantly larger (about 30-40 times as much data due to they added an opening library) and released in 1983-88 for Apple II, Atari 8-bit, C64, PC DOS, Macintosh, Amiga and Atari ST. Yet again chess nerds who just bought their first Macintosh would not know about Sargon I and II, only Sargon III.

[+Black_Tiger]

Gauntlet IV is another game that only includes an optional variation of the original game along side a straight port.

[Sir Guntz]

On 3/25/2021 at 5:42 AM, Steven Pendleton said:

...and now I remembered The King of Fighters '94. Obviously, the ' means that it's the one released in 1994, so it's definitely not the 94th game in the series, but it's interesting to see that they titled the first one that way for some reason. I think normally you'd release a game called The King of Fighters and then use the year for sequels, but they decided to not do it that way. The thing is that the title for the international version of Garou Densetsu is Fatal Fury: King of Fighters, so I was kind of hesitant to mention it since maybe that means it doesn't count, but close enough.

 

Then after KOF 2003, they switched to a slightly more boring naming scheme: XI, XII, XIII, XIV, and now XV.

This has nothing to do with sequels missing an earlier entry but I still find it amusing that the first 7 Mario Party games were released once a year, for USA and Canada at least, meaning you can name them like this:

 

Mario Party 99 (N64)

Mario Party 2000 (N64)

Mario Party 2001 (N64)

Mario Party 2002 (GC)

Mario Party 2003 (GC)

Mario Party 2004 (GC)

Mario Party 2005 (GC)

 

As for King of Fighters, given Fatal Fury Special includes Ryo from Art of Fighting as a hidden guest character and KOF 94 includes many Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting characters, one could make the argument that Fatal Fury Special could be called King of Fighters '93.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Sir Guntz

[+jgkspsx]

How about sequels that rejected the existence of their predecessor? One that comes to mind is Super Cobra. Did they really want to distance it so much from Scramble? And then there’s the whole Robotron/Smash TV/Total Carnage mess. Super C is kind of similar.

[+jgkspsx]

For many years, I thought that Herzog Zwei was just a fanciful name. Little did I know there had been an original Herzog on Japanese computers.

 

Mortal Kombat Trilogy was a weird game because it was not a compilation, but a synthesis of all of the games, plus it added a new gameplay mechanic, a new finishing move, and a bunch of special moves. Not quite MK4 but a strange case.

 

 

[mbd39]

3 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

For many years, I thought that Herzog Zwei was just a fanciful name. Little did I know there had been an original Herzog on Japanese computers.

 

Americans might not have been aware that Secret of Mana was a sequel. The first game was released as Final Fantasy Adventure here.

 

 

[+jgkspsx]

Can we talk about the morass of confusion that is the Wonder Boy and Adventure Island series? Both series were originally made by Westone, who licensed them to Sega, who apparently own the Wonder Boy trademark, and to Hudson under the agreement that it not be treated as a series, apparently.
 

The first Wonder Boy is actually the first Adventure Island game, and has nothing mechanically or stylistically in common with the other Wonder Boy games except a cutesy art style, extremely limited animation, and a certain awkwardness to jumping.

 

 

Wonder Boy for the Game Gear was titled “Revenge of Drancon” in the US and given this scary box art:

 

 

And then you boot up the game and see:

 

 

Take THAT, truth in labeling laws!

 

And then that game starring Hudson mascot Master Higgins split off and became Adventure Island. It was released for the NES, along with its sequel, Adventure Island II.

 

 

Which was ported to the Game Boy as simply “Adventure Island”. Why you do this.

 

 

Meanwhile Wonder Boy (the series, which from henceforth had nothing to do with the skateboarding caveman) became a Sega swords and sorcery epic with RPG elements with Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

 

 

Which Hudson ported to the PC Engine as Bikkuriman World, a licensed TV show spinoff. 

 

 

This is the first Wonder Boy game in the new subseries named the “Monster World” series because the Japan home Master System port was called Super Wonder Boy: Monster World. Oh my goodness.

 

 

Meanwhile, Hudson introduced a NEW mascot, Bonk, ALSO a caveman.

 

(not Master Higgins)

 

And then Sega released Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair. This is the last Wonder Boy game outside the “Monster World” subseries, and the last to be released in the arcade.

 

 

Oddly enough, this is a lot closer to Adventure Island - your life meter goes down as you don't eat, and it starts out in familiar tropical Adventure Island surroundings. But it's really not the same as any other game in either series, as it's an autoscrolling game and your weapon is a gun. Also, you ride a dragon-bird-thing for boss levels that turns it into more of a shmup. So weird.

