/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9142279
To make people like Australia-kun seethe about them ignoring shitty irrelevant pal countries to this day.

It didn't happen the way you think it happened. Nintendo of Japan didn't decide "let's settle in America! Let's settle in Europe!", it's the contrary, American/European businessmen went to Japan and made deals with Nintendo so they could sell their systems and games whateverelse and soon after settle a division there.

And any game that was unreleased in other countries were publishers not wanting to bring that game over. Could be it never peaked their interest, didn't think it'd sell well enough, or completely flew around their radar.

>It's a large first world market

>>9142292
and I mean publishers in the respective countries. Even bighousehold games Nintendo of Japan didn't make the decisions for release overseas, see SMB2 (J)

>>9142279
Because back then translation was really hard and non-scandis REFUSE to learn English

>>9142292
>American/European businessmen went to Japan and made deals with Nintendo so they could sell their systems and games whateverelse and soon after settle a division there.
this is literally the exact opposite of what happened and you have no idea what you're talking about.

>>9142279
It wasn't "a large market" back then. It was multiple smaller markets with some degree of connection. You could easily dominate the market in one country while failing miserably in others. Nintendo got lucky with a very solid distributor in Sweden and the Nordic area, while their UK partners failed spectacularly. Many NES games were released only in Scandinavia for that reason, e.g. Gimmick.

>>9142279
they just thought europeans were too primitive to comprehend things like super mario

>be JP console game publisher in 80's and 90's
>if the game is translated into english, can sell in USA to one of the largest markets for videogames
>country has track record of consoles selling well
>if you wanna put it out in europe, need to translate the game into english, french, spanish, german, and possibly a few other languages
>in the NES days, this meant producing 5+ different mask roms for the same game, later gens just had to figure out how to shove all that text in the space
>all to publish in countries where low-cost microcomputers were the #1 gaming platform specifically because games could be purchased for very cheap, something cartridge consoles couldn't compete on

>>9142279
why? because Europe in NES heyday's was divided between NATO and Warsaw Pact. And if you are in NATO like Japan and USA, you don't want to support enemy alliance. And later, when Soviet Union collapsed, NES was already cloned by Hongkong/Taiwan companies. And that was a time for them, but not for Nintendo to conquer Europe with Super Mario Bros(pirated, but still).

>>9142414
Did the nords get any other exclusive titles? Gimmick is the one you hear about, but did they get any other Famicom stuff that wasnt released anywhere else? Also wasn't the euro release of Banana Prince a German only title? And i want to say France got Hammerin Harry but i may be thinking of the gameboy version.

Nintendo feared the Speccy, simple as.

>>9142439
Yeah, I can't imagine trying to play SMB in another language, or how much it devastate Nintendo's budget to attempt such a large-scale translation.

>>9142650
I think that Devil World (Miyamoto's early maze game) was also a Nordic exclusive outside of Japan.

>>9142279
Because Nintendo wasn't some massive consumer electronics company back then and still isn't really
Did you know Nintendo has never had a branch in northern Europe? Nintendo licensed their name, marketing rights, website domains and everything else to a third party company that does literally everything for Nintendo in that region.
That's also the reason why you'll never see a Nintendo game with an official translation in something like finnish despite them selling mostly kids games. Nintendo technically doesn't do business in that country.
There's only a few countries where Nintendo of Europe actually does business such as Germany and France.
Compare this to Sony who had business units and import/sales relationships in place decades before they got into video games due to manufacturing consumer electronics like TVs and stereos. Any AV shop in Europe that carried Sony Walkmans could start selling PlayStations but only a select few that managed to plead and beg to their single local Nintendo importer could sell Nintendo consoles.

>>9142810
no it was released for whole PAL region

>>9142828
There was few games that did get translated over there, shadowgate on nes being one of them, but because there was not enough demand, and English being taught at early ages, there was no need, and its much cheaper too. But boxes and manuals did often/commonly get translated even in the nes-era.

>>9142279
British devs such as Rare, Software Creations and Ocean worked closely with Nintendo throughout the NES era and were largely responsible for making the SNES a commercial success in the West. Meanwhile in the US you had companies like Tengen and Color Dream flouting Nintendo’s publishing rules and flooding the console with shovelware.

>>9142650
To my knowledge, France is the only place outside Japan to get that the first Saint Seiya game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSfZE70fecU

PAL chads have never been that interested in Nintendo. It's first and foremost PC that's been the big thing, and SEGA later Sony when it comes to consoles. But consoles were seen more as toys and PC as a hobby / more powerful tool.

>>9142496
>The ability to play Super Mario would help Soviets gain world domination
???

>>9143723
Nice, I didn’t know Shadowgate had a Somali localisation.

