The Little Lord Fauntleroy was the first American novel to get a famicom game. Yes, it is mostly set in England, but Frances Hodgson Burnett lived in the USA for more than twenty years when she wrote the novel.
If anyone played the American version of this game, which (based on the two people I've ever talked to about this game) appeared to be a rental store staple around 1990, you might be surprised to see the Famicom version open with the river rafting level, which was the second stage in the US. It appears Seta correctly observed that opening with the river rafting gave an inaccurate impression the whole game was going to be a terrible top-down shooter rather than a terrible platformer, so they took stage 5, the pirate ship, and pulled it all the way back to become stage 1. Why not just swap the forest level with the rafting level? Who knows.
A shame Winkysoft's console debut was so poor. Their output on Super Famicom may as well have been from a different company with the quality difference. Ghost Chaser Densei is a great beat em up with a nice OST, and Macross Scrambled Valkyrie may be the best game based on a licensed property on that system, at least to me.
So true! Winkysoft did go on to make far better stuff. But everybody has to start somewhere, and a developer's console debut isn't guaranteed to be good. Looking at the early works of Atlus or ArcSys proves that to be true. Even this game has its merits, it's memorable in an odd way and I think the soundtrack is pretty decent.
I actually owned this game back in the day. Always thought it was mediocre at best. I didn't particularly hate it or anything, it was just there - though it doesn't look so great for 1989. As for Square's version... I guess most people (especially in the West) know it for one thing only. :P
The Little Lord Fauntleroy was the first American novel to get a famicom game. Yes, it is mostly set in England, but Frances Hodgson Burnett lived in the USA for more than twenty years when she wrote the novel.
If anyone played the American version of this game, which (based on the two people I've ever talked to about this game) appeared to be a rental store staple around 1990, you might be surprised to see the Famicom version open with the river rafting level, which was the second stage in the US. It appears Seta correctly observed that opening with the river rafting gave an inaccurate impression the whole game was going to be a terrible top-down shooter rather than a terrible platformer, so they took stage 5, the pirate ship, and pulled it all the way back to become stage 1. Why not just swap the forest level with the rafting level? Who knows.
A shame Winkysoft's console debut was so poor. Their output on Super Famicom may as well have been from a different company with the quality difference. Ghost Chaser Densei is a great beat em up with a nice OST, and Macross Scrambled Valkyrie may be the best game based on a licensed property on that system, at least to me.
So true! Winkysoft did go on to make far better stuff. But everybody has to start somewhere, and a developer's console debut isn't guaranteed to be good. Looking at the early works of Atlus or ArcSys proves that to be true. Even this game has its merits, it's memorable in an odd way and I think the soundtrack is pretty decent.
I actually owned this game back in the day. Always thought it was mediocre at best. I didn't particularly hate it or anything, it was just there - though it doesn't look so great for 1989. As for Square's version... I guess most people (especially in the West) know it for one thing only. :P
Great series of videos man! Can't wait til you do a vid on Sweet Home! Def my fav Famicom exclusive.
Sweet Home will be episode 566. I need to watch the movie again pretty soon to prepare for that one...
I do remember vaguely renting this on NES. don't remember a lot about it which probably says something...