Gol Dodo (JP Version) had much darker skin than Zann (US version). In a forum post on their official message boards, Natsume responded as to why they changed his skin color:

"Normally, we're happy to see ethnically diverse characters in Harvest Moon games. However, Zann had a lot of characteristics that in the West are sometimes associated with hurtful and outdated stereotypes of native African people. The skull on his head, the fact that he spoke in broken English, etc. Unfortunately, it just wasn't possible to completely change his character design and rewrite all of his dialogue, so changing his skin color seemed to be the best fix. Again, we're happy to see ethnically diverse characters in Harvest Moon games, but not when they're reinforcing negative stereotypes that a lot of our players will find hurtful and offensive."