When I was a little turd, I was fond of being a stupid prick and sold my NES with an awesome library games so I could buy a SNES. I later pulled the same stupid stunt when I sold the SNES (which turned out to be the fucking greatest console ever) for a PSX (which luckily turned out to be OK too). I blame myself it every day but thanks to some geniuses at Nintendo I can now, at last, play a significant part of my library again on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Nintendo would not be Nintendo however without fucking up a brilliant idea. And that is exactly what the rant below is about.

The Cold War

The first ten years of my life, during the full 80′s, for me, the U.S.A. was the greatest country on earth. Yeah, reflecting upon that makes me sad too but alas, that’s how it was. As a little kid my days revolved basically around three things: Nintendo, movies and Lego. Friends had to be interested in either one of those. Life was simple.

There were a few basic rules when it came to games and movies: the US would always have the coolest movies first, the US would also have the coolest games first and finally they would also always have more of either one of them. Now that was completely understandable as the market over there was simply much bigger. Looking back now, it makes sense and as a little kid, not knowing better, I was cool with that too.

Back to the Future

Fast forward twenty years and here we are, well under way in the glorious year of 2008. I would like to say that things are better but they are not. Things are different though but the fuck ups are the same. The amount of games that differs between the two VC libraries of the pond is down to five games but now the difference is in the actual games that are in each library.

You see, instead of just creating a global Virtual Console channel for the Wii, Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to divide the world into regions. Yeah, that’s right: regions. How the fuck you can divide the world into regions is beyond me but God damn, unbelievable as it is, Nintendo did it. Now, in the words of the AVGN: “that’s bullshit!”

Each region has games that the other region would like to see. All of those games are perfectly releasable in every region but instead Nintendo is handing out the cool games to individual regions. Its like you and your little brother or sister both want that awesome toy but only one of you gets it. I know, it’s shit.

Fuck Me, Regions?

Unfortunately, I am so completely fucking mystified by the fact that some dick flippers at Nintendo were able to divide the fucking world up into regions that I just have to get this little side rant of my chest.

Fuck monkey shit, it’s stupid as hell but below are the “official” regions, the numbers represent the size of the VC library as of August 25, 2008:

• Japan (357)
• North America (248)
• Europe (243)
• Australia & New Zealand (230)

Now, how the fucking hell are you able to divide the world into that pile of shit? What happened to, you know, those things we call “continents”? Are those not just fucking right when you want to divide the world up into pieces? Noooo, instead we have these arbitrary regions that make no sense whatsoever.

What the fuck happened to countries like, just to name something, Russia? Is that not a real country? Does that not almost span Europe and Asia? OK, maybe some people think that Russia is in Europe but not part of Europe. It does not really make sense, cool.

But what the fuck about China? I guess nobody is playing VC over there. All those countries in South America? Maybe we can extend our logic and make that part of North America. They are connected after all. Yeah right, while we are at it we can fit Africa in just about anywhere. But I guess nobody is playing VC there either. Only some tribes that can’t stop killing each other there so why bother, right?

I though that was it but wait… Fuck holy manure! After looking this shit up in Wikipedia I found out there’s a fucking fifth region:

• South Korea

You might be thinking: “Damn shit those Koreans, a whole region of their own?” But actually, it seems that Nintendo is taking a little piss on those poor South Koreans because only 22 titles have been released so far. Also, the store “updates irregularly on Tuesdays”. I feel almost sorry for ranting now. Almost.

Back to the Story

With that whole region shit comes this crazy release policy that should only make sense to the turds who cooked up this pile of shit in the first place. Now the fact that Japan is the dog’s bullocks in library size makes completely sense. Most of the games that they have over us (EU, NA, A&NZ) are just too plain weird, stupid or hard for most of us. Let’s face it: those guys are hardcore and just way more insane when it comes to gaming than us. That’s cool.

They deserve that huge ass library. More power to them and that kind of shit. Not to mention the fact that it is the easiest market for Nintendo: huge name, huge market, no localization, no limits – no question about it. That does not mean they should treat the rest of the world like shit, which frankly, sometimes it feels like they do.

Love Not War

It seems like the Japanese through Nintendo are conspiring to drive “The West” apart while at the same time keeping the South Koreans on a nice and tight leash so they can throw them a few bones once in a while. Of course this idea is totally absurd but it is a good example what kind of crazy shit can happen when you leave a reasonably sane person wondering about what the fuck is happing for too long.

