http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DifficultyByRegion

Games with various difficulty levels allow you to choose how hard or easy you want the game to be from the start. While some can be easy or hard no matter which one you pick, some games may seem harder or easier just because of the region the game was made in. Typically this occurred due to there being a belief in Japan that Americans preferred harder games; often American versions would have the lowest difficulty setting totally removed and / or an even harder bonus mode added. However, the inverse also occurred at timessome Japanese game developers felt that Americans (usually, but this could apply to Europeans and Australians too) would not be able to handle a game's difficulty, so a North American release would be made significantly easier, or even replaced entirely.

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Another reason for higher difficulty in international versions is that renting games is illegal in Japan. Either you buy it or you don't play at all (unless you borrow from a friend who has bought the game). This led to increase in difficulty for games which were considered easy and short enough that gamers could finish them over a couple of days of renting it. Higher difficulty means more time has to be spent with the game in order to beat it, which requires more rentals or buying the game.

Sometimes, the difficulties are the same but named differently to be more or less encouraging depending on the language/region. For example, one region might have Easy, Normal and Hard while another has the same difficulties, but labeled Normal, Hard, and Super respectively.

This phenomenon causes professional players and speedrunners to decide a specific version to be used, or separate each version in different categories, and also, it causes hardcore players to seek out for foreign versions and region-free consoles just to play harder versions.

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Examples are listed by platform of origin:

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Arcade

Bionic Commando - The export version lets players keep their current weapon between stage, whereas the Japanese version (Top Secret) reverts it to the default gun. Additionally, the helicopters in the export versions are lesser in number, drop fewer bombs, and will eventually stop chasing you if you avoid them for long enough.

Black Tiger - The Japanese version, titled Black Dragon, features a greater number of enemies with stronger attacks, more aggressive bosses, more falling rock traps, and more expensive items.

Cadash - The Japanese and American versions are more difficult than the European and World versions (the version in Taito Legends Collection is the World version). Herbs and inns are more expensive, you can't carry as many Herbs or Antidotes, bosses have more health, the Priestess' Time spell gives less time, and the Dragon Amulet is worth less money.

Crime Fighters - The Japanese version featured a traditional lives/health gauge system, whereas the American version uses hit points that are gradually drained as time goes by. The Japanese version also has a back kick button that was removed from the American version. On the other hand, the American version allows up to four players, whereas the Japanese version is limited to just two.

Dark Adventure - A Gauntlet clone by Konami, the game underwent extensive changes for its Japanese and International releases, titled Majū no Ōkoku and Devil World (not to be confused with the first-party NES game of the same name) respectively, after the original version apparently underperformed in North America. Devil World ditches the melee weapons of the original in favor of giving each character a gun, replaces individual power-up items in favor of a Gradius-style power-up selection meter, and is completely linear in its overall structure (as opposed to Dark Adventure, which forced players to choose from multiple paths and figure out the correct way by themselves).

The overseas versions of Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone were made first and featured item shops where the player could purchase new playable characters, special moves and weapons (among other power-ups) by inserting more coins into the cabinet. Essentially Double Dragon 3 introduced the concept of microtransactions in gaming long before it was employed by other developers. This feature proved to be rather unpopular among players, so when the developers worked on the Japanese release, they removed the item shops completely and allowed players to choose any of the four character types from the get-go, with all their moves usable from the outset (they did make the Hurricane Kick harder to pull off to compensate for this). In the Japanese version weapons are found lying on the ground waiting to be picked up, a huge contrast from the first two games where the player had to disarm enemies first.

Fire Shark, as with Twin Cobra, had respawning only at checkpoints and no simultaneous two-player mode in the original Japanese version, Same! Same! Same!; enemies also fire more often. The developers at Toaplan regretted making the Japanese version too difficult; the later simultaneous two-player Same! Same! Same! is actually easier than the overseas version.

Gradius features more aggressive enemies in the overseas version (Nemesis). To make up for the increased difficulty, the game throws the player a fleet of red enemies every time he loses a ship, allowing the player to refill his ship's power-up gauge.

Gradius III, in the "Asia" and "World" arcade versions, had the full length "technical course" of the Japanese version with the difficulty of the "beginner" mode. The PlayStation 2 port used the Japanese arcade difficulties in all regions, but added an Easier Than Easy (though still Nintendo Hard) setting in the options.

Haunted Castle had five different versions labeled E, K, M, N, and P. E, K, and M were the overseas releases, whereas N and P were Japanese releases. Version M in particular is the hardest of the four versions, where a single bone throw from a skeleton enemy in the very first stage will result in the player losing half of his health.

