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).

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.