Hello, everyone. Today is the last day of BaD. I kind of regret not commenting on everyone blogs. There were some really interesting and great blogs this year. But it just kind of got overwhelming to catch every single one. Plus, I didn't have the greatest February myself. Those aren't great reasons why I should have done better, I know. I do want to say to congrats to everyone who wrote, commented, and read this year's BaD... as well as congrats to everyone who is continuing writing.
Moving on to today's topic, great games you want to import. There are a bunch of games that are stuck in Japan (or other countries) that haven't made the jump over. There are countless reasons why this happens: lack of funding/ resources for translation, lack of interest, etc. Still there are games that are really worth getting no matter the cost...which can be high. Its nice though that many modern consoles make it a lot easier to do that by making games or the consoles themselves region free. Still, there are many games that don't have that luxury due to being on previous consoles that were not region free. Like Metal Wolf Chaos.
Metal Wolf Chaos is game that deserves no real explanation. The game quite literally speaks for itself: You're the President of The United States in a mech...Nuff said. Its hard to believe that this early original Xbox game came from Japan considering the game was dubbed in English. Furthermore, its really hard to believe that people that devolved this game would make another Western love letter in the form of Demon's Souls and Dark Soul, From Software. I may not want Dark Souls II but if From Software announced an HD remake of Metal Wolf Chaos? Hell, yeah. Especially considering that the game is nearly $200 to buy.
So what games, do you want to import?
The last three Summon Night games on the PSP. 3-5 came out in Japan only, I think, but you can buy them on Ebay for 80 bucks each. Only thing is, they are not in english.
Do you know if these game came out a downloadable titles on PSN? If so, you can probably get them digitally at a lower price through a Japanese PSN account. It doesn't fix the lack of translation which still bites.
As far as I know they did not. I have even tried to find them for the PSP EMU.
Wow, that's surpising that neither of those options are available.
I love the game, I have the 1,2 GBA and Twin Age on the DS. Awesome game. Wait, I found them for the EMU. Now I need to learn Japanese.
Dragon Quest X.
Don't worry about not commenting on all the blogs. Nobody can do that. There's just too many. It was a good BaD though!
That DQ was the MMO one right? I'm surpsrised that it hasn't made the jump yet either. Well, if FF XIV does well enough, maybe it will make the jump to the West.
I hope so....
God Eater 2, I got the first game free through PS+ and loved it.There still is no western release date for it :(
Its weird that GE2 doesn't have a realease date. I thought the cameo in Project X Zone kind of solidified the fact that Bandai Namco had some interest in porting it to the west. Maybe they will, eventually.
I'm not surprised From Software has strong ties with Sega, considering this looks like a Sega game, especially the cutscene voice acting. It looks gloriously stupid and therefore awesome, though.
Oh yeah, its full of that late 90's/ Earily 2000's Japanese Americana that definately so Sega. I never thought about that until you pointed that out.
I want to see some of the famous Visual Novels like Fate/Stay Knight, Tsukihime, CLANNAD, among others, to have official english releases. I could just find them in the web for free, and do hope to find a place to download some of them, but with a small growing market of some Visual Novels released outside Japan like the Phoenix Wright games, Hotel Dusk, 999, Corpse Party and recently released Danganronpa, I think they could create a good market out of that. Besides, one of the most famous ones can be purchased and it will be avaiable to Steam soon, and I don't think it was avaiable to be bought unless in imports.
Its really amazing how many visual novels have come over in the last few years. Its gone up considerably. The only thing that really standing in the way is just translations costs.
When the regular DS and PSP were in the limelight, I imported a lot of games because those consoles were region free. I mostly imported the Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko Drum Master) games for those systems, but other import-friendly titles would come about too, like Jump Superstars (Smash Bros. with popular anime characters) for instance.
There are a few titles i wish could've gotten a US release really badly, like Mr. Driller Drill Land on GameCube, Miles Edgeworth 2 on DS, and so on. Captain Rainbow on Wii would've also been interesting to try, and I'm game for any Taiko no Tatsujin imports.
I do remeber that Best Buy had Jump All Stars for sale one time. I was so confused because I though you need a Japanese DS to play it but hearing that its region free makes so much more sense now.
The electronic store Fry's also used to sell import DS and PSP games, that's where I got a lot of mine.
I am a huge fan of jrpg's, so there are a lot I would love to get. However, if they aren't in English, then I would pass. My Japanese is non existent and it is a really tough language to pick up. I did import Xenoblade from the UK thanks to Nintendo's dumbassedness. If you still haven't played Xenoblade, that is the best route. It is cheap in Europe and the Wii soft mod was so easy, I couldn't even screw it up.
Yeah, I'm probably going to soft mod my Wii some point soon. If not only to play imports but soft moding might be the only way to bypass the lack of Nintendo's WiFi service closing soon.
Either the Tales games that came out for DS and didn't make it over here, or DQX.
Wait, there were Tales of games that DIDN'T come to the West? On the DS? I'm not a Tales fan but I'm rather shocked that they never made it to the West at some point.
If GodEater 2 and Onechanbara Kagura cross over to the states I'll be a happy man!
If there's a lot of fan backing, I bet Bandai Namco would port GE2 to the west. They seem to be porting a ton of games the last few years to the West, especially games that have a lot of Western Fan backing. The only downside is most of digital only but hey at least its better than nothing.
I'd like to order Culcept DS from Japan, but the Japanese text would make the experience a chore.
Well, you might want to try looking over at GameFaQs. I know for a few of the games I play they have translated Japanese Text Guides that might help out with that.