Highlights
- Many iconic Japanese video game franchises, such as Final Fantasy and Metal Gear , used to take a long time to release in North America and Europe.
- The Legend of Heroes and Romance of the Three Kingdoms started as PC exclusives in Japan before eventually releasing on consoles in the West.
- RPG Maker , a game creation series, has traditionally been PC exclusive but recently released on PS4 and Switch.
It used to take a long time for games to arrive in North America and Europe from Japan. The biggest example is the Final Fantasy series. The first game was released in Japan on the NES in 1987, but it wouldn't receive a Western release until 1990. After that, the series skipped two games and rebranded Final Fantasy 4 as Final Fantasy 2 on the SNES.
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The saga is very long, but eventually, the ship righted itself. Now, it’s common to get games on the same day as in Japan. Interestingly, many iconic Japanese video game franchises originally started as PC exclusives.
1 Dragon Slayer/The Legend Of Heroes
This is a two-for-one deal as far as PC RPGs go. The Legend of Heroes is decades old, but it is still a niche series in the West because the release schedule is rather wonky. There are also a lot of branching games, so it can be hard to discern one from another. One example would be The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. This series began under the Dragon Slayer banner, which first appeared in 1984 for the Japanese PC-8801 systems.
The game would not be released on a console until the Game Boy in 1990. Most of the Dragon Slayer series remained PC exclusives first before moving on to other hardware in Japan. The Legend of Heroes is a spinoff that started with Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes, which was also a PC-8801 game, but it was released in 1989. It took a long time, but as of the past decade, most games in this series launch simultaneously on PCs and consoles.
2 Metal Gear
Metal Gear was released in 1987 on the MSX2 computer in Japan. Even then, it was seen as a solid breakthrough in the stealth genre. It was ported that same year to the NES in Japan and a year later in the West. Due to its popularity, there was an exclusive NES sequel in 1990 called Snake’s Revenge.
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The true sequel was also released for the MSX2 in 1990 called Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. Western fans would not be able to enjoy that game or the MSX2 original version of the first game until 2006 via Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. It’s also worth mentioning that the launch of Metal Gear Solid in 1998 made this series a console staple.
3 Romance Of The Three Kingdoms
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a series that is based on a Chinese epic of the same name, depicting warring families and kingdoms in a seemingly never-ending conflict. It’s one of the country’s most famous pieces of lore, and it has been recounted in games for generations. Western fans are probably more familiar with Dynasty Warriors than Romance of the Three Kingdoms​​​​​​, but they are more or less covering the same ground.
Now, Romance of the Three Kingdoms began in 1985 on PC-88 systems in Japan; it would later be released on the NES in 1988. From there, the games would usually be released on PCs and consoles the same year but months apart. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 13 was the first game in the series to simultaneously launch on PCs and consoles in 2016.
4 RPG Maker
Video game enthusiasts have a lot of options to create games nowadays. They can create levels in games like Super Mario Maker or LittleBigPlanet, while bigger games like Dreams allow players to create seemingly anything they want to. RPG Maker predates all of these games, and it is a series that focuses on the RPG genre alone.
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Things began with RPG Tsukuru Dante 98 in 1992 in Japan for the PC 9801. The first game in the series to hit consoles was RPG Tsukuru: Super Dante via the SNES in 1995. Most games in this series are still PC exclusive, but one of the latest releases, RPG Maker MV, did hit the PS4 and Switch in 2020 in North America. Will this trend continue, or will RPG Maker be a PC series predominately?
5 Shin Megami Tensei
Shin Megami Tensei is what the series is known as today, but it started differently. The first game launched as Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei​​​​​, and it was released in Japan on the MSX computer in 1987. A few months later, it went to the NES equivalent in Japan.
The sequel was an NES exclusive in 1990, and from there, the series primarily became a console RPG franchise. While there are still games coming out today in the main series, most RPG fans are probably more familiar with the Persona spinoffs.
6 Ys
The Ys games are still niche action RPGs in the West, but the series is almost as old as The Legend of Zelda. Things began in 1987 with Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished, which launched in Japan on the PC-88 in 1987. A year later, it got an NES port. The first three games would follow this pattern more or less, with the games first appearing on Japanese PCs before reaching consoles.
In 1993, the fourth game got two different versions. Ys IV: Mask of the Sun was made for the SNES and Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys was made for the PC Engine, which was a console, believe it or not. This is not where the series solidified itself as a console franchise, though, as sequels and remakes bounced back and forth between PCs and consoles.