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Here's yet another case of a Japanese game getting censored in the U.S. Assault Suits Valken was released in the U.S. by Konami - who had licensed it from NCS Corp - and retitled Cybernator. Konami didn't mess with the actual game itself - both the U.S. and Japanese versions are almost completely identical. However, they removed a few things - if you've never played Assault Suits Valken, you wouldn't miss them.

Assault Suits Valken on the left, Cybernator on the right

As you can tell from the above screenshots, Assault Suits Valken shows a picture of the character that's currently speaking - just like in Valken's sister series Assault Suits Leynos - and Cybernator does not. It's not a major change, but it would have been nice if Konami had left those pictures in Cybernator.

The other thing I'm thinking of came as a total surprise to me when I first played Assault Suits Valken. Back in '93, my friend Chris had picked up ASV at a local game store that carried imports. I already had Cybernator, and he liked it a lot - in fact, he liked it so much that when he saw ASV, he had to grab it. So we went back to his place and popped it in the SNES. Upon getting to the final stage and beating the boss in the Senate, we were surprised to see that, instead of progressing to the race through the underground tunnel, the Assault Suit flew up and smashed through the top few floors of the Senate building, landing on the top floor. Upon walking to the right, the Assault Suit wound up in a large office facing who we guessed was the enemy president. A heated conversation took place, judging by the looks on the two character's faces in their closeup pictures - then we were astonished to see that the president suddenly was holding a gun to his head! The president's picture vanished, and then you could see his tiny little onscreen figure, who was seated at his desk, blow his brains out!

Needless to say, we were shocked. A suicide scene in an SNES game? Inconceivable! But sure enough, we had just witnessed it. Don't believe me? Check out the pictures below and see for yourself. Click on any pic to see it full size, and mouse over it for info.

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