Jackal (aka Top Gunner) - In the Japanese version (version T), the player's machine gun will shoot at the direction their jeep is facing, whereas in the US (version U) and World versions (version V), it will always shoot north. The grenade/rocket launcher works the same way in all three versions though.

Kid Niki Radical Ninja had mid-stage checkpoints in the American arcade version, whereas the Japanese arcade version (Kaiketsu Yanchamaru) forced you back to the beginning of the level upon death. The NES/Famicom port had the same mid-stage checkpoints in all regions.

Shadow Force- The U.S. version uses a complicated six-button control scheme, whereas the Japanese version has a simpler three-button control setup: the Hard Punch and Light Kick buttons were removed, and the "snatch" move (in which the player's character copies an enemy's appearance and abilities) is now performed by pressing punch and kick simultaneously instead of having a dedicated button. Both versions of the game also featured one-on-one versus segments between stages which forced players to drain each other's health, but these can be turned off in the Japanese version, whereas they're mandatory in the US release. A third version also exists that is entirely in English, but is much closer to the Japanese version in terms of gameplay.

The Simpsons was made much easier than the international version in Japan. More food and weapons were added to the levels (including a new atomic bomb item that clears the screen), the slingshot was powered up to kill any enemy in one hit, and you can use weapons while jumping. The Japanese version also allowed players to add another "layer" to their health gauge by picking up food with full health.

Super Contra ends on one loop in the U.S. version, whereas the Japanese version has a second loop in which the difficulty is set on the hardest setting (regardless of the game's actual settings) and continues are not allowed.

In the US version of Trigon (Lightning Fighters), the game-breaking Homing Trigon weapon is no longer available in 1-player mode. On the plus side, it does have instant respawning when you die, although you still lose all your powerups.

Twin Cobra has a fair number of differences from its Japanese version, Kyūkyoku Tiger, but the one with the most dramatic impact on the game's difficulty is that Twin Cobra doesn't force the player back to a Checkpoint upon dying. The player's helicopter also moves a bit faster in Twin Cobra. However, the bullet limit is higher in the Japanese version, allowing for increased firepower. The sequel features more durable enemies in its Japanese incarnation.



Family Computer / Nintendo Entertainment System

Super Famicom / Super NES

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Nintendo 64

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has the Owl Statues you find in-game as warp points and quicksave points in the international releases of the game. In the Japanese version, the only way to save was to play the Song of Time and return to the Dawn of the First Day. The inclusion of owl saves required Nintendo to reduce the number of save files to two. To this day, International Majora's Mask is the only non-handheld Zelda game to not have three save slots.

Nintendo GameCube

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance removed the Harder Than Hard Maniac mode and replaced it with an Easy mode in the American version. Then again, the 255% crit chance forge bug was removed, and the typical Critical Hit Class like Swordmaster, Berserkers, and Snipers getting their critical hit boost back that was absent in the original Japanese version.

Luigi's Mansion with its Hidden Mansion mode. It wasn't too impressive in the Japanese and US versions, with merely rooms being a bit darker and some other minor tweaks. The European/Australian version though... completely redid most of the game. In this mode, you got the whole mansion mirrored, more (and harder) enemies in rooms, more treasure like golden mice, bosses with new attacks (rocking horses in the first battle went diagonal, you rode on the Poltergust when against Boolossus, and Bowser's mines exploded instantly in some cases), and annoyingly... you had to beat the Hidden Mansion to get an A grade.

Metroid Prime uses a hint system to show players where to go next. One of the members of the development team wanted more hints added to the North American version of the game because he feared that players would get lost in a game where you're on your own. The Japanese version of the game has fewer hints.

Resident Evil 4 has an "Easy" setting in the Japanese and European versions that was not present in the American release. This also applies to the PS2 and Wii versions.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door has several rooms in the X-Naut Fortress where Mario must follow a safe path along the floor to avoid becoming electrocuted. In the Japanese version, the safe path is only two squares long in the third of these rooms, compared to three in the North American and the European/Australian versions.

The Japanese release of Wario World gives the Final Boss an additional phase. This was likely to make up for the Japanese release coming almost a year after the others.

