Regions/Countries that released video games...

[themessage]

I'm lost in a web of games, and I need some guidance to find the light. I'm not too familiar with imports, but I'm trying to categorize every console/pc/handheld video game known to mankind. A rough estimate is about 100,000+ games released around the world.

Okay, forget everything I said before :), here is my new list.

Can anyone verify a country below?

Systems and Games will be divided up between these regions and specified country if known.

Region
..Country
--------
AS - Asia
---
..China
..Korea
..Japan

EU - Europe
---
..Finland
..France
..Germany
..Greece
..Italy
..Netherlands
..Spain
..Sweden
..Turkey
..United Kingdom

NA - North America
---
..Canada
..United States

SA - South America
---
..Brazil

OC - Oceania
---
..Australia


...Unverified...
.Argentina
.Belgium
.Denmark
.Ireland
.Luxembourg
.Mexico
.New Zealand
.Norway
.Phillipines
.Poland
.Portugal
.Russia
.Scandinavia
.Switzerland

[davidleeroth]

Did I get it right that you're looking for game variations between countries and not games developed in certain country?

In Europe, games used to come with English in-game and multiple languages in manuals and boxes so the same game was distributed throughout Europe. (In NES games denoted by -EUR in most cases)

Gradually more localization was added with Europe divided to smaller regions like UK, mainland countries and Scandinavia. Still most differencies were in the serial number but more games came shipped with specific language for the country in manual and sometimes in boxes.
This was a specialty of Nintendo as Sega, in many cases, still shipped same games Europe-wide (In SMS/MD/SS denoted by -50)

Come PlayStation, we've seen fully localized versions of Disney, EA, Hugo, WWTBAM and sport games. That's a lot of different variations possible: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish. Maybe even Danish folks their own, too.
In case the of PlayStation, fully localized games have different serial number whereas manual/box differencies are usually dealt with the same number.

All in all, it's a mess. :o I'm sure someone will come with more specific info.

[anagrama]

A handful of Master System/Megadrive games were localized for different European regions, but the vast majority weren't.

Each company has their own way of operating, and this can vary between systems and publishers aswell. I'd imagine that creating an accurate overall guide would be incredibly hard, though I'm sure there's folks on here that can help if you've any specific queries.

[themessage]

Yes, game variations between countries.

Does anyone know what countries have released games other than what I have in my list? Specifically, sold games in a retail store.

Thanks for the info so far :).

[robotriot]

Then imagine if two countries have the same language, I'd assume they've been receiving the same game throughout history. Combining both countries might solve that? But categorizing by language would be easier.

GTA: San Andreas for example will be released in a different version (extremly censored) in Germany than in Austria and Switzerland, although all three countries have the same language. Thus it's probably best to sort by country, not by language :)