11 Lovely Mega Drive Platformers That Sadly Never Left Japan
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Published 2022-10-06
The fourth generation of video game consoles wasn’t so great in the west. Video games hadn’t caught on as much as they would eventually, so many games that were produced in Japan, stayed there. Japanese game developers feared that their games wouldn’t appeal to gamers in the west so they decided to just keep them in the land of the rising sun rather than spending money on localization.
There were over 900 games released on the Sega's 16 bit console, known as the Mega Drive in Japan and Europe, with only over 700 being brought overseas. Because of this, we missed out on some fantastic games, some of which are the best the console has to offer. So to help undo this wrong, Bits & Beats have collected 11 great Mega Drive platform games that were released in Japan that weren’t released in the western market, so you can finally see what you were missing out on!
Intro and Outro Music
Aries Beats "Synthwave Dreams 2020" is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: free-songs.de/synthwave-2020/
Games Featured
0:00 Intro
0:23 1988 Osomatsu-kun: Hachamecha Gekijō
0:58 1990 Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure!
1:29 1990 The NewZealand Story
2:01 1990 Rainbow Islands Extra
2:32 1992 Magical Taruruto-kun
3:07 1992 Wani Wani World
3:41 1993 Doraemon: The Dream Thief and the Seven Gozans
4:22 1993 Snow Bros. Nick & Tom
4:54 1994 Monster World IV
5:27 1994 Pulseman
6:02 1994 Crayon Shin-chan: Arashi o Yobu Enji
6:52 Outro
⚠️ All gameplay recording, game curation and opinions included in this video, as well as editing is completely done by me
Bits & Beats creates videos about the history of video games. In this channel you'll find comparisons, retrospectives, technical analysis, but, mostly, game curations with the idea of having an important task of preserving video games, and make them relevant to society at large.
Curation isn't just about digging up neat games, but it's also about preservation, interpretation, and using one's knowledge to make it relevant to people. With my videos I want older gamers to look back and remember the influence of video games on their lives, and new gamers to understand the larger context of the series they're playing for the first time today.
I put significant time and creative effort into each one of my videos, including research, digging into archives, playing video games and recording hours of footage, selecting specific clips, writing reviews for each title, and making a very careful video editing in the way to transmit both educational and entertaining values to my audience. Every video takes a lot of hours to produce, because I strive to give my audience a consistent, high-quality content.
Fidelity and preservation of the video games is essential in Bits & Beats, so the recordings are made with the highest bitrate quality. It is done this way to preserve original game look and sound through modern footage, with no superfluous additions. I recommend you watch the video at 4K and 60 frames per second to get the best possible viewing experience.
I hope you enjoy my videos and find them useful!
#BITSANDBEATS #megadrive #platformer
All Comments (21)
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If you're looking forward to seeing more Japanese cute platform games, you might be interested in 20 Extremely Cute SNES Platformers That Sadly Never Left Japan 👉 https://youtu.be/UQZGr-g3pwc
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4:22 Sega's Snow Bros is a mega classic! And the new levels of the princesses? Flawless. Didn't you learn anything from them Snow Bros Special?
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Pulseman actually made it to the states via the Sega Channel. I had Sega Channel growing up and it was awesome to have full games that I could play without having to swap cartridges. It was the 90s equivalent of Xbox Gamepass lol. There were a few Sega Channel exclusives. Idk why none of them got physical releases. Pulseman was a gem!
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2:15 i love the 'definitely not somewhere over the rainbow' theme there
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There was a Snow Bros for Sega Genesis? WHY JAPAN?! Who thought we wouldn't by that?! ( That game is almost as addictive as Bubble Bobble! )
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I was expecting a lot of classics that stayed in Japan for mystifying reasons, but I have to say, it's pretty obvious why most of these never left Japan. Most are based on some anime or series that were also trapped in Japan, and no one here would have bought them. The puzzle games (Wani Wani, Rainbow Islands, and the Snow Bros) probably could have sold, but not in great numbers, and possibly not at all. They were pretty cutesy for Sega's 90s "attitude era" aesthetic. The only two that were clear winners that I think could have done great here also if marketed properly were Monster Hunter 4 and Pulseman.
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Actually, Monster World IV did get localized later on through Wii Virtual Console, Xbox 360, and Sega Genesis Mini as well.
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This is awesome! Though, Monster World IV did get a local release on the SEGA Genesis Classic decades later.
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As a Sega kid back then this is sad that I never got experience theses games on my Mega Drive here in Australia I remember playing Snow Bros in the arcades and it’s sad it never got released as I always wanted a lot of arcades games to come to the MD console and with Monster World i remember seeing it in the gaming magazine saying it was coming but sadly never got release which made me so angry to miss out on as I grew up playing all the Wonder Boy / Monster World games starting from the Master System wonder boy. It’s really sad that I missed most of theses games here on this video as a kid back then I would have loved all
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I've seen some of these in rent stores in Brazil. If memory serves me correctly the Japanese version of Strider was slightly different from the US version as it was on shinobi
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The production value of your videos are always off the chart. Well done.
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I love these video of games that never left the west.
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Monster World IV is amazing. It always feels fresh.
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Monster world 4 left Japan and is available in the U.S. it is playable on The Sega Genesis mini!!
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I freaking love Decap Attack, so I'm sure that I'd enjoy Magical Hat if I ever get a chance to try that one out. ^_^
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Was really hoping for Pulseman to be included in the upcoming Sega Genesis Mini 2😔
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Another outstanding video thanks dude 👍
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Man I got to play some of these games like right now! Thanks for the video Bits and Beats!
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magical hat and psycho fox on the master system were super underated classics. MWIV's animations and music, graphics were all incredible. Damn shame we didnt get it back then.
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The big issue here is that I don't think that most gamers won't understand themes of these games. But for games like Pulse Man I wouldn't mind giving them a try due to that they're those "what if this meets that or what if you combine this and that",games like that work
