10 Famous Video Games That Started Out As Something Else Entirely

10. Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. is well known the world over as one of Nintendo's top titles, series, and franchises. And why shouldn't it be? After all, where else are you going to find such a wide variety of stars from other top Nintendo series throw down in a knock-down drag-out fight? Mario vs. Link! Donkey Kong vs. Bowser! Ice Climbers vs. Fox McCloud! Pokemon vs. Pokemon! ...okay, maybe not that last one so much. But it wasn't always this way. In the game's earliest days of development, it went by another title: "Kakuto-Geemu Ryuoh", or "Dragon King: The Fighting Game". If that sounds like a funny name for a Nintendo all-star mix-up (as though "Super Smash Bros." isn't), well, you'd be right. Instead of featuring every big name from throughout Nintendo's considerable history, Dragon King featured... none of them. Satoru Iwata, the then-future president of Nintendo, and Masahiro Sakurai originally worked on it, seeking to create an alternative to the two-dimensional fighting games which were "crowding out the market" at the time. So how did the inclusion of established Nintendo characters come about? Believe it or not, with great reluctance. According to Sakurai in an edition of "Iwata Asks":

I asked to use Nintendo characters since it was so hard to accurately convey to the players the atmosphere of the gaming world where they play a fighting game on home console. You have to have some main characters in a fighting game, and when you line up character 1, character 2, character 3 and so on, the main characters end up blurring together. With a game for the arcade, it€™s okay for character development to take a backseat since players are content with the fighting. With a fighting game for the home console, however, you have to set up the general image or the atmosphere of the gaming world right from the start or else the game suffers. That€™s why I asked to use Nintendo characters.

"Nowadays, we take it for granted, but at the time, people had reservations about mobilizing an all-star cast of characters," Iwata added, noting that even Nintendo fans were at first wary of the prospect. How things have changed. Word has it that the game was originally never planned to leave Japan, and now it is a worldwide hit which features not only a growing roster of Nintendo stars, but third-party characters such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Solid Snake, Mega Man, and Pac-Man as well!