Wii

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn renamed the difficulty settings. The Japanese version's Normal mode became the English version's Easy mode, while the Japanese Hard became the English version's Normal. The Western version also added the ability to make permanent (i.e. endlessly reloadable) saves mid-battle, with only Hard Mode retaining the 'suspend' (a one-time save that deletes itself when you reload it, basically just if you want to take a break) system from the Japanese version. A few new weapons were added, some existing weapons were improved, and several skills were tweaked to make them more useful. (Wrath and Resolve now always activate as long as you're below the required HP threshold. In the Japanese version, both skills were chance-based)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl has various changes made in its European/Australian version ; in addition to bug fixes, it made all the challenges skippable via Golden Hammer. No more hammer-proof challenges.

Game Boy

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge has two sub-weapons in all versions, but in Japan they're the Holy Water and the Boomerang Cross, while in the overseas versions the Cross was replaced with the Axe. To clarify: The Holy Water and Boomerang Cross are generally considered the best sub-weapons in the series — used properly, they can hit multiple times for absolutely massive damage and in some games the Holy Water can trap enemies in helpless hit-stun. The Axe... is generally considered borderline useless — it does decent damage, but it has a weird arcing trajectory that makes it hard to hit anything not positioned above you. Additionally, some of the items hidden in walls are different depending on the region.

Donkey Kong Land 2 has cheats in the English version allowing you to start with 50 lives, 40 Banana Coins, or 47 Kremkoins, but these cheats were removed in the Japanese version.

Operation C, simply called Contra in its Japanese release, has the Stage Select mode activated by default there, while the overseas releases required a cheat code.

Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Montana's Movie Madness was released in America on November 1993 and is notorious for its challenge level, not just in the levels themselves, but also because you had limited lives and continues, you got an extra life for every 3000 points, and a continue if you beat one of the bonus games, and the bosses had three hit points. The Japanese version was released one month later and has numerous differences, including shorter and easier levels, with some sections of the levels being removed completely, easier bonus games, an extra life for every 2000 points, the bosses having two hit points instead of three, infinite continues, the bonus games giving you an extra life if you beat them, and a password system.

Game Boy Advance

Nintendo DS

Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, like the GBA original, was released in the US first, making the Japanese version easier in most extents . The items are cheaper in the Japanese version, many bosses have half the health, and the badges and gear have more stat boosts. Heck, even things like the UFO to target in certain boss battles staying in one place, the save point being inside a shop in one area, certain bosses using less effective healing items, and three of the bosses having counterattacks. Unlike its predecessor, the European release actually carried over the Japanese version's gameplay.

. The items are cheaper in the Japanese version, many bosses have half the health, and the badges and gear have more stat boosts. Heck, even things like the UFO to target in certain boss battles staying in one place, the save point being inside a shop in one area, certain bosses using less effective healing items, and three of the bosses having counterattacks. Unlike its predecessor, the European release actually carried over the Japanese version's gameplay. Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, due to European ratings board aggression against any reference to gambling, did not feature the original Game Corner in international releases. Instead, everyone else got a game that is best described as "minesweeper + sudoku + (noticeably less) Luck-Based Mission". While attempting to earn prizes early would be a pain if you could actually lose money, it is instead fairly easy to get Dratini note Disc-One Nuke that comes with Dragon Rage, which always deals 40 HP of damage at a point in the game when nothing has that much, and Thunder Wave, which gives the opponent a 1/4th chance of not being able to act and always reduces their Speed to 25%, almost always making them act last and stays strong by turning into something with a higher stats total than many legendaries. Making it worse is that you can easily save scum this one so it is of Adamant nature, boosting its already high Attack while lowering the Special Attack you won't use.

The international versions of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days are easier than the original Japanese. Enemies have less HP, Munny is now awarded for beating missions, and some enemies deal less damage.

The European version of Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades has "Satch Boogie", by far the hardest song in the game, as part of the main campaign's 80s stage (the next to last one). Other versions of the game have the song as an optional Bonus Boss.

The North American version of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings was made harder than its Japanese counterpart.

Sega Mark III / Master System

Ashura was an overhead action shooter that was released as a Rambo in the United States and as Secret Command in Europe. The original Ashura version released in Japan was slightly harder, as some of the tougher enemies required more bullets to kill or were only vulnerable using fire arrows.

Black Belt was originally released in Japan as a game based on Fist of the North Star. While the difference are mostly cosmetic due to the change in characters and setting, one of the bosses (the fire-breathing giant Devil's Rebirth) was replaced with a new enemy (Gonta the sumo wrestler) who fights with all new attack patterns. Black Belt also has more health power-ups compared to Hokuto no Ken.

Captain Silver is missing two stages and numerous enemy characters from the American version which were featured in the Japanese and European versions of the game, resulting in a much shorter and easier game.

