Well if you’ve been paying attention to the Wii JRPG scene at all, nay the Wii release schedule as of late you’ll know that it has been pretty dry for the last year or so, save for a few big titles like Skyward Sword, The Last Story and Xenoblade.
The Wii has had a pretty good run, considering many gamers considered Nintendo as an also-ran this generation with the little white box that seemed way underpowered, but more than delivered in fun, innovation and style.
But with that aside, Operation Rainfall is getting closer to it’s goal of getting Nintendo of America to release all three exclusive JRPG games here in North America. Xenoblade Chronicles had just been released here over the Easter weekend and The Last Story is making its way to store shelves later this year. The last one left in this trifecta to make it here is Pandora’s Tower. There has been no official word as of yet on if Nintendo will be bringing over Pandora’s Tower here, but who knows, maybe they’ll bring it over after some fan pressure!
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Pandora’s Tower has already been released in Europe, or will be released by the end of April unless there’s been a change in plans. My only worry is that they don’t bring the Japanese dialogue and original names in as well as the localized versions for some reason. I don’t mind them trying to localize games to make them appeal to a wider audience but the people who are most excited for these games, and have been following them for months/years now may be disappointed to not find the original audio/character names from the Japanese version. In a perfect world we would have more games like Resident Evil: Revelations, where we get every language/audio available to us within the game, which would solve most complaints purists may have with localization efforts.
Regardless I hope we get a North American release for Pandora’s Tower soon!
Note: The European version (Of Pandora’s Tower) has made some changes to the names of the main characters in the story, not sure if it comes with the original Japanese tied in. But there is more info on Nintendo Europe site. Off topic note: Fire Emblem Awakening is out today, in Japan(I think). Nintendo of Europe has confirmed Fire Emblem Awakening will be released there later in the year. Still no word on a NOA release date.
I think the above games are made only available at EB games/Gamestop for those who wish to purchase it (unless we can find used copies sold elsewhere). Xenoblade is suppose to be the best of the trio and it’s out first.
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There has been alot of that sentiment, even since the early days, some games have been selectively not brought over. It’s usually due to having too niche a market or some copyright issues. I think Mother 3 (Earthbound) had an issue with copyright with having tracks that some claim to be Beatles tracks in reverse.
And Nintendo isn’t the only publisher that is guilty of this too. The Tales series is notorious for not being localized often enough. I think we only got about half or two thirds of that franchise ever making it out of Japan, probably due to a different niche that prefers Tales over FF type battle systems and more anime/cel shading graphics.
The point is, publishers shouldn’t be afraid to release games in different markets and take some risks more often. Look at TWEWY. It was a fun quirky game, that ended up being pretty successful.