DJ Boy
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DJ Boy, a 1989 arcade game by Kaneko was designed as a standard side-scrolling beat'em up game partially based on the hip-hop culture of U.S. cities. What made the game unique at the time was the fact that many of the characters rode around on roller skates, rather than walking or running. It was narrated by the DJ personality "Wolfman" Jack (from American Graffiti).
The home version of the game contained controversial content in the presence of racial stereotypes. While there was a hint of this in the arcade game (many arcade fighting games rely on stereotyped depictions of "street people" and subcultures to populate their world with characters), the Sega Genesis/Megadrive port made this much more overt by darkening the skin and brightening the lips of an African American character, leading to the appearance of "blackface."
The premise of the home console game: the player character, a young boy on rollerskates attempting to rescue his girlfriend from her captors. The arcade plot involved trying to find his stolen boom box. DJ Boy skates across various stages and utilizes hand to hand combat moves in order to defeat opponents, culminating with a battle with a boss at the end of each level. Along the path, the player also encounters prizes, which then can be used later to purchase Power-ups from a store located at the end of each level (in the home version, the arcade simply tallied these as points). In the console versions of the game, as another game, River City Ransom, the "prizes" consist of coins that are dropped by defeated enemies, or food items like burgers that restore health.
The arcade ROM was successfully emulated on MAME in 2007.[1]
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[edit] Differences between Arcade and Home Versions
The original Japanese home release of the game featured caricatures that were part of the game's offbeat sense of humor that would've been seen as offensive if they were retained in its North American release. For example, the stage 1 boss was an overweight Black woman that attacked by farting (known as "Big Mama" in the home versions). When the player hit the Big Mama a certain amount of times, she would temporarily drop to the ground head first and show off her white frilly slip that is underneath her dress and then force herself up again. The arcade versions of the game featured two incarnations of "Big Mama" in the same game, one with light brown skin and another with pink skin. The home console ports gave her dark brown skin and bright red lips in the original Japanese port. The arcade version had the character "fart" occasionally simply as a character animation. The home versions turned it into a kind of "Fart fireball" attack that did damage.
For the subsequent home release in the U.S. and abroad, multiple changes were made. For example, Big Mama no longer farted; a male stripper character simply appeared in his "chip 'n' dales" outfit from the start, rather than beginning as a homeless looking man who sheds his outer garments to fight. Another potentially offensive change that was made was the insertion of in-game billboards containing Japanese text with images of scantily clad women (and focusing on crotch images).
This appears to be the same type of "Are you covered?" scantily clad woman joke that was featured in Konami's Crime Fighters (a risqué reference to insurance sales), another arcade fighting game.
The US console version of DJ Boy altered the initial encounter with "Big Mama" from the Japanese home version so that she had neon pink skin and instead of farting, threw dough nut-like pastries at the player. The second encounter had her with tan skin, in a martial arts outfit (the Japanese version gave her darker skin for this second encounter, while the arcade version simply featured a single encounter then a second encounter with two identical "Big Mama" foes that had light brown and pink skin to distinguish them, rather than an outfit/attack style change).
It is important to note that the arcade versions of DJ Boy all featured a plot in which a rival gang of skaters disrupt DJ Boy's dance marathon and steal his boom box. The home versions altered this to having one of the "punk" boss characters (who was much darker skinned in the home versions than in the arcade) capturing DJ Boy's (white) girlfriend (a character that does not appear in the arcade version). The home version added cutscenes in which DJ Boy insults his defeated foes. Other alterations include turning the "robot clown" characters into bosses rather than normal enemies, eliminating some of the "homeless guy/stripper" regular enemies, and featuring a boss that was an "evil twin" of DJ Boy (in blue clothing).
The US arcade version featured voiceovers from "Wolfman Jack" but the home versions removed these due to memory limitations.
The arcade versions had a two player simultaneous (cooperative or competitive, as players could hurt each other with their attacks) mode with each player controlling a "DJ Boy" with slightly differently colored clothing, but the home versions did not.
[edit] Adaptations and sequel
In 1990, a home version for Sega's Genesis and Mega Drive systems was released both in Japan and the U.S. The Japanese Megadrive version includes a multi-panel "comic strip" style plotline at the beginning, showing the captured girlfriend. The US Genesis version changes the first boss' skin tone and has her throw glazed doughnuts at the player instead of farting fireballs. The US arcade game had featured the "Big Mama" character (who fights you three times, once by herself and another time with a "twin", unlike the home version in which she fights you again with a different lighter skin tone dressed in kung fu outfit), but her skin tone was much lighter so she did not appear to be wearing "black face." The arcade version also lacks the "cut scenes" with the subplot of DJ's girlfriend being kidnapped by the 'rock 'n' roll' punk boss.
In the home version she also throws one of the midget fighters (seen previously in the game) at the player (the implication is that all of these little guys might be her "kids"). The Genesis version does not feature the comic panel "plot" at the beginning, but still features the plot of rescuing a captive girlfriend and has the "Are you Covered?" billboards in the background.
In 1992, a sequel, B.Rap Boys! was produced and contained similar designs and content, although Kaneko, perhaps intending to deflect further criticism, made one of the player characters black. Electronic Gaming Monthly revealed in an interview with the Beastie Boys that Kaneko had wanted to license their images for an arcade game, which most likely turned out to be this game. [1]
[edit] References
- ^ arcadeHITS. DJ Boy (set 1). Accessed 2008-01-20.
