Why import games and game systems are better

[Somebody'sPet]

A longtime friend on mine, that I've known for close to 17 years got a chance to go to the land of the rising sun a year ago. The reason he couldn't take me with him is because he won the trip on a contest for one month, and his father was VERY skilled in the Japanese language(hey, save money on a tourist guide). Anyways, when he got to Japan, the first thing they did after the first day of unpacking and getting to know the area a bit better was decide on going to the video game shops the next day. When he got in the one of the shops, he(his dad was off somewhere chatting with the locals of a near by shrine) litterally fell to his knees right there and cried, because he could not believe how many games the US was missing out on. When he got done crying, he looked at all the different games they had, and there was alot to dig through(found alot of good stuff too). He went to close to 8 shops, and he just couldn't believe how much more stuff they had. There was one shop that was like the size of one bestbuy store, and all they sold was games(that freakin' rules)! He was so upset when he realized just how bad the gamers in the US were getting rip-off, he litteraly went back to their hotel room and started cursing REALLY bad. I mean, close to 10 minutes. He did admit that the games are more expensive, but you DO get more for your money. For example, when you buy a game console over there they actually let you pick out up to three games you want included with it when you buy it. Plus the japanese games are harder and better most of the time. The Japanese versions of Ninja Gaiden and DMC3 are ALOT tougher than the american versions(you guys should see the Japanese version of DMC3 on Dante must Die, it would make Ikaruga look easy). There PS2s are also better built too.

Mr. SmartyPants, the fact is that you get more for your money with a Jap PSP. Its not about bragging right MSP. Its about more games to choose from and more settings.

Hey, you got to admit, more games is always better.

[CookinLikeSanji]

Actually, America got the tougher version of DMC.

Japan's Normal = America's Easy
Japan's Hard = America's Normal
Japan's DMD = America's Hard
America has an exclusively hard DMD mode
And of course HoH is the same in both (One hit kills)

Although I may have a feeling he could be talking about the new Special Edition DMC3, which possibly is harder, but I don't believe there's an official word on it yet.

But yes, I do believe America gets a swift blow to the face in terms of how many games we miss out on. Importing is a good thing...So is translation guides XD

[Sync]

There PS2s are also better built too.

I can attest that they are not, about the only hardware difference for a few revisions was the laser mechanism but now they're all the same. Sony just updates the firmware & BIOS much more often on the JPS2 line.

[Yojimbo]

I concur there. I'd hardly call Japanese systems better built. They're the guinea pigs for the rest of the world since systems/games from there typically come out months ahead of North America and Europe. Sure they have more games tons more but for every cool Japanese game that probably won't be coming over here there's five dating simulators, train simulators, vacation simulators, oh and can't forget those porno games. Just in general the market it very saturated with sequel after sequel and lame cash cow license games.

And even the staunchest Japanese RPG fan knows that the genre is seriously getting stale with tales of 15 year old boys who are hot headed, cocky, oblivious to female feelings, have an evil brother, must journey to X places to get X items that open X, that in the end helped the villain closer to ruling/destroying X.

Not to mention with buying import that it's going to be really expensive shipping all of that stuff as well as just paying for it.

[gameoverblue]

Sorry to tell you this, but Americans almost always dumb-down games when they come to america. REason- they know most american gamers are lazy and stupid. It's a tough reality, and I hate it. There are so many games that I play and get bored with and think to myself, this would be better with more to it.

[Arnobius]

There are a lot of games over there not worth getting too. Like movies it's what the US distributor thinks will sell over here. The trick is getting something you can read (recently picked up multi region dvd player to not rely on US movie distributors)

[Nate]

Americans almost always dumb-down games when they come to america. REason- they know most american gamers are lazy and stupid.

That's not always true.

Take Arc the Lad II for PS1, for example. Working Designs literally used EVERY FREE BIT OF MEMORY on the disc, and they had to cut out scenes from the disc to make it all fit. Why?

Because Japanese characters use one symbol for an entire word. English has to work with letters. With the vast amount of dialogue in the game, changing it all from Japanese to English literally took up ALL the memory, so much so that they had to remove some parts just because the text was taking up so much memory. It wasn't to "dumb it down" for American audiences, and it wasn't because American gamers are lazy and stupid...it's because there wasn't enough space to put everything on there when translated.