>>9143735
this will trigger a lot of sharters when they read this but it’s the truth

>>9142776
I think even the more text heavy games were usually in English. But the manuals did get translated to every fucking language possible. Same with the boxart and backside. This adds a lot if complexity over a simple English only USA release. And you have to deal with distribution and advertisement in all these countries separately.

USA was much easier to cope with

>>9142279
Because contrary to the popular (American) believe, Nintendo's marketing and international sales were handed by complete retards who made plentiful mistakes and then their replacements did a pig-headed continuation of those mistakes. Add to this the simple number of languages needed to handle and you have a recipe for a disaster.

>>9142279
Europeans could smell the corporate bullshit coming from Nintendo from miles away, even with their happy Disney mascot bullshit. Its no surprise they weren't keen on them from the beginning, especially when said Nintendo likes to spread the lie that they sayvedvidya when most of said Yuros were still busy playing Atari and SEGA games in peace.

>>9143748
>PAL chads have never been that interested in Nintendo.
Nintendo was pretty popular in Northern Europe.
Also, can we even consider England as European? To me, bongs are sub-humans.

>>9144467
> To me, bongs are sub-humans.

tell that to their larping ubermenschs

on the subject tho, places that seem to be pretty big around Nintendo in Europe were usually metropolitan areas and folk with pretty upper-class bgs. Problem with that, was that they turned their nose down on other gaming platforms when there was a plethora of stuff available. A very limited viewpoint on games as a whole, usually.

>>9143735
Nobody gives a fuck about Rare's jank, certainly not today.

>>9143748
You're either British or a larping American. Outside of the UK where Sega was much more popular, Nintendo was largely on an even level of popularity as Sega in most of Europe, with Nintendo being somewhat more popular around Scandinavia.
In Eastern Europe, before the fall of the Iron Curtain and for a time afterwards, the market was dominated by Famiclones, either produced locally or imported from China.

Like in North America, Sega does very strongly with the Genesis, but then fades away with the Saturn and Dreamcast, the Sony and Microsoft taking Sega's place as the alternative to Nintendo (for better or worse). The main difference with Europe and North America on Sega and Nintendo is that the Master System does like shit against the NES in North America, but actually sells rather well in Europe, particularly the UK.

For Brazil (I don't remember if they are PAL or NTSC), the Master System really wasn't as popular as some are lead to believe, their market was also dominated by Famiclones, initially domestic ones, then Chinese ones of much lower quality. Genesis/Mega Drive was the Sega which people liked in Brazil, while Tec-Toy's Master System clones were seen as babies toys.

>>9142279
They didn't, it's just that Europe isn't a single large market with a single main language like America (and to a degree Canada) is, it's a whole bunch of smaller markets with a bunch of different languages, you don't have this one big Nintendo Of America to handle distribution in all 50 states, so it's not as easy to do that business in Europe at that time.

>>9142414
This is correct.

>>9142496
Warsaw Pact countries were awash with Famiclones.

>>9142776
>>9143881
It'd really depend on the game. Most NES games weren't very text heavy, so it doesn't matter if a French kid doesn't understand what in the fuck "PRESS START" is supposed to mean, because if he doesn't have a translated manual (he probably does), he would still figure it out with some fidgeting and experimenting.
Nintendo games which weren't text heavy were simply not translated at all here in Sweden, I had no NES or GB game which were in Swedish, and the only NES game in Swedish I ever played was Shadowgate (a text heavy game). The assumption here was that either the text wasn't that important, or Swedish kids knew enough bare English to get by, and probably that applied to other European countries.

So for European markets where knowledge of the English language at the time was passable, such as Scandinavia, or the UK, they'd be golden to just reuse the translation they did for the Americans, but with games like Zelda, Pokémon, etc, you actually end up having to do a fair bit of reading, thus there's a bunch of translations of those into different languages. Pokémon was not translated here, however.

>>9142279
Translating to a bunch of random European languages vs just translating just to English and making bank in USA and commonwealth/UK countries, I assume?

>>9142650
The PAL version of Deja Vu (NES) was only released in Swedish.

>>9143740
Officially, yes. Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American countries with their Famiclones had access to it and other Japanese exclusive games (and west exclusive games).

>>9143740
Saint Seiya was very popular in France
strange and random but true

>>9144768
> you don't have this one big Nintendo Of America to handle distribution in all 50 states,

you also don't have (didn't have) one company dictating the markets either, which was nice for the time.

>>9143735
I don't know about Software Creations and Ocean (as in, I can't even remember them), but yeah, Rare did shitloads of really good stuff during 4th and 5th gen. It's kind of funny that their games were such a big hit in the US and many parts of Europe, just not their home country.

