O-Chan vs Freeon-Leon

Kid Fenris wishes to remind us all that, in the Western release of Hebereke, called “Ufouria: The Saga” (and by “Western” I don’t mean the US, it never got a NES release over here), its localizers decided to rename its characters, and while doing so even redesigned two of them, turning protagonist Hebe into “Bop-Louie,” and fursuited girl O-Chan into the orange dinosaur Freeon-Leon.

The Hebereke bunch were already a random bunch of crazies, but they’re cute crazies. Sunsoft’s localizers tried to inject them with a dose of hip-serum. Here’s a brief summary:

Hebe the penguin Changes: Rechristened “Bop-Louie,” given big eyes

O-chan the cat-suited girl Changes: Made a wall-eyed lizard not in any kind of suit, renamed “Freeon-Leon”

Jennifer the fish/frog thing Changes: Renamed “Gil”

Sukezaemon the ghost Changes: Renamed “Shades”

Kid Fenris notes, in a pair of posts, that, in the recently-released sequel for Switch, the localized versions make cameos during the return to base cutscene!

Hebereke had a much more productive live in Japan, where the series got several sequels. The changed characters are a relic of the time when Sunsoft seemed uncertain of how to approach overseas markets. Blaster Mastered was (and is) revered, but didn’t sell as well as they expected, so they released a weird kind of sequel called Fester’s Quest, with Addams Family characters. They localized a Game Boy version of Hudson’s Bomber King (renamed to “Robowarrior”in English) as a sequel to Blaster Master, called Blaster Master Boy, and sponsored another sequel, made by Software Creations, for the Genesis.

Back on the NES, the license for a Terminator 2 game fell through, so they rebranded it as Journey to Silius, and not being able to get the Superman license scuttled plans to release another game completely, despite a hasty renaming to “Sunman.” Was there ever another game publisher so cursed with licensing issues as Sunsoft?