Former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida has revealed that one of his biggest regrets from his 31 years working with the beloved console series is that many Japanese classics never made their way to the US and Europe during the PS1 era.
Yoshida is currently doing the media rounds to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original PlayStation's launch. As part of an interview with GI.Biz, Yoshida delves into some of his regrets from his many years at Sony and his work on various PlayStation consoles. Namely, that some beloved Japanese PS1 hits never got the chance to make a splash internationally.
"Because of limited retail space for both the European and the US teams, they didn't approve many Japanese games," he says. "So some Japanese games, especially from third-party companies, didn't see release in the US and European regions."
Unfortunately, that meant some gems of the time, like Konami’s Policenauts and Sammy’s Deep Freeze, were only obtainable if you could bother to import them yourselves, which was harder to do back then, too.
Another reason that popular Japanese games got the side-eye was the shift to 3D graphics from 2D, meaning the likes of Panzer Bandit and Mega Man X3 were given a pass to focus on others, such as Final Fantasy 7 and so on.
"I remember 2D games were not approved to be released in the US," Yoshida explains, "or at least there were impressions like that."
Another reason you've got to factor in is timelines in general. The PlayStation was launched in the US and Europe one year after its launch in Japan, so Sony had a wider range of options.
"For the Japan launch, we had only a limited number of games to launch with," Yoshida shares. "And of course, we had Ridge Racer – that was really popular in Japan, so that really helped carry the system.
"However, when it came out in the US and Europe in September of 1995, there were many additional great games. So all the games made in Japan [...] plus European games from Psygnosis, [and America had] this range of sports games. So the lineup of games was much stronger."
Thankfully, games once kept exclusive to Japan are decreasing in numbers. On this very website, we've covered several fan efforts to provide translations, making some of those games more accessible. Even outside of Sony, it's something developers and publishers have done themselves. Regardless, it would seem that Yoshida wished that fans didn't have to go through such a wait.
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