Help me convince GungHo to localize DonPachi & DoDonPachi

[Jotamide]

A little bit of background info: in the past, GungHo has brought to the EU and NA PSNs plenty of Japanese PSOne games under the "PSOne Imports" initiative. To date they've released 18 games, among them the mighty Zanac X Zanac (its first Western release!). This got me thinking that maybe we can convince them to bring us both DonPachi and DoDonPachi in the next batch if possible. Both these games have been available on the JP PSN for a while and maybe what happened with Zanac could be repeated.

In order to reach them, I opened this topic on their get satisfaction page, a sort of customer service site that they employ. The author of the PS Blog posts, Antonio Cara (apparently a Community Coordinator for GungHo) does read the feedback on that site from time to time. So maybe, if we make enough noise we can get him to pass this suggestion to the people who can make this happen. Sure, it's a long shot. But if you guys could go to the topic and show your support, who knows, we might be able to get the PS1 versions of DonPachi and DoDonPachi in the West for the first time.

[Pretas]

You should pick your battles. We don't need inferior vintage ports, and no one is going to buy them with MAME available.

[Jotamide]

You should pick your battles. We don't need inferior vintage ports, and no one is going to buy them with MAME available.

It wouldn't hurt anyone though, right? Emulation is fine as long as you own a board, which happens probably in 0.1% of the cases when someone is playing the game through MAME. Having these games in a legal, readily-available way to play would be awesome.

[beatsgo]

You should pick your battles. We don't need inferior vintage ports, and no one is going to buy them with MAME available.

This pretty much sums it up. It doesn't hurt to ask though.

If you ask me, I rather have Cave cave-in and release perfect arcade conversions on either Xbox Live or PSN with some console modernization (no, not Kinetic features) to spunk it up. Other than that, I find no reason for them to release it at this point other than nostalgia purposes or awareness of their products. Likely if they were going to do it, I'm pretty sure it's going to be on iOS/Android.

[Mortificator]

Yeah, inferior old ports can actually hurt the perception of the games. I'm not in favor of any versons being sold that aren't at least as good as what a free emulator can do.

[Nasirosuchus]

It wouldn't hurt anyone though, right? Emulation is fine as long as you own a board, which happens probably in 0.1% of the cases when someone is playing the game through MAME. Having these games in a legal, readily-available way to play would be awesome.

The legality doesn't matter to most people considering that they're ignorant of it to begin with. The MAME version is already 99% accurate to the original. This is why you probably won't see a console port of games like Dangun Feveron or Progear or Esprade.

[Never_Scurred]

You should ask them to do a localization of Ibara+Kuro.
Donpachi and DDP are great games, but old news to most of us and we never got a "real" retail version of the game. Apparently, its been emulated, but not playable for most people atm.

[MR_Soren]

Well, I'd pay $6 to play DDP on my PS3.

I wasn't aware of Zanac x Zanac getting a western release. I'll have to pick that up.

[Pretas]

The legality doesn't matter to most people considering that they're ignorant of it to begin with. The MAME version is already 99% accurate to the original. This is why you probably won't see a console port of games like Dangun Feveron or Progear or Esprade.

Cave demoed an XBLA port of Feveron at one of their matsuri events that seemed to have been complete and ready for release. It's a mystery why they didn't go ahead with it.

[MR_Soren]

The legality doesn't matter to most people considering that they're ignorant of it to begin with. The MAME version is already 99% accurate to the original. This is why you probably won't see a console port of games like Dangun Feveron or Progear or Esprade.

Cave demoed an XBLA port of Feveron at one of their matsuri events that seemed to have been complete and ready for release. It's a mystery why they didn't go ahead with it.

It's possible that the fees involved with releasing a game would exceed their projected profits. I've heard that it costs $10,000 to obtain an ESRB rating, for example. Maybe they looked at the sales figures for Guwange and realized decided to cut their losses.

It is a shame though. I'd still buy Dangun Feveron if they released it on XBLA.

[drauch]

Seems kinda odd to release so many JP text heavy and mahjong games with the wealth of completely playable games available with no language experience needed... Cool to see a few of those, but that seems like a poor strategy to localize stuff like that. Most NTSC-J versions of JRPGs and the like can usually be found for 6 bucks or so on the bay, and I imagine anyone who would actually pose an interest and had the ability to read them would opt for a physical release, anyway. I dunno, seems silly.

[drauch]

It wouldn't hurt anyone though, right? Emulation is fine as long as you own a board, which happens probably in 0.1% of the cases when someone is playing the game through MAME. Having these games in a legal, readily-available way to play would be awesome.

The legality doesn't matter to most people considering that they're ignorant of it to begin with. The MAME version is already 99% accurate to the original. This is why you probably won't see a console port of games like Dangun Feveron or Progear or Esprade.

Or, more realistically, because of licensing and profit issues. I doubt MAME wasn't too much on their mind when they released all the Xbox 360 shmups and the like so far.

[Skykid]

Completely selfishly, I'd prefer to see some Hori's brought to PSN so I can make some use of this widescreen OLED Vita thingy.

Donpachi and Dodon are a little tired now, we've all played them to death, MAME or otherwise.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

I know I've seen that the DoDonPachi port is terrible, but how is the DonPachi port?

I'm obviously not interested in seeing an inferior version of DoDonPachi on PSN, and the same would go for DonPachi. But if DonPachi is a good port, then I'd definitely like to see it. After all, even if I'm emulating something, I do prefer to own it legally in some form if possible.

[Neorebel]

Well, I'd pay $6 to play DDP on my PS3.

I wasn't aware of Zanac x Zanac getting a western release. I'll have to pick that up.

Me either, good lookin' out on the heads up about Zanac x Zanac.

I would also pay to play DDP on the ps3 due to the setup, and also having it right there would make me play it more often than on MAME or Saturn/PS2.

By the way, which port are you guys describing as awful, the PS1 port of the original DoDonPachi?

[Chaos Phoenixma]

DoDonPachi is the one with the terrible port on both PSX and Saturn. I haven't seen comparison reviews for DonPachi.

[drauch]

Eh, "terrible" is a bit of an overstatement, just not 100% accurate.

[Nasirosuchus]

It wouldn't hurt anyone though, right? Emulation is fine as long as you own a board, which happens probably in 0.1% of the cases when someone is playing the game through MAME. Having these games in a legal, readily-available way to play would be awesome.

The legality doesn't matter to most people considering that they're ignorant of it to begin with. The MAME version is already 99% accurate to the original. This is why you probably won't see a console port of games like Dangun Feveron or Progear or Esprade.

Or, more realistically, because of licensing and profit issues. I doubt MAME wasn't too much on their mind when they released all the Xbox 360 shmups and the like so far.

The MAME developers wait at least three years before they make a game available. The PGM and SH3 games had long ago been ported to the PlayStation 2/Xbox 360 by the time they were available in MAME.

In the case of games like Donpachi, Dodonpachi, Dangun Feveron, Progear, Esprade, etc there was never a console release to begin with. Those games have been available via emulation for quite some time and are practically 100% accurate to the arcade ports. It wouldn't make any sense to release them now from a standpoint of profitability.

[drauch]

Mmm, fair enough. I wasn't aware of the previous PGM releases. Where were those released as?

Regardless, I still think they'd have better luck releasing a widely known shmup (regardless of the inferior port) rather than a JP only JRPG.

[ciox]

I think they could still fire up DDP fans by putting out a pack that includes the Campaign Version, fat chance though.