AKA. What am I missing?
A few months back I found Ufouria via rom(after reading about it in Nintendo Power some 6 years prior) and it's a great game not disimiliar to metroid(only a lot more colorful). And a while back I got Kuru Kuru Kururin for the Gameboy Advance(via ebay) and it's a great game.
Now neither of these games was released in America, so I'm wondering about other games released in Europe that rock, that I may have missed. A lot of people talk about playing these Jrpg's that never came stateside, but playing a game I can understand seems kinda stupid. Though I did play Super Picross and it was good stuff.
But I digress any other great games I should check out?
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For the record, these games have still not been released in Europe:
Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Tales of Destiny, Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden III, Valkyrie Profile (they didn't even bring the PSP version over), Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria and Parasite Eve.
Yeah, we sure do get all the good stuff.
Still stand by my 'wanting cool games that weren't released in America' statement though.
Didn't Europe not get Mario RPG also
Wii: 5024 6786 2934 2806 | Steam/XBL: Arcibi | FFXI: Arcibi / Bahamut
Yeah. That's right. PAL-land missed out on Mario RPG.
On the upside, we did get International Cricket for the NES and Super International Cricket for the SNES.
I'll probably give it a whirl again, what was the other sequel you mentioned?
However, you guys don't think nudity will melt your face off, like opening the Ark of the Covenant.
I think you guys win.
In Europe's defense, Contra with robots is still awesome
I mean, come on
Whether the endless waves of enemies are aliens or robots is meaningless because one is just as cool as the other in my opinion
Wii: 5024 6786 2934 2806 | Steam/XBL: Arcibi | FFXI: Arcibi / Bahamut
They looked like(were?) humans though, not aliens. Shooting humans is always more satisfying than shooting Robots.
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Oh shit, I will never say anything bad about Probotector. It's the others that I'm talking about.
I only found out that Probotector and Contra were the same game a few years ago. I kept seeing Contra mentioned everywhere, and thought "Wow. I wonder how I missed that whole franchise?". Meanwhile, I thought Probotector was a totally underrated series of games.
Also, if you're really getting Mother 3, there's some people who'd probably move there just to play it. :P
Woah, wait where did you hear this?
For now....
There was a kururin GCN game too.
I don't remember, but I could've sworn someone saying Mother 3 GBA was getting a release there.
To this day, I remember looking over screens for Parodius (I've been a huge shmup fan for years), and saw that it was going to Europe but not America, and I began seething with a rage that continues on to this day.
While there have been many others, this is what sticks out in my mind.
EDIT: You guys got Sin and Punishment also, didn't you?
How did I miss that? Oy. Weird thing looking at some screen shots it looks like the traditional play style, but it's listed as 'fighting'.
So can you play Japanese games on a American Gamecube?
Yes, but you'll need either a Freeloader disc, or to do a bit of soldering.
Also, you will want a dedicated memory card for your Japanese games.
I'm still looking for a cheap copy of that.
Also, when games ARE EVENTUALLY released here, we sometimes get extra goodies. MGS3 had some extra stuff thrown in including a European Extreme mode, and games like Metroid Prime got some extra voice samples and bug fixes. Generally, by the time a game has hit Europe they've ironed out the kinks and we get a more polished product.
Must be the translation of all the dialogue...
There´s been so much BS rumors about a Mother 3 release that I seriously doubt it.
There´s very little reason to be envious of Europe. We nearly always get everything later than USA, we sometimes get the games butchered, and often we don´t get games at all. I´ve had to mod both PS1 and PS2 to get my hands on several RPG classics. I´m also very, very afraid that my Playstations will break, because the modding is either difficult or expensive, depending on wether you are going to do it yourself or pay someone else to do it. All this would virtually be a non-problem if they´d make region-free consoles and games.
We also often get black&white manuals when USA gets full color manuals. Sometimes we don´t get a paper manual at all when USA does. Some collections and bundles have more stuff in USA, and also cost less than the gutted European versions. We always pay more, even when we get less.
Some publishers use aggressive copy-protection in Europe, but not in USA. Some games in here include Straforge, when USA copies do not.
Another frustration is that American web shops rarely even seem to aknowledge that there is life outside of USA, much less have reasonable shipping costs to Europe. I´m dependant on two Canadian shops, so if they don´t have something, I most likely won´t get it. I also miss all the cool pre-order bonuses. We don´t have pre-order bonuses, ever. I would have loved to get the Twilight Princess collection, the Phoenix Wright 1 and 2 pre-order bonuses, and the awesome pre-order bonuses that came with Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. They never came out in my coutry, and guess twice if those two Canadian shops I buy from had any available?
Summa summarum: American gamers, you lucky bastards.
Don't remind me of the EU Baldur's Gate II manual in contrast to the US one, ugh.
Or for recent events: The EU NeverwinterNights II 'pamphlet'.
But anyway, perfect summary.
Off the top of my head I can only think of three games that were released in Europe but never made it to the US. They're Vib Ribbon, Dropship and Resident Evil: Survivor 2 (funnily enough, the list goes from awesome, to average and lastly, to terrible).
As for included extras with PAL versions, we've had new features in MGS2, MGS3, MGS:PO, Ico and SotC. The new features in MGS2 were probably the best out of that lot (new modes, socom silencer, tuxedo and extra cutscene) but Ico's extras were pretty awesome as well (lightsaber, translation and co-op). The others... Meh. SotC had some awesome art but not '4 months later' awesome. MGS3 had a few more face paints, a couple of new modes and euro extreme, but again, not worth a 6 month delay. MGS:PO looks to have a couple of new maps and characters but personally I'd rather have 6 months before goddamn April.
Most of the time though, our games end up gimped. FFX in particular ran 10% slower than the NTSC version and had gigantic borders (the first game Square Enix released that wasn't gimped was DQVIII). DMC1 did as well. Also, from what I've heard, the NIS games have features taken out of them so that they fit on CD's rather than DVD's.
I can't speak for anything else you mentioned, but the NA release of Subsistence did have European Extreme mode, and yes, it was still called European Extreme.
Anyone know why it was called this? To wiki!
I don't know anyone who has played ps2 over the net in the UK. I-link yes, but not netplay.
As for not released in europe stuff, how about Xenosaga 1? We get xenosaga 2, but not 1! wtf? what the hell is that all about?
The final fantasy games with their huge borders are annoying its true, but to be fair they have a half-decent reason. All the backgrounds are made from paintings, and in some cases the paintings are only the size of the screen, so if the game were to be increased to PAL resolution, there would be a gap near the top and bottom anyway where they ran out of painting.
Now all that could be easily fixed I know, but at least its a better reason than "we couldn't be arsed" (EG streetfighter EX3, devil may cry)
God I hope FFXII doesnt have borders.
There's no excuse for NoE not releasing that. It was even released here in Australia.
Oh yeah, I remember years back in the 64 days watching a video of the NTSC version of Mario 64 and I couldn't believe how much it was. Plus no letterboxing.
My Baldurs Gate 2 manual was like...huge. Did the US get something novel-sized, or what?
And everything Raggie wrote is unfortunatly true. We get to wait 6+ months for games to reach us and then it's usually a badly magled NTSC>PAL translation we get. That is if we even get the game here, we've missed out on a shitload of games, forcing a lot of us to chip our consoles and start importing.
On consoles, though - specifically Sony ones in my personal experience - shitty PAL conversions were a constant bugbear. Tekken 3, for example, ran a full 17% slower and in horribly squished 'widescreen'. It was dreadful. My PS1 was also modded because of this; which led to the hilarity of my UK Tekken 3-owning mate bitching that my Japanese copy ran too fast whenever he played it.
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