Here is one interesting case. I thought Sega’s biking game Fonz (1976) was just one of those opportunistic “Space Trek” / “Star Fight” / “New York New York” titles that quickly cashed on popular trends and IPs but it actually has a connection to the real Fonzie character and therefore the Happy Days IP, as pointed to me on a different board (by Youloute from VGDensetsu). Sega had a biking game with primitive haptic controls called Man TT, mainly distributed in Japan. The exact same game was rebranded as Moto-Cross for the US market. Note however that it seems there was no title screen, or text whatsoever, when playing the game so they did not even have to modify the circuitry (this arcade machine predates the idea of a “ROM” in the sense we understand it today). The two cabinets play essentially the same game.
The Moto-Cross machines did not meet a huge success in the US market, but Sega was owned by Gulf+Western at the time, who also owned Paramount, who owned the hot new series Happy Days. As a result, it is assumed Sega got the permission from Gulf+Western to rebrand the cabinets a third time, as Fonz and to pretend the game was a Happy Days arcade game with the most popular character on TV at the time (Fonzie for the kids out there).
Unlike the Wagaseishun no Arcadia conversion mentioned above, nothing has been modified inside the game to make use of the IP. It seems to be the exact same game as the original Man TT version, so it’s a bit tricky to consider it an IP adaptation in a video game, at least as understood in this topic until now. The audio ran on separate audio tapes but it seems they focused on delivering realistic motorbike and road sounds, and used the same tapes in all versions, so Sega did not even change the BGM for the Happy Days theme either. In essence, the game itself is not a video game adaptation like Superman or Lupin III.
But as a commercial product, the cabinet makes it (seemingly) an “officially licensed” product, or at least a properly authorized product, even if the copyright for Paramount is nowhere to be seen on the machine, manual and advertising. You can see the word Happy Days written in small to the left of the Fonz logo in some versions of the cabinet, such as the model on the flyer shown above, but it seems some versions of the cabinet did not feature this branding either. The phrasing on the flyer is very dodgy; it seems they are very careful which words they use (they never mention “Happy Days” nor use the full “Fonzie” name, just “that character” made famous “on TV”), which is why I am still not entirely sure how official the whole thing is, really. On the other hand, it allows me to say Sega was ahead of everyone so why not!
