Something You Learned Today

[Jedi Master Baiter]

I just realized that Rick Zumwalt was in an episode of Full House, playing a father of a kid who's bike was stolen by Jesse:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/the-bicycle-thief-airdate-november-23-1993-rick-zumwaltjohn-stamos-picture-id109428246

I remember that episode.

Anyone who's been here long enough knows how much I love Bull Hurley.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

I just found out that the elusive Warrior Rahzar with Fur

[UglyJoe]

Anyone who's been here long enough knows how much I love Bull Hurley.

                       

[Armageddon64]

I learned Armageddon movie (username checks out lol) is probably the film with the most pro CRT monitors PVM/BVM on screen, and I imagined how many Famicom I could plugged on all those wonderful CRTs... that would be amazing 🥹

[FamicomRetroGamer]

I haven't used nor logged in to this community for so long I had forgotten so much of it, but to be fair, it was offline for a while (I think). Plus, to log in it shows the username "famicom_proud_owner" while posting as "FamicomRetroGamer" and I knew that FRG username sounded familiar... It was me.

I didn't remember I posted so much here and what's that Sharp C1 thing about.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

All this time I didn't know there was a PlayChoice-10 version of Metroid with a map: https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/PlayChoice-10

[P]

A game that really needs one too. Unfortunately I don't think this map updates as you play (to show your position etc). It's probably just a static map as part of the game description that all PlayChoice-10 games has and not much better than the map that comes in the manual for the game.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Despite others mentioning this before, I just found out myself that Hello Kitty World (Famicom JP only) is Balloon Kid (Gameboy US only) which is Balloon Fight GB (Gameboy JP only).

Now I want. (Hello Kitty World)

[P]

Yeah I think that whole ordeal is amusing too.

I wonder if they didn't just port Ballon Kid as is to Famicom but never found the market timing for releasing it, and then they just rebranded it Hello Kitty and released it like that (meaning that there might be a Ballon Kid Famicom prototype ROM hiding somewhere in the world).
Or it was the other way around, the Game Boy version is a port of the unreleased Famicom version.

[adori_12]

When you find out about Hello Kitty World you can't help but imagine what the hell happened that led to the creation of it.

I haven't found any interviews or magazines that explain the development of the port but here's my theory.
Balloon Kid was never intended to release in Japan which is not weird considering Kid Icarus: Of Myths And Monsters, also a first-party title published some months later, suffered the same fate. Character Soft found out that Balloon Kid, a quality, cute and cartoony game, had no plans to release in Japan and were interested in converting it to a Sanrio game, so they had Pax Softnica, the original devs for Balloon Kid and with whom they had already worked in Kero Kero Keroppi no Daibouken, to port the game and change it into a Hello Kitty game. They got the rights from Nintendo to do this but for whatever reason they decided to strip away all references to Nintendo and their games in the game itself. The SMB jingle from the bonus stage was removed, the Balloon Trip mode was removed likely because it featured the original Balloon Fight theme, and even the title screen credits "Mario Co. Ltd." which was a joint venture between Nintendo and Dentsu and not Nintendo themselves.

It is very unlikely that Balloon Kid was a Famicom original that got ported to the Game Boy, given the choppy framerate of the game and how all stages in Hello Kitty World have lots of added blocks so that the Game Boy screen dimensions stay the same, shows that the game had always been planned with the Game Boy in mind. Hello Kitty World starting as a straight port is more likely, but again I don't think Nintendo ever wanted to publish the game in Japan and that's why they allowed Pax Softnica to change it to Hello Kitty World. Even when the game finally made it to Japan with no major changes it still was a Nintendo Power GB exclusive that was never sold in stores and I think that proves they didn't have much interest in its Japanese release.
The only evidence I could think of that Hello Kitty World started as a direct port would be the leftover theme from Balloon Fight, but that was likely just Hirokazu Tanaka porting all his songs from the Game Boy so that Character Soft could decide which ones would be used and which ones wouldn't.

And well as for the game I really like it, such a fun sequel that really deserves more attention. Thankfully Hello Kitty World is not expensive at all, I hope you can get a copy  .

[P]

Good point about the Game Boy resolution, that's pretty strong evidence that the Game Boy version is the original.

I don't get why Nintendo would make a game with no plans of releasing it in Japan though, unless Balloon Fight was much more popular outside Japan or something. That does fit Kid Icarus though as Paluthena no Kagami was supposedly considered a so-so game while in NA and Europe it was one of the most beloved NES games (I loved it myself as a kid despite its shortcomings). Probably because we had a much smaller game library compared to Japan.

There are more examples though, Gumshoe comes to mind and that wasn't a sequel to anything AFAIK. I guess it was just one of those games that Nintendo made but the marketing team didn't find a good timing to release it and pitched it to NOA and NOE (or whatever connections Nintendo had in Europe at the time besides the Scandinavian Bergsala) who both were interested.
I think Star Tropics was a game that actually was made for a western public from the start though. Actually Donkey Kong was also, but that didn't stop them from releasing it in Japan as well, and since it was as popular as everywhere thankfully, Mario and Donkey became as famous in Japan as everywhere else.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

I finally found out where these stairs go to:

https://www.filfre.net/2015/07/a-new-force-in-games-part-3-scumm/library/