Sega Master System Titles Coming to Wii VC

[Joe Redifer]

Must be some sort of in-joke.  As an SMS gamer, I sure as hell don't get it.

[Game and Watch Kirby]

Perhaps can a screenshot be shown of the Chibi Crows from Wonderboy here? That way, there can be more of a proper understanding of this, and I'm curious to know what they look like, too .

[Keranu]

I don't know what they are referring to either, but I sense stereotypical black people (think DeeJay from SF2 or Lucky from KoF ).

[guyjin]

tried to google some screenshots, but couldn't find much.

[Black Tiger]

If people get offended by Loco Roco and Nintendo or whoever has decided to censor things like "Star of David" symbols, then I can't see anyway that they'd Wonderboy get released with an enemy character like this-




And although it shouldn't really be any more offensive, from what I've seen in American news over the years, the hero/main character makes it worse.

[Necromancer]

I still don't get it.  Is that supposed to be a blue tar baby?

[nat]

Yeah I don't get it either. I don't see anything in that picture that anyone in their right mind would be offended by, except maybe someone in the Blue Man Group.

[Turbo D]

This man is offended:



After all,...That was him!!!??!! 

[Black Tiger]

Maybe I'm pretty misguided about what passes as offensive in the U.S., even though I've seen island/jungle native stereotypes criticized in the media in recent years.

But its obvious that the blue color isn't supposed to represent a blue colored character anymore than Tom Tom/Boy's hair is supposed to be yellow instead of blonde. This is an 8-bit game from 1986. Otherwise they'd have named it something like "Blueberry Boy".

Here's the original artwork from the japanese manual-




After grabbing the screenshot, I was curious how Sega would've handled the character art and desciption in the english manual, since it still predated political correctness. It turned out that the manual I found in the nearest copy of the game was an international edition.


Here's the art and descriptions-




Here are the translations-

COAL KID
CHIBICROW: Lil' Crow
Scharzes Kind: Black Child
BEBES NOIR: Black Baby
NEGRETTO: -sounds like the rest

If people still don't find it offensive then so be it. But it doesn't change what the character is supposed to be.

[nat]

Oh. OK. Taking into account he is, in fact, BLUE in the game I don't think anyone is going to have any issues. I actually thought all these years that enemy was some kind of big-headed bird or something. Yeah, I'm serious.

[Black Tiger]

Oh. OK. Taking into account he is, in fact, BLUE in the game I don't think anyone is going to have any issues. I actually thought all these years that enemy was some kind of big-headed bird or something. Yeah, I'm serious.

I'm interested in finding out what they call him in the manual if he's left untouched.

[Keranu]

Very interesting name differences, Black_Tiger! Some of those names sound they like came straight outta old days, I wouldn't be suprised of the name "Coon Kid" crossed their minds.

I don't think this is as racist as the heads in Doki Doki Panic though.

[Game and Watch Kirby]

Thanks for providing the screenshot for us, Black Tiger. That doesn't seem to be too bad at all, but I think I might know what you're referring to in terms of offense. There has been some conspiracy over the appearance of characters resembling the one named "Black Face", who had large black lips and supposedly did some suggestive actions, and making alternations possible to avoid making reference to him. This is why the pokemon Jynx now has purple skin as opposed to having black before (I haven't read too much on this, however).

To get back appropriately on topic, although the games are in a "soon" date, I'm suspecting that the games will be released as early as sometime in the month of April.

[Game and Watch Kirby]

Wonder Boy was just released for Virtual Console today. For those who are interested, it is available for 500 points. I came pretty close saying the releases would be in April, but the first ended up being on the last day of March .

[Black Tiger]

Wonder Boy was just released for Virtual Console today. For those who are interested, it is available for 400(?) points. I came pretty close saying the releases would be in April, but the first ended up being on the last day of March .

I bought it today and it turns out that they jacked up the price at the last minute. So it looks like SMS games will all be 500+ points.

Coal Kid appears unaltered, but the manual omitted enemy names, even though they retained "God of Death".

The image quality is very nice (none of that Turbo VC blur), but it looks like the scrolling may be a bit choppy. Also some instruments sound a little garbled. Still lots of fun.