Curated playlist
Japan-exclusive video games
- Mitsumete KnightMitsumete Knight, released in 1998 for the PlayStation, buries an odd detail in its story. A bomb threat happens inside a church, a moment the game leaves unexplained. Players only learn the truth years later, through separate audio…
- Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no TokiGensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki dropped into Japanese game shops on the 9th of February 2012, and by the end of that first week it had sold more than 61,000 units. That made it the highest-selling title in the country during…
- Star Wars (1987 video game)Star Wars, released in 1987 by Namco for the Family Computer, arrived in Japan with something unusual attached to its announcement: a photograph of George Lucas shaking hands with Namco founder Masaya Nakamura. That image signaled…
- Final Fantasy IIIFinal Fantasy III launched on the 27th of April, 1990, and within its first week sold 500,000 copies in Japan. By March 2003, that figure had reached 1.4 million, making it the highest-selling domestic release among the first three games…
- Gensō SuikogaidenGensō Suikogaiden placed Nash Latkje at the center of its story. He served Holy Harmonia's Southern Border Defence Force on assignments that would entangle him in the larger conflict of Suikoden II. Both of its volumes are visual novels…
- Tokimeki MemorialVideo game series
- Tokimeki Memorial (video game)Tokimeki Memorial arrived on the PC Engine on the 27th of May 1994, carrying a premise that made seasoned game journalists stop cold. Konami, the company behind Gradius and its reputation for punishing arcade-style challenges, had built a…
- Durarara!!Durarara!! begins with a headless rider on a black motorcycle that sometimes neighs like a horse, weaving through the neon-lit streets of Ikebukuro. That image alone tells you this is not an ordinary story. The rider is Celty Sturluson, a…
- Namco × CapcomNamco x Capcom arrived in Japanese game shops on the 26th of May 2005, carrying inside it nearly one hundred characters drawn from two of the largest video game publishers in the world. The idea was ambitious enough that, at the time,…
- Tetsujin 28-goTetsujin 28-go arrived in 1956, the creation of Mitsuteru Yokoyama, and it asked a question that would echo through decades of Japanese popular culture: what happens when a child inherits a weapon? The premise is stark. A ten-year-old boy…
- Lucky Star (manga)Lucky Star began, in its creator's own words, as nothing special. Kagami Yoshimizu told Newtype USA in June 2005, "I don't really think my production process is anything special." He added that "my personality is very well suited to doing…
- Granblue FantasyGranblue Fantasy launched in Japan in March 2014 on Android, iOS, and web browsers, built by a studio called Cygames. What made it remarkable from the start was not its platform or its genre, but two names on the credits: composer Nobuo…