Games That Were Complete Re-Skins of Other Games
So, you wanna design a game? Well, you could spend lots of time and money developing a concept, art, engine and other assets. Or, you could just take an existing game, change the main character, enemies, weapons and call the game something else entirely. Boom! New game!
This concept is called re-skinning and while it’s generally looked down upon as an easy cash-grab or lazy way to develop a new game, sometimes it works out rather well. Other times its a complete flop. Here are a few examples of games that were actually others in disguise.
SUPER MARIO BROS. 2
Super Mario Bros. 2 offered wildly different gameplay than the previous (and many subsequent) Super Mario Bros. games
Ever wonder why Super Mario Bros. 2 plays quite a bit differently from other Mario games of the era? What with all the pulling up turnips, jumping on enemies without squashing them and so on? Well, it was never supposed to be a Mario game in the first place. In fact, a different sequel to Super Mario Bros was released as super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan and was later re-released in North America as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. North America’s version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was released in Japan as well, but as a completely different property called Doki Doki Panic.
Nintendo did not want to release the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2 in North America over fears that the game might be considered too similar to it’s predecessor and also too difficult for western players (Japan has a long-standing tradition of making video games less challenging for western audiences). So, they took the four playable characters of Doki Doki Panic, turned them into characters that already existed in the Mario franchise and voila! New game!
Doki Doki Panic’s four playable characters had slightly different play styles. There was a well rounded character (Imajin), a character that could jump higher and hover a tiny bit at the peak of her jumps (Mama), a character who could float/glide when jumping (Lina) and a character who was faster both at running and pulling up items (Papa). These characters became Mario, Luigi, Peach and Toad respectively and while these traits were completely ripped from an entirely different game, they have have become established traits of the characters in later Mario games. Luigi being able to jump higher than Mario and Princess Peach being able to glide when she jumps are such examples.
This is one of the better-known example of a re-skin game going incredibly well. Super Mario Bros. 2 introduced some iconic enemies of the Mario franchise like the Shy Guys and Birdo. In fact, the North America version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was so popular that it was re-released (again) in Japan as Super Mario Bros USA. That makes it a re-release of a North American game that was a re-release of a Japanese game that was re-skinned to appeal to western audiences.
CHEX QUEST
I’ve talked about how bizarre the original Chex Quest game was as a 90s advertising ploy in a previous post. But as mentioned there, the fact that it was a marketing ploy for a cereal brand wasn’t the only crazy thing about Chex Quest. It was also a complete re-skin of Doom, one of the most violent and gory games of the era.
Chex Quest turned the deadly weapons of Doom into non-lethal kid-friendly weapons called “zorchers” that teleported enemies back to their home dimension instead of killing them. Each of the zorchers was a re-skinned version of a Doom weapon. The pistol became the mini-zorcher, the rocket launcher became the zorch propulser and the chainsaw became a rotating spork called the super boot spork.
While Chex Quest didn’t enjoy quite the same success as Super Mario Bros. 2, it did develop a pretty devoted cult following, enough to earn it two sequels AND an HD remake that was released on the Nintendo Switch in March of this year. Clearly, re-skinning isn’t always such a bad idea. One could even argue that this entry is a re-skin of the on from my earlier post.
SUPER 3D NOAH’S ARK
Chex Quest wasn’t the only game to take an ultra-violent first-person shooter and turn it into a game for kids. Super 3D Noah’s Ark was a re-skin of Wolfenstien 3D. They didn’t really try to hide it either, kept the 3D in the name and everything.
Designed to be a religious edutainment game that would appeal to children, Super 3D Noah’s Ark removed all violence, blood and gore from their game just like Chex Quest did. Wolfenstein’s weapons were swapped for an array of elaborate slingshots that functioned just like the different guns in the source material. For enemies, Super 3D Noah’s Ark had irate and hungry animals, mostly goats for some reason, who had broken out of their cages and were causing havoc on the ark. Noah, controlled by the player, had to use his slingshots to fire food at the animals in order to make them fall asleep.
Know of any other games that masqueraded as other games via re-skinning? Please let me know in the comments below!
