Hello and welcome to Project Nitsuj. Last week, we took a look at games only available in Japan. For one reason or another, Japan selfishly decided to keep these games for themselves. Though to be fair, America wasn’t any better. Yep, just like Japan, we in America also made games and kept them to ourselves like the greedy pigs we are. Whether these games were good or bad is up for debate, but for one reason or another these games never left the borders of the USA. I’m Nitsuj and these are the top 11 American Only Games.
#11. A few notable Sport games and Horror movies
I decided to put these two categories together because there’s quite a lot of them. We love our sports and movies here in America and as such have made a number of videogames based off them that were for our pleasure and no one else. Some of the most notable sports games that come to mind are Fox Sports College Hoops ’99 for the N64, Gretzky NHL 06 for the PS2, and All‑Pro Football 2K8 (one of the few titles not associated with the NFL). On the movie side there we have a number of horror movies such as Beetlejuice, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and cult classics like Dick Tracy that never got the chance to leave our borders. Reasons for why these were never sold overseas vary from game to game. Whether it was licensing rights, no market for the sport or recognition of the movie, and domestic alternatives, these games never left America and instead embraced their home audience only.
#10. BattleTanx
How did I miss playing this game when I was a kid? It’s fucking insane. Released on the N64 in 1998, the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic America where a virus has wiped out 99% of the female population. Gangs now fight over the remaining women and when the main character, Griffin’s fiancée gets kidnapped, he steals a tank and sets off across the country to find and save her. While not the best, the game is as American as you can get. Taking on other enemies with your tank and blowing them up out of pure joy and violence to save your fiancée. What more could you want? The game was never released in Japan due to its bleak and American-centric themes and settings that just wouldn’t have appealed or translated well to the Japanese audience. 3DO, the publisher who made the game also had no presence in Japan, so a localization was never planned.
#9. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Manhattan Missions
TMNT was quite popular in the 80s and 90s thanks in large part to the cartoon. Naturally, there were a number of games based off the heroes in a half shell that were released in America and Japan, but the Manhattan Missions was a different story. Published by Konami and released on the IBM DOS PC in 1991, this game was different than the other games at the time. The game took more inspiration from the original comics rather than the cartoon; thus it was darker and more mature. We play as the turtles who are trying to stop the Shredder from building his criminal empire. The gameplay was similar to the first TMNT game on the NES. It was known for its difficulty, each turtle having their own unique stats, and having the ability to switch between them in each level. To this day it’s considered the most obscure TMNT game out there and has never been re-released in America. It was never localized for Japan due to hardware issues and the game being overshadowed by the 80’s cartoon games which were a big hit in the country and how the turtles got popular in the first place.
#8. Power Punch 2
Released on the NES in 1992 the game was originally developed as a Mike Tyson game called Mike Tyson’s Intergalactic Power Punch. The game would see Mike Tyson get abducted by aliens and take on the toughest boxers in the universe to prove he’s the best. Unfortunately he got arrested in 1991 for the rape charges and the game replaced him with his made up lookalike Mark “Tough Guy” Tyler. The game got negative reviews mostly and was seen as a low budget release. With the game’s troubled history, lack of star power, and small-time developer it was never considered for localization.
#7. Twisted Metal 3
The vehicular manslaughter series was a big hit in the 90s and one of the stand out games on the PS1 that showed everyone what the hardware could do. However, things went bad when the game’s production switched over to 989 Studios after Sony parted ways with the game’s original creators. The game was met with bad reviews and considered one of the weakest entries in the series. As someone who is a big fan of Twisted Metal, I can confirm that this game left no impact on me whatsoever. The music was out of place, the levels were bland and empty, the endings were bad, and it just looked ugly compared to the first two games. Worst of all it replaced the dark gritty edge we came to love with a more weirdly kid-friendly presentation. A complete betrayal of the series entirely. The game was never intended for an international release as Sony wanted to test the waters and after seeing the negative reception the game got, Sony may have dodged a bullet by not localizing it.
#6. Pac-Man Fever
I got a fever and the only prescription is more Pac-Man. A party game released on the GameCube and PS2 in 2002 which allows you to play as Pac-Man and other notable Namco characters. While there are minigames, the main objective of the game is to reach the end of the board before everyone else. Out of all the Mario Party clones this is definitely one of the more forgetful games. The game was never intended for the Japanese audience despite Namco having quite a strong following in Japan. This is mainly because it was developed by a small California studio called Mass Media Inc. who had no presence in Japan and just didn’t stack up to the other Pac-Man games Namco released in Japan.
