In the halcyon days of video games it used to be very common than when a certain game company wasn't currently planning or just wasn't interested in translating one of their popular works into a specific game system, another game company would just buy the license and do the translation and publishing work themselves. This was a very convenient practice that benefited both game companies, but specially us game fans since thanks to it we were able to play many games that perhaps otherwise would have never been released.

Licensed reprogrammed games were highly predominant throughout all of the '80s and until the late '90s in most PC and home video game systems. For example, with the exception of「Street Fighter II'」and「Super Street Fighter II」all of the CAPCOM arcade games that were released for the [SEGA Mega Drive] system were reprogrammed by SEGA. And in the case of the [NEC PC-Engine] all CAPCOM games released for the system were reprogrammed by NEC. Likewise a great deal of the arcade and console games that were translated for the many PC platforms were reprogrammed by companies that focused more in the PC market, while in turn most PC games that were translated for consoles were reprogrammed and published by companies that focused more in the console market. This was not only practical but it also made a lot of sense, specially from the marketing point of view, as in general consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a well-known brand name in its respective market area.

「Power Drift」for the PC-Engine (reprogrammed by ASMIK) was the only console translation of the popular SEGA arcade racer during the 16-bit generation. Power Drift was also reprogrammed by ACTIVISION for the various Western PC platforms. Speaking of which, Western PC systems were filled with sub-par reprogrammed games that had nothing to do with what gamers were getting in Japan.

CAPCOM and SEGA were overall the big name game companies that handed down the most licenses, although the much smaller Nihon Falcom was probably the one that licensed the most games in relation to their number of released games. Surprisingly the big game companies that licensed the less games were NAMCOT and KONAMI which usually reprogrammed and published their own products across most of the video game platforms of the time.

Obviously the quality of reprogrammed games varied greatly and accordingly to the talent and dedication of the developer in charge of the translation, and of course, accordingly to the difference in power between the original and the destination systems. The PC-Engine in particular is notable for having one of the game libraries with the highest amount of reprogrammed games thanks in no small part to its parents companies NEC and Hudson Soft which together licensed games from a lot of different game developers, even including games from their direct rival company at the time SEGA.

In Japan the owners of the [Sharp X68000] personal computer were lucky to have some of the best reprogrammed games of their time, like an arcade perfect port of the [SEGA SYSTEM-24] game「Bonanza Brothers」in all of it's high-res arcade glory. Also, one of my favourite reprogrammed games was the Mega Drive version of「Senjou no Ookami II」which although it was lacking the 3-player simultaneous action from the original [CPS-1] version, the new gameplay mechanics implemented by SEGA in its new [ORIGINAL MODE] made the gameplay deeper and arguably more interesting and challenging than the original arcade game.

This type of third party reprogramming fashion ran out of steam by the end of the '90s. As games were getting more complex and production costs were increasing considerably, it is very likely that licensing costs also increased to a point where it just wasn't worth it anymore for most game publishers. Something important to note about licensed reprogrammed games is that more than a corporated decision, they had more to do with fan-service and the personal desire of the developing studios to have such games. Licensed games were never high-budget productions nor they ever became smash-hits or system-sellers, since if the games had such potential to begin with, they most likely would've been published by its own parent company in the first place.

While licensed reprogrammed games are not extinct, the practice is only but a shadow of what it used to be. And unfortunately the ones who lost the most with its downfall was us game fans. (T^T)