I’ve been living in Japan for over a year and a half now, so I tend to forget what is going on in the gaming world in the States.
I have a rough idea because I still chat to some gamers and they tend to live in not-Japan. They also tend to as of late bitch about what Nintendo is releasing or more precisely what Nintendo is not releasing.
I remember reading Nintendo Power a lot as a child which 1) provided me my ability to read and 2) gave me an intense loyalty to the company and the feeling I should defend them at every turn. While I don’t do number two every day, I still get the feeling to do it sometimes when I know I shouldn’t. Even when I’m doing the exact opposite.
What was more magical about that time was I only knew about games that Nintendo Power told me about. Or games I saw in the store. My knowledge base of what games existed was intensely finite. I had no idea the amount of games Nintendo was making for a system that was functionally the same yet slightly different from the one I owned.1 I had no idea. Hell, I probably didn’t even know that the stuff was coming from Japan!2
But these days we know a lot more. People are leaking information at such a rate that we know about game titles as soon as they are trademarked. We get covered with images and movies of the game before it’s even close to being released. Companies are even making anouncment these days about events where they will make announcements. That’s right, people. Think about that long and hard.3
Announcements of announcements.
Where have we gone wrong?
What seems to have come with this is the idea that just because a game is released in one region that it must come out in other regions, and it damn well better be out fast. I’m in agreement that it would be very nice for this to happen. I also think that world peace could be kinda cool as well. A free dinner tonight would also be sweet.
My point is that sure, these things would all be nice. Some things would make sense. But they may not happen. And I just can’t get angry over that.
And everyone knows I get angry about some inane shit.
Is it because I have spent the time learning Japanese so now I’m pretty much able to play any game released anywhere without hassle? I mean, there is invariably going to be a Japanese or English language release of a video game. I’m not implying others should do the same just to play games, but I just have to wonder why people feel these games should be released just because they want them to be.