>>9144681
Completely delusional. Rare was a premier brand at one point and Nintendo were extremely close with them for a time. It was a great lament for Nintendo fanboys when they finally split that partnership.
>Killer Instinct
>Battle Toads
>Donkey Kong
>Goldeneye
>Perfect Dark
>Banjo-Kazooie
They were at the top of their game on the SNES and N64, which most of their best stuff was exclusive to, with Donkey Kong and Goldeneye being system sellers. You got some Battletoads on Mega Drive, and Killer Instinct would be better in the arcades, but you weren't playing that game at home on a Sony or Sega console.
Hell, they did a bunch of games on the NES and Game Boy which weren't shabby either, Wizards & Warriors is a classic.

>>9145075
Sort of, but sort of not. Nintendo did pretty lukewarm in the UK in the 80s and 90s, the Master System was actually bigger than the NES there, in complete opposite to the US.
Can't remember how it fared in Australia, but Sega did pretty well there.

More budget was put into localizing and translation starting with 5th gen, which is when you see way more games offering you to play them in Spanish, German, French, etc, countries where kids didn't know any English at all at the time.
In a number of Euro countries though, kids knew passable enough English (certainly a lot more today), and with a lot of old videogames actually not relying that much on conveying critical information through lots of reading, it was figured kids would just deal with it, thus the translations made for the US just got reused a lot of the time. Usually it wasn't a problem, though I recall asking my big brother or parents for clarification of a few things I didn't understand at the time when first playing Pokémon.

>>9142279
because everyone had dendi already

>>9142279
In the UK the NES blew up during xmas 1990 because it was bundled with the first TMNT game during the height of Turtle mania.

>>9146285
I love this game. It's so merciless, but it was so fucking cool to play a Turtles videogame. Sick music too.
https://youtu.be/jgDbohdN-1c
https://youtu.be/myzcQTJeVVE

>>9145140
>strange and random
Not at all, it was also popular in Italy and Spain. Anime being a late 90s and early 00s thing is an anglo/northern euro phenomenon. It's just that, out of these 3 countries with a strong anime culture, only France was relevant enough to get them their own anime related releases. But if you were in Spain or Italy back then, they would still sell you the French version of those games in many stores. I'm still not sure if they just massively imported a lot of them from France directly, or they just officially distributed them in French.

>>9142279
Everytime I met a Brit or a Greek I've ignored them too. God forbid anyone would have to interact with a Pole

>>9143740
They also got the Dragon Ball game actually localized as Dragon Ball instead of Dragon Power IIRC

>>9142290
fpbp

>>9142279
Because Europe was a collection of fragmented american vassal states and soviet vassal states with different languages. Plus they are poor. It was a completely different market.

>>9144681
Rare was a top-tier dev during the SNES and N64 days, you can't really argue with it.

>>9144681

>>9147958
But I thought Europe was first world.

>>9142279
They didn't.

>>9144701
Yes, Sega and Nintendo were on the same level in Europe. If i remember it correctly, Sega had alot of Disney games. And Disney (mainly Donald Duck) was and is very big in Europe.

>>9142279
Eastern Europe was going through its hardest period at the time. It was transitioning from planned economy to liberal market, so when the self-sustainabilty was replaced with capitalism, people found thenselves being too poor for purchasing techonology. This has lasted until the late 90's.

>>9149784
Americans were pulling in 3x the pay after taxes. First world didn’t mean much except that you were communist.

I honestly have no idea lmao

>>9150138
That's true.

>>9150138
Has Eastern Europe ever been economically stable or prosperous? Russia certainly hasn’t.

>>9142650
Uforia (aka Hebereke) was also nordic only outside of Japan

>>9150601
I was going to say Greece but then I was like oh wait never mind. Seriously I can't name one off the top of my head. That's kind of sad.

>>9150601
Sorry I'm retarded Greece is in the balkans.

>>9150601
Russia was unironically most stable and prosperous during the Soviet Union up to that point in history. Of course it's better now, but it was stuck in the middle ages before the revolution.

>>9146415
>late 90s and early 00s thing is an anglo/northern euro phenomenon.
Speedracer or G-Force?

>>9150079
Both Nintendo and Sega had a bunch of Disney games, and yeah, they were really big around these parts, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge especially, they were fucking kings here in Scandinavia, Mickey Mouse and the others were mostly side characters to them.
I was gonna say that Sega had maybe more Disney games for the Mega Drive than Nintendo did for the SNES, but a quick Google shows that it's actually about even, so maybe I just missed a bunch. Sega had exclusives like Quack Shot though.

Man, Disney actually produced some extremely cool and varied shit back in those days, now their output is boring as hell.