Operation Rainfall, Wii gamers demand American versions

Not all video games are released worldwide. When a game is not localized to other countries, the creators of the game think their game will not sell well and will not be worth the cost to translate it into several other languages and then release them in those countries.

Over a year ago, “Xenoblade” was released in Japan on June 10, 2010, on the Nintendo Wii. “Xenoblade” is a turn-based RPG — a genre that is slowly disappearing on the home consoles.

Later on, in January, “The Last Story” was also released on the Wii in Japan. “The Last Story” is another RPG with more action based combat. The creator of “Final Fantasy” (The biggest franchise in RPGs) worked on this game.

Lastly, “Pandora’s Tower” was released in May of this year, yet again, only in Japan. “Pandora’s Tower” is an action adventure game and plays a lot like a “God of War” game.

Both “Pandora’s Tower” and “The Last Story” have been announced to be released in Europe, and “Xenoblade” has already been released in Europe and Australia.

For the most part, these types of games are not on the Wii, and many people want to play them.
In June of this year, several people were upset that these games have yet to be released in America. People banded together and created a petition online to bring the games to the states. They call this movement Operation Rainfall.

Besides the petition, Operation Rainfall also has several missions to bring awareness to these games, and their lack of playability in America.

Once the game “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” is released, Operation Rainfall plans on going to forums, blogs, reviews and responding to tweets about Zelda and mentioning these three games and how they might also enjoy them if they enjoy Zelda.

Anyone could just import “Xenoblade,” but the American Wii will not read the game because it is region locked. This  forces the player either to purchase a Wii from wherever they imported the game from, or hack their own Wii to play this game and the others if they so chose to.

Nintendo has taken notice to Operation Rainfall, and had this to say: “Thank you for your enthusiasm. We promised an update, so here it is. We never say ‘never,’ but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time. Thanks so much for your passion, and for being such great fans!”

Some video games take years to become localized — the first “Professor Layton” game being one of them. This game took almost two years to be released in America. “Arc Rise Fantasia” took over a year to be localized. Not many games are released worldwide simultaneously.

It’s only been a year since “Xenoblade” was released in Japan, and not even a year for the other two games. The people behind Operation Rainfall might be jumping the gun a bit even though Nintendo has no plans as of now to release these games in the states.