Capcom was recently the victim of a major ransomware cyberattack that saw a slew of its upcoming video game projects leaked online. If the leak is to be believed, Capcom’s upcoming game projects include plans to localize the Great Ace Attorney games, which were released for the Nintendo 3DS years ago but never saw release outside of Japan. Apparently, Great Ace Attorney will get localized releases for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 at some point in 2021, though official plans have not been announced at the time of this writing.
The possibility of Great Ace Attorney being localized is exciting for Ace Attorney fans that live outside of Japan. However, there are still many other games that have been stuck in Japan that would be great to see localized for people in other countries as well.
Here are seven games in particular that we would like to see localized.
If Capcom does localize the Great Ace Attorney games as the leaks suggest, then that would leave Ace Attorney Investigations 2 as the only game in the series that hasn’t been released outside of Japan. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 is the sequel to Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, which puts players in the titular prosecutor’s shoes instead of having them play as usual series hero Phoenix Wright. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 earned strong reviews from critics, and while it’s not necessary to appreciate the overarching Ace Attorney storyline, it would still be nice for fans outside of Japan to be able to experience everything the franchise has to offer.
Ace Attorney Investigations 2 was originally released for the Nintendo DS back in 2011, but Capcom has since ported the game to iOS and Android mobile devices. So while a release of the DS original is out of the question, perhaps fans will be able to experience the game on another platform. Ace Attorney fans should keep their fingers crossed and hope that the rumors about Capcom’s 2021 plans for the series are true.
One of the weirdest Wii games ever produced is Captain Rainbow, a Japan and Taiwan-only game about a Power Rangers or Shazam-like superhero that is trying to make his TV show popular again. To do this, Captain Rainbow visits Mimin Island and interacts with a variety of recognizable but not quite as well-known Nintendo characters, like Super Mario Bros. 2‘s Birdo, completing quests and trying to get his wish granted.
Captain Rainbow was never localized for unknown reasons, but it’s possibly due to the game’s sexual content. Bizarrely, Captain Rainbow features a quest involving sex toys, which clashes with Nintendo’s family-friendly image, to say the least. Perhaps Nintendo felt as though Captain Rainbow was just too strange to catch on with audiences outside of Japan, but whatever the case may be, it’s a shame this delightfully weird game has not been available to a wider audience.
Speaking of Wii games that need localized, Disaster: Day of Crisis needs to be in that conversation as well. However, Disaster: Day of Crisis never getting a North American release is even more perplexing than Captain Rainbow, as English-language versions of the game already exist and are out in the wild. Nintendo released the game in Japan, Europe, and Australia, but for a variety of reasons, stopped short of releasing it elsewhere in the world.
Disaster: Day of Crisis suffered from poor sales, and that combined with former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime disliking the game meant that it was never released in North America. It’s true that Disaster: Day of Crisis earned mixed reviews, but it still had its fans, and if nothing else, it would be interesting for fans of developer Monolith Soft to check out. Since an English-language version of Disaster: Day of Crisis already exists, maybe fans will get lucky and Nintendo will finally decide to localize the game.
One of the most frustrating games on this list is Dragon Quest 10. The 10th entry in the long-running Dragon Quest franchise, it remains the only main series game to never be localized outside of Japan. Dragon Quest 10 is a major departure from series norms in that it is an MMORPG as opposed to a traditional single-player JRPG adventure, but it still earned strong reviews at the time of its release and has enjoyed consistent support from Square Enix for the past decade.
Square Enix has released Dragon Quest 10 on numerous platforms, with gamers in Japan having access to the game on PC, mobile, Switch, PS4, and Wii U, yet it has never released the game in other countries. It would be a shame for Dragon Quest fans outside of Japan to completely miss out on a main entry in the series, and with the massive success of the Final Fantasy 14 MMO, hopefully Square Enix can eventually be convinced to bring it over.
One of the highest-rated Nintendo DS games was the music/rhythm game Elite Beat Agents. Its bizarre concept saw a team of superhero agents complete dances to solve peoples’ problems all over the world. Despite the game earning strong reviews from critics, Elite Beat Agents was not a sales success for Nintendo, which could very well be the reason why the sequel was never released outside of Japan.
Elite Beat Agents 2 features similar gameplay as the original game, with some improvements, new difficulty settings, quality-of-life changes, and more. Unfortunately, Elite Beat Agents 2‘s gameplay practically requires the Nintendo DS and its stylus to work properly, so it’s hard to see the game ever being localized for modern platforms without some radical changes to the game design.
Even though the Wii was a massive sales success, Nintendo failed to localize many of its more interesting games. One such game that failed to ever release outside of Japan was Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, which stands out as the best-selling entry in the long-running Fatal Frame survival-horror series. With Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse selling well in its native Japan and earning positive reviews from the press, it’s unclear why Nintendo never bothered localizing it.
The one video game localization that is likely the most-wanted by many fans is Mother 3. The Game Boy Advance-exclusive JRPG is the only game in the Mother series (known as EarthBound in the west) not to be released outside of Japan. Numerous fan campaigns have cropped up over the years to try to convince Nintendo to localize Mother 3, but none have been successful. On the bright side, a fan translation exists that allows English-speaking fans to experience the game for themselves, though many are still holding out hope for an official English-language release.
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