/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10701929
Dragon Warrior were popular enough to stay in the Nintendo Power top 10-20 up to late 1993

Final Fantasy sold more in the US than it did in Japan. FF and DQ games were constantly on Nintendo Power's TOP 10 lists.

But as JRPGs grew in size, the effort it would take to translate them also grew exponentially. That + the cost of the manuals is the real reasons why western publishers stopped bringing them over. When you have the choice to release game 1 versus game 2, when game 2 takes 10x more effort and money to produce, you're going to go with game 1.
This is why we mostly got A-RPGs which were lighter on the story side.
Also why these games didn't release in Europe, nobody wanted to make the effort to translate them for an even smaller market.

In foresight though it's obvious those were stupid choices because the market was there. Even in the case of Europe, Dragon Quest games would have sold out in a month in countries like France and Spain just on the Toriyama name alone. And a DQ game finally released over there, DQ8, it was a success.

>>9207480
Now let's check two months before just make sure this wasn't a one off exception...

>>9196048
I don't think that has much to do with it, as the power fantasy is also real in DQ if to a lesser extent. The first Final Fantasy was more popular than Dragon Warrior games in the West but that probably has to do with the D&D setting.

Then at least the US got FF4 and 6, while there was no DQ on SNES. As for DW7, it was using 2D characters and monsters and very little FMVs when FF7 and the entire world only cared about 3D and FMVs precisely.

>>8881637
Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior games were constantly in the Top 10 of NES/GB games in Nintendo Power in the US. It's only in Europe that RPGs were almost non existant.

The series was very often seen in the Top 10 in Nintendo Power, so yeah

>>8639387
2 months earlier
note that Dragon Warrior IV is in both of these