Topic.Rising Star Games, for those who don't know, is basically the European equivalent of Atlus USA, bringing all manner of niche games to the PAL regions. They published
DeathSmiles over there, and this past fall, they released
DoDonPachi Resurrection with a region-locking scheme such that it would run on US Xbox 360s (which is why I imported a copy). Now they're opening a US branch, and kicking things off with a US release of the hotly-anticipated Cave shmup
Akai Katana - possibly an effort to sidestep Microsoft's apparent crackdown on region-free-but-still-region-exclusive releases (as reported by a G.Rev representative when asked why
Under Defeat HD is region-locked on 360)?
Regardless of whether or not that's the reason, this is great news for anyone who plays games that could even remotely be considered "obscure." Bigger publishers are continuing to release titles specifically designed to target a "western" market and to sell millions of copies easily, while the kind of games that would have been successful here a decade ago (or more, in the case of certain genres) are ignored and lost in the shuffle, lucky to be picked up by someone like XSeed or NIS America. Having another company around who's willing to take chances and release weirder titles over here is a good thing in that regard. I, for one, like being able to purchase the games I enjoy in a language I can understand, rather than spending extra money on imports or, in many cases (mostly on PC), having to pirate a game to be able to play it at all because it's simply impossible to purchase in a form I can load and play in English right off the bat. This is why I'll be buying
School Days HQ when that comes out in English, and why I purchased the PS2 versions of
Fate/stay night and
Clannad but played the games on PC, where English patches exist for both titles.
Also, maybe it'll mean we'll see less stupidity like the PS3-exclusive download-only US release of
Arcana Heart 3? Because seriously, Aksys botched that one pretty hard (made worse by PSN going down a month later).
