Why can’t I get awesome Japanese video games?
The question of “Why can’t I get awesome Japanese video games?” was asked in the comments by Shannon and I feel compelled to give my thoughts on the subject. I paraphrased the question, so I hope I got the gist of it correct.
Living in St. Louis (or the surrounding areas) for pretty much all my life does two distinct things to you:
- You become painfully aware of where you went to high school
- You realize how cut off you are from all the kick-ass stuff covered in awesome-sauce that exists in the rest of the world
I started gaming pretty young, considering the age of video games themselves. Since that beginning, there has always loomed the ethereal spectre of foreign games. Every now and then we would get our hands on a game in same alien language (my first copy of Alone in the Dark was a bootleg in French) and we would wonder why this stuff wasn’t more available in the States. We heard about the bizarre peripherals for the NES and Genesis that never left Japan. We heard about the WonderSwan console that also never left Asia. And most of all… we heard about the amazing games that we would never be able to play. And we sulked. A lot.
So now I’ve been living in Hong Kong, China for the past year. I’ve also visisted Tokyo and seen the billions of game stores (slight exaggeration) in Akihabara. I’ve drooled over the sheer number of Gundam games for every system. And I envy the Japanese their games.
So we know that these kick-ass games covered in awesome sauce exist. So why can’t you get them in the States? The main reason you don’t see these games brought over to the US and European market more often is generally due to money. It costs a LOT of money to completely translate a game from Japanese to English. Consider not only the written dialog but also the menu systems and game mechanics as well as the written manual and the packaging that the game is displayed/sold in. If a game includes voice-acting then you are talking exponentially more money. Why would a game publisher spend that much money on a game to bring it outside of Japan only for most people to stare at it and say “WTF, I don’t get it.” Sure Katamari Damacy took the market by storm but most aren’t that lucky.
Now I know that you still believe that there must be more gaming gems out there from Japan-land that you want to play. I’m sure there are. So is there any way to get the games anyway?
Well, I have two responses to that:
- You CAN get many of them if you want. You just need to order from stores like Play-Asia or J-List (although the game selection is slim here)
- You probably don’t REALLY want them anyway
OK so the first point is pretty self-explanatory. If you must have a game, there are possibilities although I will warn you that these imports are not cheap. However, that second point may throw you. I’ve grown up believing that everything from Japan is cool. And to some extent that is true. However, when you get the chance to look at a wall of Japanese video games and start picking up boxes, you quickly realize that you can only look at the pictures and think, “Wow, I have no idea what is going on but it looks sweet.” And then you put the box back. This is true for pretty much every game in every store I saw… UNLESS you can speak and read Japanese.
Now for those of you reading this that can read and speak Japanese, you are probably smirking to yourself right now thinking, “That’s right you gai-jin bastard! All the kick-ass games, with and without awesome-sauce, are all mine to play! MUAA-HAA-HA-ha-haa-ha, etc.” Because you’re mean like that that. Yeah, you know who you are. For the rest of us, Japanese is still and probably always will be the equivalent of figuring out Spatial Calculus written in an Ethiopian dialect of Latin. In case that analogy escapes you, that means it’s hard.
So let’s say you just don’t care about the Japanese and you resolve yourself to slog through hundreds of pages of meaningless text just to say you’ve played a particular game. Good for you, I hope you have fun with that. I’ve tried doing just that and I can’t do it. It’s not fun. But to each their own. So if you insist on this, how do you know what games to buy? Ah, here’s the real bite because for every game like Jump Ultimate Stars or Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan or Super Robot Taisen OG that is awesome, there are twenty other games that would disturb, confuse, nauseate, or bewilder you.
For example, I just read about a new Japanese game in that you play a man who was killed by the devil. The devil requires the man to corrupt three other men by various means (to steal their souls) in order to be brought back to life. Obviously you accept since there wouldn’t be much of a game otherwise. So as I understand it, you really mess with these men until you basically break them. And then you make them your bitch. Oh, I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way. Your character, literally and graphically, bends these broken men to be his love slave before they lose their soul. Sound like a fun game? To some of you it might, but I’m willing to bet that most would not find this fun.
