Author Topic: 2015/03: Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) - zagato blackfist  (Read 11531 times)

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Offline JonLeung

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2015/03: Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) - zagato blackfist
« on: February 28, 2015, 04:08:19 pm »
For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to zagato blackfist's Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) maps.

Jack and Ryu are out to save Chinaland (again).  And to do so, they'll have to recover the seven Auraballs!

Super Ninja Boy is the North American version of Super Chinese Land (J), a game in the "Super Chinese" series, of which most of the series has not been seen in the West. They do have a big fan, though, zagato blackfist, who has mapped a number of these games for us here on VGMaps.com.

It's not too uncommon to see games having regional differences. Besides language, obviously, there are other localization choices made to appeal to cultural standards. Perhaps religious symbols are censored out or modified, or food items are changed into something resembling more common cuisine in that part of the world. But Super Ninja Boy has a number of changes which seem rather superfluous. Compare the World map, for instance, and you can see that some interesting looking towns and castles look a bit more generic in the North American release. The overall landmass is similar, but here and there you will find a number of alterations that serve no real purpose. The Underwater area has a lot less detail and fewer sunken ships. Perhaps it's not necessarily a cultural thing but that someone just felt like changing the graphics and layout of the game without disrupting the overall experience. Nothing major, just random tweaks on a whim. Whatever the case, zagato blackfist has mapped both versions for us, so we can enjoy comparing them, even if we don't quite understand why the changes exist.  He's essentially mapped the whole game, twice!

So to recognize the effort and dedication in mapping a game 200%, zagato blackfist's Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for March 2015.

Offline dark_lord_zagato@yahoo.co

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Re: 2015/03: Super Ninja Boy (Super NES) - zagato blackfist
« Reply #1 on: March 01, 2015, 12:01:41 pm »
Thanks for this honor. It's nice to have one of my projects chosen for map of the month. :)

The whole game had an unfinished look to it in the Japanese version, like Culture Brain had to push it out the door before it was ready but they kept working on it for it's eventual US release. Judging by the way bombable wall tiles were changed from small cracks to big X signs i'd say most of the changes were to make the game easier. The underwater part is cleaned out so the player doesn't go bumping into everything and checking every last sunken ship to find out which one is real and the world map gets helpful arrows in the ocean.

Kind of wish they had kept the unique town icons though, but the US version looks much better overall.