For me, though, it's not an issue. I can't read Japanese, and I don't feel like bothering just so I can spend a huge wad of cash more (like Jimbo said, it costs a LOT to import stuff) to get obscure games. Yeah, it sucks. There's a couple of games I've seen that aren't coming here that I'd really like...but I have too many games already, it would be a hassle to read them, and I don't have the cash to burn.

Hey, as long as Wild ARMs games keep coming over, I'm happy.

[Arnobius]

A lot of those games are those dating sims too, where people talk for 10 minutes and you get to choose A or B and they talk for another 10 minutes.

[Myoti]

I've started thinking about trying imports, such as Jump Superstars, since the odds of it coming overseas are next to none.

Another would be One Piece: Grand Battle Rush, after hearing how much they tore it apart here to make it fit the dubbed series. =_=

[Rocketshipper]

They cut scenes out of Arc the Lad 2? That game is actully LONGER in Japan!?!?! O_O!!! It's already long enough as it is.

Working Designs also improves most of their games in terms of graphics and stuff. Like the instruction booklets said that they enhanced the anime cinemas in Lunar and Lunar 2 to run full screen and faster, or something. And they added more save slots

[Yojimbo]

Sorry to tell you this, but Americans almost always dumb-down games when they come to america. REason- they know most american gamers are lazy and stupid. It's a tough reality, and I hate it. There are so many games that I play and get bored with and think to myself, this would be better with more to it.

That's a sweeping generalization if I've ever heard one. Might as well say all Japanese gamers do is buy up every licensed game that's thrown at them, have 50 dating sim games, and are so obsessed they play them for 12 hours a day. Doesn't make it true. And you contradicted yourself as well. Your first statement has little merit to it, which has already been stated, and if it were true it would be the Japanese devs dumbing it down not the localization team.

Like I said for every cool Japanese game out there there's a dozen vacation simulators, dating sims, and mediocre licensed games along with it. That they're going to charge an arm and a leg for on top of.

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Mr. SmartyPants, the fact is that you get more for your money with a Jap PSP. Its not about bragging right MSP. Its about more games to choose from and more settings.

get a boot disc. that solves your problems. The problem is that it's in... japanese! and it's harder to play mainly rpgs! The only import games I have no problems with are like fighters.

*happily plays Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen 3 on my american gamecube*

[TrigunX89]

Ahh, I dream of a day when I will take trips to Japan, buy awesome games, and know enough of the language to understand and play them fully... But for now, that's still just a pipedream, and imports are far too expensive.

[Somebody'sPet]

I'm really sorry if I upsetted anyone in here. I did not me that whatsoever. I was just stating a fact that many times the US and Canada, not to metion Austraila, get rip-off when a game from the far east comes over here. Its not the Japanese peoples' fault. Its the gov'ts fault because of the extreme amount of censorship that games have to go through. What I'm trying to say is, when I pay full price for a game, I except to get the FULL game. Not a watered down version. See what I'm getting at?

[Nate]

Um, it isn't the government's fault. It's the game company's. The localization company decides what gets kept and what doesn't. Not the government. The government is trying to regulate, true, as you can see with Jack Thompson. But ultimately it's not that the government is forcing companies to censor games. The game companies will sometimes do it of their own free will.

It's like anime on TV. It's not that the government is forcing the companies to censor the show. The company takes it on themselves to censor it. One Piece is a prime example. They could've shown it uncut and unedited on Adult Swim, but they chose not to. It wasn't that the government told them to take out the bad content. It's because they wanted to be able to market the anime to a wider audience.

And don't forget that sometimes Americans get BETTER stuff. The American version of Dragon Quest VIII will have cut scenes and voice acting that the Japanese version did not have.

And remember, it's all a matter of MONEY. Take Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix for example. Square would've had to rehire the voice actors, rehire the translation team, produce new box art, so on and so forth...and they probably wouldn't have enough sales of the game to cover the costs of doing that. Companies are in business to make money, whether you like it or not. If they do things that make them lose money, no matter how much the fans like it, they'll go out of business and then you won't have ANY games.