Never left Japan

More than a quarter of the library only ever shipped in Japan — rhythm games, visual novels, quirky sims and whole series that never got an English box.

491 games

Why so many stayed home

Text-heavy genres were expensive to translate onto small cartridges, licensed anime games depended on shows that were not airing abroad, and by 2005 many Japanese publishers had already moved to the Nintendo DS. The result: more than a quarter of the library never got an official release outside Japan.

Highlights

Rhythm Tengoku (2006) started the Rhythm Heaven series, which only went worldwide on the DS. The first three Gyakuten Saiban games were GBA originals; the West met Phoenix Wright years later through the DS versions. Mother 3 (2006) remains the most famous untranslated Nintendo game — English-speaking fans finished their own translation in 2008. F-Zero Climax (2004) was the series’ last new game for almost twenty years, and it never left Japan.