#5. The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire
Who doesn’t love Spider-Man? He’s everyone’s favorite web-head hero with enough quips to entertain you for days. Today, Spider-Man games are held as the pinnacle for what superhero games should be like, but back in the 90s the story was different. Web of Fire was on the ill-fated Sega 32X and sees Spider-Man take on Hydra who have taken over NYC. For those of you who don’t know, the 32X was Sega’s poor attempt at trying to keep the Genesis alive. It was a huge failure and considered one of Sega’s biggest flops ever as barely anyone in America let alone Japan brought a 32X. Naturally, nobody played it and since it was released near the end of the 32X’s already short life cycle localizing was seen as pointless.
#4. Dragon Ball Z: Sagas
If you were a kid in the 90s and 2000s you watched Toonami and if you watched Toonami that means you watched DBZ the show that introduced anime to a generation of western children. Because of its success it only made sense to make games based off the series and that’s exactly what Atari did in 2005. Released on all the major game systems at that time, Sagas is an action-adventure beat ’em up game that takes you through the Saiyan arc all the way to the Cell arc and allows you to play as some of your favorite characters from the series. Despite the negative reviews, the game was one of the first to cover multiple arcs in a single, linear action game. As well as being one of if not the first DBZ games developed outside of Japan. Because of the game’s poor reception in the west, it was seen as a waste of time to localize it and has since remained an American only title.
#3. Sonic’s Schoolhouse
Yep, Mario wasn’t the only one making educational games for kids. Sonic also got in on this, and it was just as bad. An interactive game released on the PC in 1996 for kindergarteners to fourth graders, Sonic guides players through spelling, math, and reading questions as well as giving them animal facts. It’s a bare bone game that critics say wasn’t entertaining or educational and essentially went against the very philosophy of Sonic. It was the first Sonic game outsourced to western developers as Sega was struggling with the Saturn and had no idea what to do with Sonic. Apparently, we didn’t know either. Much like the Manhattan Missions, the game couldn’t be localized due to hardware issues, but the biggest reason was because the curriculum was tailored made for the American audience and not the Japanese audience who were most likely studying way more advanced stuff in those age groups.
#2. Mega Man Anniversary Collection and Mega Man X Collection
A staple of the 80s and 90s, the Megaman games are considered beloved games in and out of Japan. The Mega Man collection was released in 2004 for the GameCube, PS2, and later Xbox and featured games 1-8 in the collection along with artwork from the games, music, an interview with the creator himself, and the two arcade games, Power Battle and Power Fighters. Mega Man X came out in 2006 for the same systems and featured the X games 1-6 along with artwork, interviews, and Battle & Chase. A racing game that was never released outside of Japan. If you were a huge Mega Man fan like my older brother and cousin, then you had to have these collections. The games were American exclusives because Japan already had their equivalents of the games long before us so localizing these games was seen as pointless even though you could make the argument that the American versions are slightly better.
And number one
#1. Pokémon Puzzle League
The anime that swept the world by storm. Outside of their normal games, the Pokémon franchise tried different spinoffs knowing damn well we would pour out our money to play them. Pokémon Puzzle League was one of these games. If you’ve played Tetris Attack you’ll be familiar with the gameplay. If not, then the objective is to clear blocks from the playfield by arranging them in horizontal or vertical lines of three or more blocks. A continuous stream of new blocks pushes up from the bottom of the playfield, causing the entire playfield to rise continuously and quicker over time. The game follows Ash who enters the puzzle league to prove his skills and takes on various friends, rivals, and gym leaders to become the puzzle league champion. The game was overall fun and considered one of the best puzzle games on the N64. So good in fact that they brought it back for the Wii’s Virtual Console and the Switch’s Nintendo Classics service. The game was never localized in Japan because it was considered impossible. Everything in this game comes directly from the 4Kids English dub, not the Japanese version of the anime. Meaning Japan would literally have to recreate the entire audio, cutscenes and script from scratch as well as record with the Japanese cast and rebrand the game so that it matches with the Japanese continuity. Despite Pokémon’s global popularity this was seen as an expensive endeavor that wasn’t worth the time and costs.
And that’s my list. Know any games we kept for ourselves? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
