Current Events > Remember the time Japanese companies would keep all the good stuff in Japan?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Tons of Japanese exclusive games that we would never have a chance to try out. They still do now but not as much as back then.

Having to rely on translated versions years after.
https://youtu.be/V5gz6DLwJa0

I heard Namco x Capcom did really good in Japan dunno why it was never brought to the west

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americans hate good games, falling for the "weeb" meme and refusing to play a good game

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Rika_Furude posted...

americans hate good games, falling for the "weeb" meme and refusing to play a good game

This.

Though the weeb label is still relatively new, there was still the stigma associated with foreign games and anime since there was a time when people heard Japanese media and they assumed it was weird porn.

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to be fair, some japanese companies still keep the good stuff in japan

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Nintendo was horrible about this during the GBA era. It's depressing to go back and look at its first-party library. We (USA) may have gotten nearly all of the overpriced NES/SNES ports, but we missed out on an unbelievable number of Nintendo-published originals; Mother 3 is only the tip of the iceberg.

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TheCodeisBosco posted...

Nintendo was horrible about this during the GBA era. It's depressing to go back and look at its first-party library. We (USA) may have gotten nearly all of the overpriced NES/SNES ports, but we missed out on an unbelievable number of Nintendo-published originals; Mother 3 is only the tip of the iceberg.

Examples?

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Zeromous375 posted...

I heard Namco x Capcom did really good in Japan dunno why it was never brought to the west

probably complicated licensing since it's crossover series, same problem with Super Robot Wars (made by the same studio).

the sequels did get brought to the west tho, Project X(cross) Zone and PXZ2.

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Remember when Europe got even less goodies than NA?

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Shadowplay posted...

Examples?

F-Zero Climax is a huge one. Then there's the first Rhythm Heaven, the first three Starfy games, the original Magical Starsign/Vacation, and various others.

EDIT: I just double-checked the list, and holy shit - there was even a JPN-exclusive Custom Robo on the GBA. Totally forgot about that.

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SNES got absolutely boned when it came to this in the later years. NoA just pulled the plug on the SNES when the N64 dropped so we missed some of the best RPGs from the later years. And they werent just throw away games, some of them are on par with FF6 and Chrono Trigger.

Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Bahaumat Lagoon, Arabian Nights the list just goes on and on.

Not to mention games we missed from series that no one in NA had a clue about until Smash Bros Melee turned them into characters and trophies.

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Well maybe American audiences shouldn't be so tasteless. Why should Japan risk losing money when they know we only wanna buy blockbuster games?

GentlemanGamer posted...

Well maybe American audiences shouldn't be so tasteless. Why should Japan risk losing money when they know we only wanna buy blockbuster games?

not even buy blockbuster games. get f2p shit like fortnight and then only buy skins

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When it comes to NES/SNES, I do wonder why games like FFII, III, V or Seiken Densetsu III (now known as Trials of Mana) never got brought outside Japan back in the day when other games in their repsective franchises did?

Atleast the above games did find their way outside japan at some point though. Many other games listed in this thread were not so lucky.

MagnusDJL posted...

When it comes to NES/SNES, I do wonder why games like FFII, III, V or Seiken Densetsu III (now known as Trials of Mana) never got brought outside Japan back in the day when other games in their repsective franchises did?

Atleast the above games did find their way outside japan at some point though. Many other games listed in this thread were not so lucky.

There were a few reasons.

1) Some of the later games had fx chips that were a pain in the ass to work with. This is what happened to Star Ocean.

2) Anime related games. These ones never had a chance. Anime just wasnt big enough in NA yet to make it worth it for companies to drag over a Sailor Moon beat em up or a Gulliver Boy RPG.

3) N64. This is the biggest reason we missed out on a fuck ton of late RPGs. NoA just said fuck the SNES when the N64 dropped. Same thing happened with FF2 and 3 when they switched from NES to SNES. Nintendo used to absolutely despise working with older hardware for some fucking reason. Not the case anymore thankfully (Star Fox 2 for instance) but yeah, late games always got screwed.

There were other more minor reasons (We missed the later Mystical Ninja games because they were hella inappropriate for example) but those are the main reasons.

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No, they still do it a lot. And whatever DOES actually get localized has a terrible localization.

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electricbugs2 posted...

There were a few reasons.

1) Some of the later games had fx chips that were a pain in the ass to work with. This is what happened to Star Ocean.

2) Anime related games. These ones never had a chance. Anime just wasnt big enough in NA yet to make it worth it for companies to drag over a Sailor Moon beat em up or a Gulliver Boy RPG.

3) N64. This is the biggest reason we missed out on a fuck ton of late RPGs. NoA just said fuck the SNES when the N64 dropped. Same thing happened with FF2 and 3 when they switched from NES to SNES. Nintendo used to absolutely despise working with older hardware for some fucking reason. Not the case anymore thankfully (Star Fox 2 for instance) but yeah, late games always got screwed.

There were other more minor reasons (We missed the later Mystical Ninja games because they were hella inappropriate for example) but those are the main reasons.

I dont think that games with special chips had an extra level of pain in the ass. The games were already done and they had the source code, that bypasses all the problems that fanmade translators have to bypass.
Memory storage is a better answer. The memory is limited, English text takes up more space than Japanese, and RPGs got tons of text.

Worst was when they had a fully translated version of the game but decided to not release it because it was too close to the next generation, like the Nes version of Earthbound.

And then we got cases when they decided to not translate it because they were going to work on the next title instead. Final Fantasy V was getting an English translation, but Square decided to scrap it and have an English translation of Final Fantasy VI being made while they still worked on the Japanese version, which was pretty rare back then. I remember reading that the English translator had to scrap weeks of work because of changes in the game during development.

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Namco x Capcom is a bad example because it's a shit game.

Anyways a lot of it had to do with NoA dealings with localizations and either not bothering with it or fucking it up.

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