A large part of the VC games that we are given so far is superb and hopefully a lot more good stuff will follow. It is just the little things like what happened today that really tick me off: USA VC Releases: Ys Book I & II and Samurai Shodown II.

Samurai Shodown II is cool but what I’m really very pissed about is that Ys Book I & II are available in the US as we speak while in Europe we are wondering what the fuck we did to deserve this. Did we not pray enough? Did we not drew blood of those damsels and did we not offer it on the blood stone below the full moon on those sacred nights in February and September? Damn you Nintendo and all your offspring! May the joy of children bring you blood and evil until the world is no more!

The Other Side

To be fair, those guys at the other side of the pond (or those down under for that matter) are just as fucked by Nintendo as we are over here in the region they call Europe. While they are treated to the fabulous Ys Books we got Super Mario RPG last week. We also have Mega Man 2 since the 14th of December last year. We also have a bunch of old school C64 gems that are not available over there yet. I think it is a master stroke to provide C64 games on the Virtual Console but am absolutely stupefied why they are only available here.

And on a personal note: who is the fuck hole’s banana bearing pickle licking pile of dick weaving professional hamster shit diving ass wrinkle that is responsible for me now almost craving a year for Axelay? It hurts man!

Why the Fuck Is It So Hard?

Come on now people, we are living in 2008. Birds are singing, the sun is shining and a large part of the world is connected, at least, the part of the world that matters is. Now, fuck those tribes in Africa for a minute and never mind that there are actually some reasonably civilized people living in other parts of the world besides those living in the sacred parts of Nintendo’s official region system. Now ask yourself this question:

“Why oh why, in the name of our beloved Lord and saviour, would we differentiate between the east and west side of the pond and those unfortunate to live down in the underbelly of our beautiful earth?”

I asked myself this question a thousand times. A few times I thought I had an answer but unfortunately, after giving it a little more thought, it never made complete sense.

“It has to be localized for Non-English speaking European monkey”

While this is often the case for current games this cannot be true for VC releases because those games where localized once already (if any localization) and you would be hard pressed to find a publisher who will go through all the trouble of localizing a twenty-year old game just to release it in Europe for the VC. As far as I can see it, there are three scenarios:

• If the game has already undergone localization to English it will most likely just appear in that form
• If it has not been localized to English then it would be completely reasonable to only release it to the Japanese market and be done with it
• If it has been localized to English but not to, for example, French or Italian or some other stupid Nationalistic language there should be no reason to withhold it from the European market

By the way, if you are offended by that last sentence you may also want to see the closing note.

“European monkey won’t like it”

That may very well be the case. But you know, the beauty of our world wide web is that it is – like – world wide. While I can understand the motivations for releasing some games in Japan only there is nothing in my mind that can find any reasonable understanding for the policy of releasing some games only in one or more of the other regions while depriving the other regions of said games.

“European monkeys rate slow”

I can understand that some regions use a different kind of rating system than other regions. And some institutes work faster than others. Agreed. But that still does not explain while some games take over more than a year to appear on either side of the pond.

A good few of them even never appear for the folks down under at all but they are not very vocal about so I’m not sure how they feel about that. I do know that a lot of people are hugely frustrated by some of the games popping up but in the wrong region and rightfully so. This shit is not right.

Fuck This Region Shit

There’s no reason that Axelay should not be released here. Likewise there is also no reason to not release Megaman 2 and Super Mario RPG in The States. It is a fucking download for crying out loud! Why the fuck should it cost more money to just have a single access point for the rest of the world instead of this crazy region shebang we have now?

I hate this fucking region shit. I hate it on the fucking DVDs I buy and I hate it even more on the fucking VC. Its fucking useless. It does nothing but it is only there because some corporate ass holes deemed this shit looked like a solid plan. In the end, it only frustrates fans and customers.

Fuck Axelay, I don’t even want to play it any more. And even if, I will just download an emulator, play the bitch for a few hours and be done with it. Saves me some money too.

Closing Note

If you live in Europe and can not understand English well enough to play a few video games well: fuck you. Why are you fucking it up for the rest of us who took some time to learn another language or two?