Overrated Imports

[xelement5x]

I wonder if Japanese people ever import american stuff that was never released there, like the Atari 7800 or Colecovision.

I go through Yahoo Japan a lot and I'm constantly amazed by what shows up there from the US, but the occurrence is few and far between. Other media sites do have stuff as well from the US, I've actually found boxed 32X games occasionally for much cheaper than what they go for on ebay.

On YJA I'm mainly focused on Mega CD/LD games, but there's plenty of variety in that. One crazy example though: there was a US Sega CD model 1 boxed with paperwork up there maybe a year ago and it only went for about $75 since no one over there wanted it. I was tempted to grab it myself, but I've already got a boxed M1, so no need.

[NeoVamp]

As for Japanese people collecting western games, I saw a Mega Drive fansite called Mega Steel Empire where the guy reviewed a few western exclusives for the system. There's the belief about "Yo ge, Kuso ge" (western game, shit game) in some circles but there are still those who see past the cultural disdain against western games. With current western games becoming more accepted in Japan, it's something that's gradually being upturned in contemporary Japanese gaming.

I always wondered if somewhere in Japan lives a guy with a Mortal Kombat II poster on his wall, telling his wife that digitized
sprites was a completely awesome new thing back then that hardly anyone did, and that it was a shame that it wasn't more
popular, especially in Japan.

Not cause I love MK, just because it seems such a cultural clash.. I honestly wonder if a guy like that exists.

I also wonder if there were kids back then in Japan who watched GI Joe/Mask/Ghostbusters/ThunderCats and who defended it
to their fellow kids by saying "well these cartoons don't have deaths and naked tits and sad stories, its all action!"

such a different culture.

[zetastrike]

I also wonder if there were kids back then in Japan who watched GI Joe/Mask/Ghostbusters/ThunderCats and who defended it
to their fellow kids by saying "well these cartoons don't have deaths and naked tits and sad stories, its all action!"

such a different culture.

I always wondered what it was like for the Japanese kids who liked Transformers back in the 80s (before Headmasters). Were they treated like pariahs by anime kids for liking the white man's show?

[steve]

Definitely Majyuuou for the Super Famicom. The game play is slow and the guy you control is this teeny-tiny Lemmings sized sprite (you can't even see the bullets coming out of his gun). Yeah, the graphics are nice and colorful and the control is decent, but I find Mystic Defender a much better alternative for the your gaming dollar. It plays much faster, the graphics are nice (especially for a early Genesis/Mega Drive game), and there is a naked girl at the end.

+1. I liked it, but I'm not crazy about it. To me, it's a solid 7.5 out of 10, but not an epic 9+ out of 10 game, which is how most people sell the game. I think it might have to do with the fact that there simply weren't many dark games like it on SNES, so when one comes along, people latch onto it and hype it even more. Plus, in some ways it did feel like Castlevania meets Resident Evil (not quite, but you can see the comparison a bit). I do like it, but think it definitely gets overrated.

Disagree on R2 being worse than Doom Troopers, though, lol. R2 isn't great, and I might even call it overrated, but it's definitely no Doom Troopers IMO, and the graphics ARE splendid. What impressed me most however was the shooting level where hundreds of ships are flying at you with no speck of slowdown whatsoever. That was mind blowing, and still is to this day.

As for overrated imports... I might get hated on but I actually believe many of the Saturn imports are overrated. Don't get me wrong, I still like them a lot and all that, but I think they are overrated because the US library was SOOOOOO mediocre, that as soon as you had a bevy of quality games like many of the Saturn imports, people latched onto it even more and proclaimed the scene as being epic/legendary. If you look back at the library though, it's a shame there weren't more quality 2D platformers. The system hardly has any Sure, there are some without-a-doubt classics, like SF Zero 3 (AMAZING port) and Metal Slug (even with the slowdown), but a lot, like Taromaru and even some of the shmups, aren't quite as good as I once thought they were 10 years ago. I think back in the early 2000s they impressed, just because of the whole import allure and the fact like I said that the US library was so average that you sort of automatically viewed the imports as Godsends, but some of them haven't aged too well with time and perspective IMHO. Having an import Saturn catalog back in the early 2000s was sort of like being in a secret club/society, which only added to their lore. In truth, SOME of those games vary from slightly to grossly overrated.

