Warning - this is likely to spoil minor parts of the Tokyo Xanadu plot although that is not the intent.
I first played Tokyo Xanadu in 2018 on the PlayStation Vita. I also did a run through the eX+ edition on the PlayStation 4 a couple years later. Tokyo Xanadu is filled with references to other Falcom games. It's set in a world where Falcom is the only game developer in existence. Tokyo Xanadu is really a Falcom fan game, one that happens to be made by Falcom.
I started a gallery of all these references but realized that was a boring topic and scrapped it.
Some time later Tokyo Xanadu was ported to the Switch. I of course played it and noticed right away that many of these fan references were replaced. I don't know why they did that. It's their game, they can do what they want.
So I dusted off this old draft and turned it into a comparison of what changed. I can't promise that isn't also a boring idea.
This is not in order of appearance, but starts with one of the odder ones:
The Gurumin claw machine is now "Gurunin". The visible plushies are from other games and received a palette swap.
This slight rename and palette swap thing is everywhere. Staying in the arcade:
Ys is now simply "Y" and the characters look like bootleg versions of themselves.
Again, it's their game, they can do whatever with it. I just find it a weird thing to spend extra time on.
I haven't seen an explanation for this change. I can only speculate... like maybe they are trying to establish this is set in a fictional universe? That seems like the most obvious explanation. It's the kind of thing a lawyer would tell you to do. I've worked on a lot of software and have many stories of lawyers asking for changes to avoid far-out lawsuit scenarios.
That's all I can come up with. Some lawyer was concerned that the usual "this game is fiction and not based on real people and stuff" would be invalidated by the presence of real Falcom games. So then someone would sue claiming that a character in the game is based off them.
Disclaimer: I have no idea if this hypothetical situation I made up in 5 seconds is even possible in Japan. In the US you can pretty much sue anyone for anything without consequence.
Alright, let's move on to Adol getting another dye job:
The Vantage Masters arcade game is renamed to "VM Japan" and Estelle is given a pretty bad palette change.
This minor reference to the Ys series survived intact, perhaps because it doesn't mention Ys by name:
The bookstore has a lot of changes and the Switch version camera makes it tough to see them all. One thing that jumps out is Falcom is now "Palcom" in this world.
There are more palette swaps. This time Estelle gets purple hair instead of neon blue. Fie gets a total goth makeover.
Also the game series has been renamed to "Miracle" if I know how to use a translation app.
Here are some more palette swaps, I don't for care the Gurumin one but the other two ended up looking OK:
I think this next one makes the character look more like they do in the actual game:
On some of these they didn't change the text at all:
That doesn't have the name of the series though.
In some cases the original version of Tokyo Xanadu had English text that was left untranslated in the Switch version:
This also clarifies that the Trails series was renamed to "Thousand Miracles" in this version. That name will come up again later.
This is a closer view of one change that was in a previous comparison:
The McBurn change is an improvement, although it makes him look like a more generic bad guy:
There are some other examples in the bookstore that are tough to see, like this Xanadu one:
The magazines in the mall have the same palette swaps:
The store selling outfits, which are from other Falcom games, looks the same:
This kind of supports my theory... none of these directly mention the game they are from.
In this poster the cast of Trails of Cold Steel are now in purple jackets:
So this is the odd part, or maybe not if I'm right about the motivation for these changes... the renditions of Rean and Alisa have new hair and/or outfit colors. Their "magical" counterparts, who aren't in a game, are left unchanged:
So it's like things that appeared in a game had to be changed but things from the PFalcom magazine are left alone. The costumes appear in multiple games though so maybe there's some nuanced distinction? I don't know. It now seems more like there is no theme to these changes. Also why do none of the students notice their homeroom teacher is a character in a locally popular game series?
None of this alter ego universe is changed anywhere:
In general, the anime store at the mall looks the same. The colors are a little different and some text wasn't translated:
Maybe not translating the text was a conscious choice to make the environment feel more authentic. I doubt anyone who would play Tokyo Xanadu was disappointed to find Japanese text everywhere.
It's too bad they replaced the original old-school color palette here:
Oh well.
And next up is "Thousand Miracles III" starring a young Conan O'Brien or possibly Clay Aiken:
We'll wrap-up with a couple other sightings in the video store. This has another palette swap and it also looks like the tank (which I assumed was stock art) was replaced with a different vehicle:
The Ys VIII box art has one of the most jarring changes:
The title is gone and it looks like a completely different game.
Alright, this was a little bit interesting I guess. Still kind of a boring topic but at least this is one thing out of my drafts folder.
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