Retro Gamer Travels
LOST IN TRAN SLATION
How the rest of the world experienced your fav ourite games
» [SNES] The characters of Panel De Pon were fine for Japanese gamers, but wouldn’t work elsewhere.
JPN
FORMAT
ECONOMY
SNES ■
DEVELOPER
Nintendo/Intelligent
Systems ■
YEAR
1996 ■
ORIGIN
Japan ■
LOCALISED FOR
Rest of World ■
REASONS
Commercial ■
PANEL DE PON
PANEL DE PON JPN ROW
Japan Rest of World
Departing: 1996
How do you sell a puzzle game outside of Japan? Well, according to videogame executives of the early Nineties, the best way to do it was to rebrand it wholesale by lifting a whole bunch of imagery from another videogame series starring a popular mascot. That’s how Puyo Puyo became Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Kirby’s Avalanche, and how Cosmo Gang: The Puzzle became Pac-Panic.