[NeoVamp]

I always wondered what it was like for the Japanese kids who liked Transformers back in the 80s (before Headmasters). Were they treated like pariahs by anime kids for liking the white man's show?

And its the same with software, the "white man" made Zsnes and ePSXe and Dolphin emu. where are the amazing groundbreaking
Japanese only emulators? Where's the Japanese Bare Knuckle Remake? or Japanese OpenBor, or Mugen, or Adventure Game Studio?
The Japanese loved Castlevania, where's the Castlevania open source remake? or a Windows interpreter for those PC-FX hentai games?
or rom translations, did a fan team ever translate Secret of Evermore to Japanese?

We can't be the only people who enjoyed this stuff enough to later make emu's/apps/remakes/etc of it??.
It's almost like there's no Japanese presence on the Internet at all, do they even have Internet in Japan?

(and yes I know of the handful of Japanese emu's, but you'd think there'd be a bigger Japanese footprint online)

[zetastrike]

We can't be the only people who enjoyed this stuff enough to later make emu's/apps/remakes/etc of it??.
It's almost like there's no Japanese presence on the Internet at all, do they even have Internet in Japan?

(and yes I know of the handful of Japanese emu's, but you'd think there'd be a bigger Japanese footprint online)

I've come to the conclusion that Japan has its own internet that only they can access. They only venture onto ours to sell us stuff.

[o.pwuaioc]

I've come to the conclusion that Japan has its own internet that only they can access. They only venture onto ours to sell us stuff.

Why bother with English boards when there are plenty Japanese boards?

[zetastrike]

Why bother with English boards when there are plenty Japanese boards?

We have plenty of members here from Europe and South America whose first language isn't English. So do a lot of other gaming boards.

[midnightrider]

I suppose it comes down to who's doing the overrating. Like I'd say SNES RPG's, but loud nerds in numbers across the internet don't exactly make something popular.

Speaking of that genre, I thought I'd like that Chaso Seed, being action oriented, but the strategy/RPG elements do kind of get in the way of that enjoyment, so it just isn't one for me. RPG sized sprites do see a lot of action on screen, before slowdown kicks in(wonder if that's why they remade it for the Saturn).

And its the same with software, the "white man" made Zsnes and ePSXe and Dolphin emu. where are the amazing groundbreaking
Japanese only emulators? Where's the Japanese Bare Knuckle Remake? or Japanese OpenBor, or Mugen, or Adventure Game Studio?
The Japanese loved Castlevania, where's the Castlevania open source remake? or a Windows interpreter for those PC-FX hentai games?
or rom translations, did a fan team ever translate Secret of Evermore to Japanese?

We can't be the only people who enjoyed this stuff enough to later make emu's/apps/remakes/etc of it??.
It's almost like there's no Japanese presence on the Internet at all, do they even have Internet in Japan?

(and yes I know of the handful of Japanese emu's, but you'd think there'd be a bigger Japanese footprint online)

Well... Soul of Dracula is a great Castlevania fan game(no actual Castlevania licensed content, but from a gameplay perspective, it doesn't get much better) by a Japanese developer. Akuji the Demon(quick metroidvania), Guardian of Paradise(quick action-adventure), Cave Story...

Come to think of it, how often do you go looking for Japanese sites, in regards to fan game/freeware/indie(doujin)/emulation/etc. development? Those other 3 games had to be translated, and it was fortunate that Soul of Dracula was developed with English at all(I'm not sure it was at first).

[o.pwuaioc]

We have plenty of members here from Europe and South America whose first language isn't English. So do a lot of other gaming boards.

I was under the impression that there boards for Spanish, Greek, and French weren't nearly as numerous as those of English and Japanese.

[zetastrike]

I always wondered if somewhere in Japan lives a guy with a Mortal Kombat II poster on his wall, telling his wife that digitized
sprites was a completely awesome new thing back then that hardly anyone did, and that it was a shame that it wasn't more
popular, especially in Japan.

Are there guys in Japan who could be called "Jamericans" or "Jeuropeans"? And are they as stigmatized as wapanese are around here? I have a hard time picturing a Japanese guy like that.

[o.pwuaioc]

Are there guys in Japan who could be called "Jamericans" or "Jeuropeans"? And are they as stigmatized as wapanese are around here? I have a hard time picturing a Japanese guy like that.

It's pretty common, actually.