What it says on the tin. The Namco game Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom was never localized in any other country until the crappy GBA version of it was released. If it had been localized for the Super Nintendo, voices and all, would it have sold well in the US? Could it become as popular as Final Fantasy?Could I mention it on the ASB forum and not have everyone asking what the hell I am talking about? *grumbles*
Could Tales of Phantasia have been popular in the US?
- Thread starter Nagisaki
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YES. the game was the most techically advance SNES games alongside DKC and nintendo was set to publish in the west before a failling with namco, if would have been a 1996 release alongside DKC3 and might even show SNES power even with CD system on the market. plus rpg were alredy pretty popular, just not millon seller till FFVII, i can imagine ToP Selling like 200K copies would match japanese sales.
I mean FFVI did fairly well in the US despite being a late cycle SNES release.
What Namco should have done IMO was to release the PS1 port that added content in the wake of FFVII causing the JRPG boom.
What Namco should have done IMO was to release the PS1 port that added content in the wake of FFVII causing the JRPG boom.
They did remake the game to PS1 but never localized as critics trashed tales of destiny(who was made with the sames SNES engine) as primitive and the game flopped too(all tales till symphonia flopped in the west, nintendo did make that series popular to begin with)
I suppose that's the downside of FFVII becoming THE JRPG - it pretty much killed off 2D console RPGs for a long time. Games like Suikoden 1 could get away with being 2D because they came out before FFVII, but everything after that used 3D.
See, I feel like if if ToP was released on the SNES and then rereleased on the PS1 it would reach a much wider audience by catching the attention of people at that critical junction in the 1990s when JRPGs were just becoming. While Destiny may not have been well liked, Eternia was pretty good, and Symphonia, while somewhat of a flop in Japan (which is why the PS2 version was made) was a very popular game in the West, and is probably the reason most people in the west even like the series. With an extra 7 years the series could actually have enough of a fanbase in the west that we could see it compete with FF directly, rather than just people in the youtube comments cheering it on for being better.
And their 3d wasn't that good till FFVIII. but yeah destiny got the short end of the stick because that.
Yeah the issue is bringing it, namco didn't care, Nintendo wanted but namco got cold feet and later nintendo decided to push SM64 to the moon.
Define popular. It probably wouldn't make impressive sales due to it being Japanese and Tales focusing a lot more on story than most WRPGs and shooters (which as Fallout 4 and the soon-to-be released Halo showed us are immensely popular). It might create an earlier fan base (although it would butterfly Abyss, unfortunately), as well as an attempt to occasionally cater to Western audiences in later games. So a Phantasia release would likely establish a small fan base, but nothing too significant.
Wait...what??? fALLOUT 1 is not even released yet and bungie didn't even coded marathon, we're talking a 1995-1996 videogame here, when the fanbase would slowly growth would be a bigger burst when a game of caliber Symphonia come later on.....
Fallout 4 was a success for Bethesda, and I doubt that interest in that style of RPG changed significantly since Western tastes in video games haven't really changed much, as shown by the shooter genre and AAA games. The Tales series is too story based to grip an America audience strongly since its action is less intense.
Did you've ever played a tales game? and we're talking mid 90's here, not even orginal fallout exist yet. so what is your point here?
I have Zestiria, Berseria, and Abyss and I love all of them, but that rude question is completely off-topic. My point is to compare a popular Western RPG (Fallout) to a relatively popular JRPG (Tales). Due to the constant preference for action by and large in America, the story-heavy Tales series won't be that much more popular than it is today if it gets an earlier release.
Is not that ironically vs fallout massive story and lore, again fallout just become popular when double as FPS(III) so things take time, you just worded your comment badly.
No, it's simply too late a release to achieve widespread popularity. While some games managed to overcome that, Tales of Phantasia is a new IP in a niche genre, which is not conductive to sales. The most it could hope for is becoming a bit of a cult hit and later gaining a reputation as a lost gem.
I repeatedly mentioned Fallout 4, you were the one who brought up the originals. It should have been clear I was referring to after it started focusing more on action by which game I was referring to.
And no Fallout game has been as story-driven as a Tales game. In Tales games, side quests are side quests. You do them if you want to and they don't affect the outcome of the story. For instance, I did exactly one side quest the first time I played Abyss, and that was because I wanted to stick it to Asch. In a Fallout game, side quests are pretty much the content. God knows if I tried to play through Fallout 3 or 4's story without any side quests, I'd end up dead due to lack of levels. If I managed to brute force my way through, though, I'd be surprised if they clocked in at ten hours. Compare to a Tales game with its typical ~60 hours of story, and you can see why I call one and not the other heavily story-based.
Not true. For example, if you do the sidequest to look into Kratos' actions in Tales of Symphonia as well as doing another sidequest earlier in the game, you'll more than likely get a different ending. In Tales of Vesperia, if you get all the Fell Arms, the final boss gets a huge change.
Haven't played Symphonia, so I couldn't know, but as for Vesperia, how big is the change? Is it super-form (like Heldalf or Artorious [fuck this guy's super-form]) or a completely different opponent? The former doesn't change the story while the latter does.
He gets a super form, but it does slightly change the ending if I remember playing correctly. I don't remember, I haven't touched it in years.
You're missing the forest for the trees, which is that sidequests are handled and treated differently in JRPGs compared to WRPGs. A handful of exceptions doesn't change the overall picture.
But he was saying that is why people wouldn't like Tales of Phantasia in the west. JRPG's are still very popular in the west, Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Tales, Dragon Quest, Mario & Luigi (Paper Mario, too), Earthbound, Xenogears (and Xenoblade), Persona, Kingdom Hearts, Fire Emblem, the list does go on. JRPG's might not stand up against the big names in WRPG's like Skyrim (well, except Pokemon), they are still very popular in the west, and the 90's was the era that they prospered the most. The thread isn't on whether WRPG's are better than JRPG's, it's about how well Tales of Phantasia would have sold in the US had it been localised for the Super Nintendo.