Quote Originally Posted by treismac View Post
Parodius rocks. As hyper Japanese/bizarre as it is, I still believe it was a poor move not to bring it on over to North America. Beyond the marketability of Japanese culture in the American market, I think that there was possibly more than a little bit of the whole "us Japanese and our ways are incomprehensible to outsiders" mindset going on in that decision, while in the back of their minds they secretly feared that if outsiders could appreciate something so distinctly Japanese it would diminish something of the uniqueness of the Japanese spirit.
What's crazy is Konami did bring Parodius out of Japan but into Europe and other PAL territories a.k.a. converting code meant for NTSC-J 60 Hz TVs to work on 50 Hz PAL TVs, on top of translation, redesign, software testing, advertisement, budgeting, overhead costs, and all of the stuff they would have had to do if it were coming to America. And it wasn't a one time thing. I should know I have all 4 on NES, SNES, Gameboy, and the Sega Saturn.

But what's crazier is Konami did it for a number of their other franchises i.e. TwinBee, Rainbow Bell Adventures, CrackOut, Noah's Ark, and Konami GB Collection.

And what's even more crazier is the Konami GB Collection was the only place you can find English versions of Yie Ar Kung Fu, Arctic Adventure, Loco-Motion, and the Mystical Ninja game made in 1991 that was everything better than the 1998 version that you'd think it was made in.....1998! And it was region-free!

Konami, why do you hate us?