Double Dragon only allows the player to continue up to two times any time in the Japanese release, whereas the U.S. version allows unlimited continues until the final stage, which makes the game easier or harder depending on your skill level.

Wonder Boy in Monster Land was released as Super Wonder Boy: Monster World in Japan, and gives all the enemy characters twice the hit points they have in the American version.

Mega Drive / Genesis / Sega CD / Mega CD

Sega Saturn

The Western versions of the Clockwork Knight games give the bosses more hitpoints.

PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16

Exile was panned for being "too hard" in Japan, so Working Designs tried toning it down a little... making the game a cakewalk in the process. The reverse happened with its sequel, where it was basically made pretty close to unwinnable.

J.J. & Jeff was an Americanized version of Kato-chan & Ken-chan, a side-scrolling platformer based on a Japanese comedy duo of the same name. The changes to the game were mostly cosmetic, but one change that actually affect the play mechanics a bit was that the player's fart attack was changed into a spray can, changing it from a back attack to a front attack.

PlayStation

PlayStation 2

Devil May Cry 3 bumped up all of the difficulties by one notch for the original US release, so Easy was Japanese Normal, Normal (the only difficulty available at the beginning) was Japanese Hard, etc. The game was no cakewalk in the original release, and the "adjustment" elevated it to hair-tearing for first-time players who didn't want to drop down to Easy. The Special Edition re-release restored the original difficulties, with the American Hard becoming Very Hard. It also restored the option of using the Gold Orbs (infinite continues, and gold orbs that let you revive right where you died) from the Japanese version... but still let you use the American version's Yellow Orbs (limited continues that are determine by the number of yellow orbs in your possession. Yellow orbs let you revive outside the last door you walked through, like the original DMC).

Final Fantasy X added the Dark Aeons to the European/Australian version, which are evil versions of your summons that function as a total of 8 Bonus Bosses (9 if you include Penance, who is unlocked after beating all of the Dark Aeons). However, they're at a higher level than the actual Endgame Bosses- in fact, most guides basically come out and say "Your party for these fights should have AT LEAST 9999 HP, their fully activated Celestial Weapons, and the following very difficult to get armor perks..." This also makes getting said fully activated Celestial Weapons harder in the European/Australian version, as if you didn't get some of the Sigils within a short time frame, you'd find Dark Aeons blocking the area later on. They're there because the European/Australian version is based on Final Fantasy X International, rather than the American version or original Japanese release, to make up for the delay and the technical issues of porting an NTSC game to the PAL image standard. However, the worldwide HD remake of FFX is based on the European/Australian version, meaning everyone can now get in on the increased difficulty.

ICO had its Japanese and European versions released after the American one and featured an increased difficulty, in addition to other bonus content. Notably, a few puzzles were lengthened by adding trickier bits, and the enemies are a lot faster and more aggressive - spawning more frequently than they did in the American version (where they only spawned if the player left Yorda in a different room or at scripted events). Fixed in the PS3 rerelease, which also included all the extras left out of the original American version.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was first released in America. The Japanese and European versions later added a questionnaire at the start of the game that affected, not only which difficulty levels the player could choose, but also whether or not the player skips the Tanker chapter and starts right off at the Plant chapter. The European version also featured an unlockable "European Extreme" setting that was even harder than the already Harder Than Hard "Extreme" setting. The E-Extreme setting was later added to the Substance version in all releases.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, like the previous game, added an E-Extreme setting to the European version, which was also featured in all version of the Subsistence update.

Mister Mosquito let you suck blood from any exposed skin in the Japanese version, but in the American and European versions, you could only suck from small designated points on the body, some of which were literally impossible to reach without dying.

Shinobi (2002) had the following difficulty settings in the Japnese and European versions: Easy, Normal and Hard. Easy was removed entirely in the US release, which shifted the collectables from Normal to Hard and added in an extra "Super" difficulty with the Hard mode collectables. Super is the only difficulty where default character Hotsuma can't kill the later bosses in one hit.

PlayStation Portable

Xbox 360

Bullet Witch has Alicia's gun do less damage in the American version, as the localization team wanted American players to use magic more.

Death Smiles runs at around 150% the speed of the Japanese version in the U.S. release, making it harder and preventing people from accurately comparing scores across regions—an unusual change considering that American players are, on average, less experienced with and proficient at the Bullet Hell genre than Japanese players. In a moment of Tropes Are Not Bad, the developers have stated that the US version is the game they had intended to make from the start, and some parts of the Japanese version were complained about as too slow.