Other games may be so overloaded with cute characters that they forget to put an actual game or story in with all the cuteness. Some games are just interactive porn (sorry, “dating sims”). Some you may think are really cool and never realize that the context of the story is something totally different because of the undertones or colloquialisms of Japanese culture that you wouldn’t understand. Most of the time, you’ll just sit there wondering “Why the hell did that just happen?”
So given these last few paragraphs, are you really surprised that more game publishers don’t spend the money and take the chance to bring more games out of Japan? I’m not. So here’s my advice: If you hear about an import that simply “must play,” make sure you do some research before you go and spend a bundle to get it shipped to you. Find out if it’s really something you’ll be able to play or even want to play. It’s the only way to keep from wasting your hard-earned game money.
Tags: culture, Japan, localization, video games
August 15, 2007 2:38 pm 7 Comments
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Import Games - A “Why Not?” « Insomnic Dreams — August 16, 2007 @ 1:40 am
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By sir jorge, August 16, 2007 @ 12:25 am
I played some Saturn Imports and they were amazing…except I couldn’t read the instructions.
By yoshi, August 16, 2007 @ 1:25 am
LOL I think the only Japanese games I really wanted to play are some of the gundam games (which have finally been ported over i think right?). Other than that, playing the japanese versions of some of the Final fantasy games wouuld be great too, especially FFX-2, since that game had Koda Kumi in it singing the 2 songs. (Koda Kumi = Japanese Pop Star)
But yeah, there are so many games that no one would get, and the culture…is so disturbingly different. But that could be another post.
By Insomnic, August 16, 2007 @ 1:33 am
Very complete reference! I especially like the point you made about it not really being worth the time or effort to either slog through the translations, spend the money (don’t forget to mod your deck), or even for the distributors to convert them!
In my own 2 cents… it seems similar to Anime fansubs. And I bet there are the same cults with games that there are with Anime. 2 prevalent cults are the “Everything Rocks” and the “Have Them All”. The first includes the people who think ALL Anime is awesome. These aren’t your typical fanboys or otaku. These are the people who are so enamored with the whole Anime culture that they are just plain crazy. Before the digital ease of fansub downloading, usually only decent anime was fansubbed; now that it’s much easier to do the “market” is flooded with anything people can get their hands on and translate.
The other group is less crazy… and is common among lots of downloaders. The “Have Them All” group just wants to download and own them all… it doesn’t really matter if they’ve watched them. These are the “collectors”. They are crazy too… but less rabid.
By the way, Cybr is a collector. Ask him about his movie collection and then ask him how many of them he’s watched. Better yet… ask him how many he’s opened.
By yoshi, August 16, 2007 @ 1:41 am
LOL that’s so funny. I don’t even know how many times i came over and he had a stack of DVD’s on the table, and none of them were opened. and they never got opened. LOL
LOL yeah, I think personally some of the Anime fansubs are a bit not right. And honestly, people really need to learn the difference between girly stuff and boy stuff when it comes to japanese things. LOL :P
By rev_matt_y, August 16, 2007 @ 1:54 am
That’s a pretty awesome explanation of the situation. I always sort of figured “Hmmm, given how confusing Japanese TV shows are, I’m pretty sure the entire experience of playing a non-ported game would be one giant session of WTF.”
By Shannon, August 18, 2007 @ 3:26 am
Thank you for the effort and thought for my question!
I wonder… would they be working on making some translation software cheaper? Or would the Japanese try to tap into the American market by writing games in a few different languages during the initial programming of the game?
Or could this be a way of the Japanese saying a nice Screw You to us? ;-) I mean… yeah…. you hear all those rumors about how AWESOME these games are, or even consoles are, things that you can never lay your own eyes on in your lifetime…. is that just a way of taunting us? ;-)
Well anyways, thank you again. :-) Have some awesome sauce. (I like that.)