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PAL By Comparison

I made a list some time back that looked at games I very much wish could receive PAL releases. I could've made that list a lot longer by including games that were already given localizations and released in the US. It's a fairly common and discouraging sight for European gamers, even to this day. It's not like most Europeans can't read English anyway, and to heck with the ones that aren't able to. (I know right? This is why the UK is so loved by the rest of the continent.)

Anyway, I figured I owed it to the handful of games (and their tireless publishers) that did in fact make it as far as Europe but didn't quite hit the US, at least not for specific desired platforms. I'm well aware that many of the games below can be procured in the US without an expensive import purchase (and the reverse is true for us as well, fortunately), but once upon a time we put-upon dirty Euros could laud our exotic spoils over the indignant Americans, shortly before they went back to playing Xenogears and Suikoden III and Final Fantasy Tactics and grumble, grumble...

TL;DR: Here's a short list of great (?? citation needed?) games that were released in Europe. They might've also been released in Japan at some point. They were not released in the US, at least not at the time.

List items

  • Another Code is better known as Trace Memory in the US, and this Wii-only sequel is more of the same mix of adventure game mysteries and little Layton-esque side-puzzles. I mean, I assume; since CING went missCING, I've been saving my copy of this for a rainy day.

  • Asterix is kind of a hard sell outside of Europe, where the character is far better liked, and the first XXL game (which was a 3D brawler not unlike God of War) didn't particularly do so well in the US. It's a shame this one never left Europe, because it's filled with silly video game references made by people familiar with how Asterix's cynical and fourth-wall-breaking sense of humor works. The gameplay itself is fairly average, but it's the stuff around it that elevates it.

  • The European Bishi Bashi Special is actually a compilation of two Japanese PS1 games, which were themselves compilations of Konami's Bishi Bashi series of fast-paced Arcade mini-game collections meant for a crowd of participants. An early precursor to WarioWare, with a similar sense of absurd humor.

  • Now, I'd hesitate to call anything in the Simply 2000 series "good", but Demolition Girl is worth a look in for its premise alone. That premise being that an average 20-something model suddenly becomes a kaiju and walks around in a confused stupor causing all sorts of accidental damage to nearby settlements. Look up GunstarRed's blog on this game for more elaboration on stopping giant scantily-clad women before it's too late.

  • Disaster was an earlier effort of Xenoblade developers Monolith Soft, and is an absolutely bananas take on a Hollywood disaster movie as produced by a Japanese Roland Emmerich. It even has elements of Hard Rain and The Rock in there too, if it needed any more action machismo and dumb one-liners. This is a game I wish Dan Ryckert could play.

  • Doshin the Giant is an unusual take on a god-sim that includes an enormous all-powerful entity that could either be benevolent or malevolent to the lesser creatures around him, depending on the player's mood. Molyneux would try something similar with Black and White (and it's only fair, since Doshin's developer cited Molyneux's earlier Populous as a reference), but that's obviously not quite as odd as this game and its goofy looking "Love God/Hate God" deity.

  • I'm sad that I could never find a The Firemen cart for sale in the wild, because I rented it many years ago and found its curious mix of a dual-stick shooter (not that the SNES had two sticks, or any sticks, but bear with me) and a firefighter sim quite appealing. The game actually told a story, and anthropomorphized the fires you put out as this unstoppable menace. Like Backdraft, fire was practically treated as a sentient predator. An odd game, but a surprisingly fun one.

  • Most US gamers are familiar with the first Siren thanks to its graphically-updated remake Blood Curse. Built by ex-Silent Hill developers, Forbidden Siren 1 & 2 made your character nearly defenseless against the invincible Shibito, relying instead on the ability to "sightjack" foes to figure out where they were in the area and waiting for an opportune moment to sneak past. Siren 2 is more of that, just with even weirder plot twists and monsters. If anything, the weirdness makes it more unsettling, and it sure gets dark with some of its body horror...

  • Speaking of CING earlier, Glass Rose is another adventure game of theirs (their first, in fact) that didn't get much exposure outside of Japan. It's hard to find in the UK too these days. It's one of those games I'm keeping an eye out for, even if it's not supposed to be all that great.

  • Gregory Horror Show is like Silent Hill mixed with Hello Kitty, as a bunch of oddball CGI brick characters find ways of torturing each other and the player in the titular hotel. The game's goal is to avoid danger, use stealth to spy on hotel visitors and find the perfect time to steal their souls (you kinda have this deal with a Jamaican Grim Reaper, y'see). It's an odd enough game just looking at it, made even odder still by taking Majora Mask's "NPCs on schedules" feature and building a whole survival horror stealth game out of it.

  • An old SNES favorite of mine, Jelly Boy was like Claymates or A Boy and His Blob in that it gave the player a hero with a flexible amorphous shape. The game looked great and was packed with imagination, if a little straightforward and familiar as standard SNES 2D platformers went. Easy to understand why it slipped through the cracks, and why the developers never thought to bring it over to the States (didn't help that the US PS1 launch was only months away).

  • This is the most prominent recent example for a lot of people, including our own horror aficionado Tricky "Spookin' Wit'" Scoops. Obviously the PS2 version is available in the US as Fatal Frame 2, and can be bought off PSN even. The Wii version with its enhanced motion controls is currently beyond a US audience's grasp. The schadenfreude is so delightful I wish I could snap a picture of it.

  • I dimly recall Rakugakids as being that "weird Japanese game" friends and TV shows would put on to confuse people when the N64 was big. It looks pretty similar to Parappa with its 3D cutout sketchbook style, and plenty of comparisons were made at the time. One of those things I ended up admiring from a distance, since it was fairly rare and expensive (like many PAL N64 games, for some reason) and I've never much cared for fighters.

  • While Project Zero II is a case where the US didn't receive a port of the game, Rez is the opposite. Originally for the Dreamcast, the US never saw that incarnation and instead had to make do with the PS2 version. I've heard there's only minor visual and audio differences between the two versions, but when your game is this focused on the visual and audio side of things it probably matters to a lot of people.

  • Likewise, Shenmue II never saw a US release on the platform that made its predecessor a big (lucky) hit (in the face (with a soccerball)). This time it was the Xbox First that filled in for its near-death rival the Dreamcast. Of course, Shenmue III didn't come out in the US either. Because that series died on its ass. Sorry. By which I mean, I'm sorry that I'm adding to this site's anti-Shenmue rhetoric. Does it help if I say I'm a big Yakuza fan? No? All right then.

  • Terranigma's legendary as the one SNES RPG everyone in the US wanted but had to import (EarthBound was a similar case for us). The third in the Soul Blazer trilogy, following Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, Terranigma begins as a series of tough puzzle dungeons and gradually, eventually loses its damn mind. Each successive Soul Blazer game just got headier and headier.

  • I feel like anyone who actually knew what Vib Ribbon was at the time probably had already found a way to import it, but it's worth remembering that this rhythm game was Europe and Japan only. Still technically is, since Sony doesn't seem to be doing anything with it despite all their conference "hints". I bet as soon as Sony's best minds figure out how to make it run on MP3s, that wireframe rabbit will show up again.

  • As with Demolition Girl, this is a very crude game made with a tacit intent: to leer at a half-naked Japanese girl as she does something unexpected, in this case fighting zombies. The Oneechanbara series (of which Zombie Zone was the first) would use its kitsch appeal to engender a whole franchise, like its bug-squashing Simply 2000 peer Earth Defense Force.
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