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

[Steven Pendleton]

37 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Didn't they make Dracula X canon eventually though?

It always was. Well, 2 of them are, anyway. Not sure about Dracula XX.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Steven Pendleton

[Reaperman]

10 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

It always was. Well, 2 of them are, anyway. Not sure about Dracula XX.

And 'Dracula XXX' is something else entirely. Theoretically, in the future they could work it into the main storyline, but IMO they'd have to rework/retcon too much of the original story. Best enjoy it as it's own stand-alone entry, if you ask me.

[Crimefighter]

On 3/24/2021 at 2:27 PM, 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.  

 

 

It's likely talking about the PC game - I've played the C64 version.

[Crimefighter]

On 3/27/2021 at 2:02 PM, jgkspsx said:

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.

Then they tried to retcon it as a Gradius prequel...

[PFG 9000]

12 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

That's not my point, but sure.

I guess I don't understand your point then.

[Steven Pendleton]

11 minutes ago, PFG 9000 said:

I guess I don't understand your point then.

I forgot what it was, so yeah, don't worry about it, I guess.

[+jgkspsx]

On 3/28/2021 at 12:52 PM, jgkspsx said:

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. 

I want to apologize to JP Famicom exclusive Adventure Island IV for leaving it out, because it is totally awesome.

 

 

The SNES games are pretty awesome too. Sorry I gave them short shrift.

 

 

[Zoyous]

Regarding After Burner II, I was always baffled by it because the title screen of After Burner II really emphasizes it, with the rotating display of spheres formed into a roman numeral I being shot down by a plane and then re-forming into the II. Sega did the same kind of revision with Galaxy Force II. Here in the States, I only ever saw the II versions in arcades and it also was a matter of waiting years for the internet to come through with the details. The key difference between those games and their original versions is that the II versions add a throttle to control your speed, whereas in the I versions your speed was constant. Thus, the naming of the home ports (After Burner for the SMS and After Burner II for the Gen/MD) is actually arcade-accurate as the SMS game has no throttle but the Gen/MD game does.

 

Similar to Herzog Zwei, another Technosoft game that always puzzled me with its missing prequel was Thunder Force II. I could never find any information on it until years later when I had internet access and learned that the first Thunder Force game only came out in Japan in 1983 on computers. 

[Steven Pendleton]

Oh, hey, it's this thread. Did you know that there are 2 different Crash Bandicoot 4s? You do now.

[+jgkspsx]

40 minutes ago, Zoyous said:

Similar to Herzog Zwei, another Technosoft game that always puzzled me with its missing prequel was Thunder Force II. I could never find any information on it until years later when I had internet access and learned that the first Thunder Force game only came out in Japan in 1983 on computers. 

They could have just given it a new name in the west, but nooooooooo. Then they compounded the confusion by giving the fourth game and third US game a new name… with a typo in it.

 

[TheGameCollector]

On 3/25/2021 at 4:42 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.

That's because the first Fatal Fury game was called Fatal Fury: The King of Fighters. Technically Fatal Fury counts as the King of Fighters 1. Control and sprite-size wise the Fatal Fury series' engine was definitely used as more of a base for King of Fighters' 94 than any other series they had. I think The King of Fighters is kind of a direct sequel to the Fatal Fury series.

Edited February 12, 2022 by TheGameCollector

[DragonGrafx-16]

On 2/6/2022 at 10:29 AM, jgkspsx said:

They could have just given it a new name in the west, but nooooooooo. Then they compounded the confusion by giving the fourth game and third US game a new name… with a typo in it.

 

And then when back to Thunder Force for V... but then we only got the PS1 version here (I play the Saturn version thanks to having a Pseudo Saturn cart) 

[dendawg]

Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.

Edited February 12, 2022 by dendawg

[+jgkspsx]

Battle Lane Vol 5

 

Volumes 1-4 went into the wood chipper I presume.

 

[Lostdragon]

On 3/25/2021 at 8:52 AM, carlsson said:

A few more from the huge C64 library:

 

Android II (quite sure there wasn't a previous Android game related to this one)

Deathwish III (perhaps the Roman numeral comes from elsewhere)

 

Then we have games based on movies which perhaps breaks the rule as the game is named after the current movie:

Rambo - First Blood Part II and Rambo III - The Rescue but I'm unsure if there ever was a game based on the first Rambo movie "First Blood" from 1982, at least one from Ocean.

The same could be said about Terminator II - Judgment Day. While there were other games called Terminator, it doesn't seem that any were tie-ins with the 1984 movie.

The Terminator (1991)  by Bethesda Softworks was the first video game based on the movie. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

Thought of a few more potential entries:

 

 

Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance 1988 on the 8 bit home computers in the UK  became simply Last Ninja on the NES in 1990.

Zzyorxx II on the Jaguar, might of  been developed after the Falcon game Zzyorxx was canned?

Never been 100% sure on the above, as it first appeared in ST Format magazine going under the name of Zozziorx 
and quoted a M.Schembri as saying the Jaguar version looked like the Atari Falcon version, but used over 256 colours, had 3 parallax scrolls and used more sprites.

 

Matrix: Gridrunner 2 on the Commodore C64 in the UK was released in the USA as Attack of the Mutant Camels.