Had you told me as little as two years ago it would be remotely possible to buy Super Robot Wars in the United States without importing, I'd have laughed at you. Sure, SRW since Moon Dwellers got English translations for Asian countries where that is a predominant language, but I never thought they would do more use that as a legal workaround for the nightmares of direct licensing in Western countries.
Even after the SRW devs all but admitted foreign sales of SRW outside of Japan were making bank and SRW T was blatant confirmation they noticed the Western fanbase and added content specifically to please them (G Gundam, Cowboy Bebop, and Magic Knights Rayearth were especially blatant evidence it was made with the West as much as the East in mind, and Captain Harlock is something both sides of the pond have fond memories of), I figured that was the best we Westerners were gonna get and considering the Switch and PS4 only required foreign accounts for DLC, that struck me as pretty fair.
However, SRW 30 can be bought on Steam, worldwide, with no restrictions except in what seems to be Venezeula, likely due to some obscure licensing issue in that country, not sure to be honest, but otherwise, Steam worldwide has no country barriers requiring VPNs and alternate accounts. You still have to import for the Switch/PS4, but it's basically the same game on all three platforms in terms of base content and DLC, so fair enough.
That all said, my fanboy heart is all aflutter because, outside of fan translation and imports, I never thought I'd live to see the day a series I was convinced was bound by nightmarish levels of licensing red tape would be natively available in my own country.
That in mind, I'm going to have a VERY happy October.
If the same thing happens to Mother 3, I'll also feel the same way.
ReplyDeleteAmen to that.
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