>>100814304The late 80s and early 90s were when those video game brands were new and the Japanese IP holders were more interested in getting them international brand recognition by any means necessary. That's how we ended up with stuff like Captain N, the Mario Super Shows, the Zelda cartoon, the American Street Fighter cartoon that might as well have been GI Joe, all those horrific DiC Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons, and so on. Accuracy wasn't as important as getting the names and concepts out there on an international level.
>Fast Forward 25 yearsThe Japanese IP holders already have their footholds in international markets and are thus in a position to exert more control over how their IPs are handled by foreign licensees. They no longer have to grin and bear shit like Captain N's green Mega Man, bullshit localizations like "Dr. Robotnik", Charlie being mutated into Blanka, or the Mario Bros teaming up with Milli Vanilli to defeat a generic lizard man that's supposed to be Bowser but looks nothing like him.
It's why systematically over the past 20 years, every single solitary piece of unique American localization of video games has been dismantled/retconned to bring the brands into alignment with the Japanese source material. They have the authority to do that now. That wild west of awful American cartoon and movie adaptations of Japanese video games are over.
