The Sentimental process behind GungHo's PSOne Imports
Posted by Joystiq Mar 15 2013 19:30 GMT in PlayStation Vita
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I was impressed with Gungho Online Entertainment's first batch of PSOne Import games, partly for symbolic reasons: they were all interesting games, yes, but they were also numerous, and Gungho CEO Jun Iwasaki told me the company had plans to release more. Imports, in my mind, are the most potentially exciting aspect of legacy download services, as companies can cheaply bring over games that wouldn't have big enough audiences to justify a localization, much less a spot on shelves.

Gungho's second batch of imports crosses an important milestone on the path to comprehensive import catalogues by adding text-heavy games to the lineup. Most PS3 or Vita owners won't even be able to play dating game Sentimental Graffiti, due to the pages and pages of Japanese text required to enjoy it.

"Our approach is to bring over as many games as possible as long as we can secure the licenses to publish them in North America and Europe," CEO Jun Iwasaki told me in an email interview. As this batch of games shows, "as many games as possible" could mean almost anything!

Of course, a small group of bilingual gamers will be delighted by things like Sentimental Graffiti, as will people hoping to improve their Japanese reading comprehension through video games. And releasing games that don't really make sense to release is a step toward getting them out there indiscriminately - the true iTunes of retro games.



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