 

 

So of course Hudson ported to the Turbografx CD as just Monster Lair without any Wonder Boy branding (but left the original title for the PC Engine CD). Even though... this is pretty much Adventure Island, guys. Didn't you like that branding?

 

 

Monster Lair was ported to the Famicom by another company who licensed it from Westone, and titled Saiyūki World. This is based on the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, which you may know as the inspiration of Dragon Ball or from the strange 2009 post-apocalyptic future game Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. 

 

 

It got an original sequel, unrelated to the rest of the series, which was brought to the US as a very questionably conceived game starring a caricature of a Native American called Whomp ‘Em. (It's a pun on wampum, the currency of Eastern Woodlands Native Americans.) I ain’t posting the art.

 

And then Sega released Wonder Boy ALSO III: The Dragon’s Trap, a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME, for the first time developed specifically for home systems.

 

 

This was released on Game Gear in Japan as Monster World II: The Dragon's Trap and in Europe as Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap.

 

 

  

Which Hudson, hold on and let me wipe the tears away, ported to the Turbografx as Dragon’s Curse, ALSO with no mention it was part of a series.

 

 

And, get this: the PC Engine release was called Adventure Island. Why. Why why why.

 

 

Hudson, realizing they had kind of made a mistake by diluting their own trademark “Adventure Island” with a Wonder Boy game, released another Adventure Island (caveman) game for the TG16/PCE called “New Adventure Island”. Even though the US had not gotten a game called Adventure Island for the TG16. (This was maybe the only US release with the face of Master Higgins used in Japanese art?)

 

 

And then Sega released (in the US and Europe) Wonder Boy in Monster World, which if you are still reading this chronicle of insanity is the FIFTH Wonder Boy game and the THIRD Monster World game. Which is why in Japan it was simply called Wonder Boy V: Monster World III.

 

 

AND THEN HUDSON PORTED THAT TO SUPER CD UNDER THE NEW NAME “THE DYNASTIC HERO” AND EVERYONE IS NOW BUGS. LIKE IN HOLLOW KNIGHT. EXCEPT CUTE INSTEAD OF CREEPY. FINE. (This is the best version of the game btw.)

 

 

Meanwhile, caveman series Adventure Island III (NES) was ported to the Game Boy and released in the US as Adventure Island II. Yes, really.

 

 

Adventure Island (the caveman games) kind of petered off in the 16 bit era with two SNES games nobody talks about much. Meanwhile Sega released the stone-cold classic Monster World IV, now dropping the Wonder Boy moniker altogether, replacing our boy with a new heroine named Asha, and turning into something altogether sleeker and smoother, in Japan only. It only made it to the US in the mid-2000s on Xbox Live Arcade and then to the Genesis Mini.

 

Then Hudson, if you can believe this, remade Monster Land for mobile phones as SUPER ADVENTURE ISLAND. With Master Higgins and all. I’m not making this up.

 

 

Starting with reissues of the original games on PS2, then Xbox Live Arcade and Virtual Console, the Monster World series has risen from its grave, with a totally gorgeous hand-animated style remake of Monster World II called Wonder Boy in the Dragon’s Trap for modern systems: 

 

 

an (EDIT) fully licensed sequel Monster Boy in the Cursed Kingdom that split the difference between the two series names:

 

 

and the forthcoming 2.5d remake of Monster World IV (which you should buy) called Wonder Boy: Asha in Monster World:

 

 

But then... there's no Wonder Boy, and this game was never called Wonder Boy before. Ay yi yi.

And then there’s Clockwork Aquario, which is kind of a third rail of both series??? You should also probably buy this.

 

 

 

I probably left out something. This was exhausting. I swear both series would be more popular if their history were not so confusing. As a devotee of the Wonder Boy (not the caveman) series even I can’t really keep track of which is which.

 

That’s it, I’m going back to bed.

 

EDIT: oh yeah, the entire Wonder Boy Master System series was released by Tec Toy in Brazil in versions that reskinned it "Monica in..." as a tie-in with the popular Monica’s Gang comic book. Yup.

 

 

 

 

[+jgkspsx]

Epilogue: did I mention the actual North American cartridge for Wonder Boy in Monster Land?

 

 

<kermit-freakout.gif>

[The Usotsuki]

It's one of the few actual SMS carts I've got.