Thursday, May 5, 2011

Localizations, Please! Cinco de Mayo Edition

The original Localizations, Please! article was a resounding success, and it was wonderful to have a few games on that list later get announced for the West. Here's hoping my luck with this continues with the Cinco de Mayo edition of this ongoing series. We have games from the Tales, Kirby, and Professor Layton franchises to name a few. Only time will tell if these get localized.

Tales of Xillia (PS3)


A new Tales game, the thirteenth in the mothership franchise, from Namco-Bandai features two main characters. The one you choose to play as determines which characters' point of view you'll experience. With an all-new rapid-fire battle system and cutscenes made in-house by Team Symphonia rather than the usual Production I.G. who is best known for their work on anime like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Localizations for Tales games have been sketchy, so here's hoping this thirteenth installment reaches our side of the Pacific.

Atsumete! Kirby (DS)


Not much is known about this game other than the player will be controlling multiple Kirby characters with the stylus through colorful worlds and lands alike. The short blurb on Wikipedia compares the gameplay of this fourth DS Kirby game to Lemmings. Just give me something akin to Kirby Canvas Curse, and I'll be happy to fork my cash over once more, Nintendo. Here's hoping the DS isn't truly dead in Nintendo of America's collective eyes.

Valkyria Chronicles III: Unrecorded Chronicles (PSP)



The third game in the Valkyria Chronicles franchise (the second on the PlayStation Portable), Unrecorded Chronicles takes place during the Imperial invasion of 1935. The game is a side story, so players can pick this title up if SEGA ever decides to send it across the Pacific and jump right in without knowledge of previous games. You can be rest assured that this title will be full of the tactical RPG action you've grown to love of the series. Perhaps E3 is when we'll get a release date for the West...

Final Fantasy Type-0 (PSP)


For those not in the know of the development cycle of Final Fantasy Type-0, this game was originally called Final Fantasy Agito XIII. The director of the game promises a battle system similar to Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. The game will pack all the Final Fantasy mythos that you can handle from summons to spells-- so much so that this will be one of the only PSP games that is necessary to be put on two UMDs. A North American release is all but certain seeing as Square-Enix is one of the few third parties in the West gaining bank on their PSP software.

Professor Layton and the Specter's Flute (DS)


After publishing the first trilogy of Layton games for developer Level 5, Nintendo no longer has the series to distribute to North America. Instead it's up to Level 5 or another company to take the publishing reins and localize the game for North American audiences. The game is the start of the second trilogy of Layton games, and with the fifth installment already released in Japan on the Nintendo 3DS, the rest of the world has some catching up to do with the professor.

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Those are but five games that may never escape the land of the rising sun. What games that are trapped in the purgatory that is Japan that you want to see come out to the West? Give me a heads up in the comments section.

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