Personal Computers

Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships features three difficulty sliders in the Russian version - difficulty, rate of experience gain for the player, and rate of experience gain for enemies (i.e. how the much ahead or behind the level scaling will be). The English version lacks the latter slider altogether and it's set in the config files to the lowest possible value, making some parts of the game too easy and others (non-scaled) seemingly overly difficult in comparison.

In the Korean version of Combat Arms, if you played the mission with the Sand Hog, one of the enemies had dynamite strapped to themselves and tried to run into you. The North American version did not have that.

Dungeon Fighter Online, when released in America by Nexon, upped the EXP requirements for levels by THREE TIMES the amount required in the Korean version. Not that this changes the difficulty all that much, but it does make for a LOT of grinding to level up. So while you'd only be at level 20 on the American version, someone on the Korean version would be close to level 35.

the amount required in the Korean version. Not that this changes the difficulty all that much, but it does make for a LOT of grinding to level up. So while you'd only be at level 20 on the American version, someone on the Korean version would be close to level 35. As discovered by Ross's Game Dungeon, the European version of the Polish-made The Chosen: Well of Souls (a.k.a. Frater) is much easier than the North American version, with the absurdly powerful Elite Mooks in Level 3 being made much more reasonable to deal with. However, after suffering through the Hell of the North American version, Ross was in no mood to play the whole game again to find out just how big the difference is, and figures it's probably still a bad game anyway. Of course, he based this on the freeware version available on the developer's website, so it's possible they only bothered to fix the difficulty when they put the game up for free, and didn't bother to patch retail copies regardless of region.

Pinball

Stern Pinball's NBA was originally intended to be released only in China, with simpler-than-usual gameplay to introduce Chinese gamers to pinball. When management decided to also release the game in the west, it was updated with several additional features to make the game harder for more experienced Western players.

Multiplatform

As a general case, PAL is at 50 Hz and NTSC is at 60 Hz. Games that process the game frame-by-frame (that is, most of them) will operate 20% faster on a 60 Hz frame rate than they do on a comparable 50 Hz system. Unless the developers compensate for this, the European versions of a given game will be easier due to increased time to react. And just as well, NTSC releases of some European games ran too fast, making them harder than intended. A notable example of this is Sonic the Hedgehog for Mega Drive / Genesis, due to the game's speed-based nature. Whilst the PAL version is certainly fast, the game was developed for NTSC, which plays faster, and many players in Europe and Australia believed that the North American and Japanese versions were better as a result (the Japanese version was the only one that also had scrolling backgrounds). In the rereleases, the game can be played at the intended speed. Averted with the Mario Party series. CyberScore has separate tables for the NTSC and PAL versions, with NTSC almost always having the advantage.

Catherine was so difficult that a patch was released to make it easier. In the Japanese version, the patch can be turned on or off once installed, but the American version comes patched and it can't be turned off. Also, the "Undo" ability, which allows you to rewind up to ten of your last moves, was added to Normal difficulty in the American version. Toy Story added a password continuation system not present in the American version to both the Japanese and European/Australian versions.

The early Guitar Hero and Rock Band games have a rare unintentional version of this trope. Due to a bug the game seems not to register some of the strums above a certain strumming speed, in extreme cases only registering about half of a players strums. While details are uncertain it seems the bug is linked to the television refresh rate, with lower refresh rates having a higher tolerance for strumming speed. Since PAL mostly uses a 50 Hz refresh rate compared to NTSC's 60 Hz you can get away with strumming a little bit faster. This means that in songs that have very fast strumming it is much less difficult to get a Full Combo while playing on a PAL system. Due to NTSC's refresh rate, however, one song (Trogdor) is completely unable to be Full Combo'd on Expert or Hard on NTSC, ESPECIALLY NTSC PS2. Most of the documented FCs for either difficulty are on PAL PS2 through the use of SwapMagic (or being in Europe or Australia, which primarily use the PAL video signal).

Kirby's Avalanche and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, both being graphically modified versions of Puyo Puyo made for the foreign market, had a much shallower difficulty curve than the original.

Super Smash Bros. For Nintendo 3DS/Wii U: In the European/Australian language versions, it's slightly easier to uncover 100% of the image in the credits due to there being more names.

Working Designs had a habit of tinkering with their localized titles' difficult for North American releases. In the Sega CD and PlayStation versions of Lunar: The Silver Star, for instance, WD added the ability to die after the final bosses without use of certain items, and in the latter system's version, enemies and bosses scale with the player's levels. The North American version of Lunar: Eternal Blue on the Sega CD also had a cost of skill points for saving the game that scaled with Hiro's levels.

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