Game Collecting in Europe is very different
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Game collecting in Europe is a very different experience from game collecting in America. In this video I go over some of those changes to see how the impact game collecting in the region.
Also, a fair amount of these EU vs US differences are simply Europe receiving the same stuff that originally came out in Japan.
Boxarts, localized game names, "bland" spine art, even the thicker PS1 game cases were originally like that in Japan. It becomes less about Europe games being different, but rather US is different from the other regions
American exceptionalism really gone crazy
Yep, same with stuff like SNES cartridges, even how the console itself looks. Same with Mega Drive being called that instead of Genesis. It's really inconsistent, though. DS games only have the thick cases in Europe, not Japan or the US, and with boxarts, it's usually a tossup whether we get the Japanese or the American version... or rarely, a completely unique one.
Nintendo is probably the weirdest about all this, even recently. Like calling the last few Mario and Luigi games "Dream Team Bros" and "Paper Jam Bros", like WTF, the latter one makes less sense than "Dream Drop Distance".
yeah, especially with his issue with the name project zero, despite that being more in line with the JP name over the US name. (The Japanese name is "Zero" which is a play on words. The kanji used for zero in the title (零) is pronounced "rei" which is also how the word for spirit/soul/ghost (霊) is pronounced.)
I think JP game devs focused more on the NA market because all they would have to do is translate to English and that covers all of the U.S. and most of Canada. Theoretically, the U.K. could have benefited from this, but you have the NTSC/PAL conversion and regulations. One of them being the requirements to support other European languages in the manual. IIRC, it's part of CE certification.
They often struggled to localize American games due to how different English and Japanese are. So localizing for all of Europe must have been a daunting task.
@@19Szabolcs91 Someone else owned the "Mega Drive" name here at the time, so they changed the name for the U.S. Reigon.
As for the SNES being different. I think this because Nintendo still felt like they had to make their game console look less like a game consol. The stigma from the video game crash still lingered in the American market. So, Nintendo would opt for a more boxy shape to fit in with other consumer electronics and computer components of the time. This was their reason for the NES being way different from the Famicom. Basically, they didn't want the NES to look like a toy compared to other electronics of the era.
I think the differences in translation for the european games is because they most likely translated more accurately the game from Japanese to the european languages rather than over-localizing like they often do in US releases
if you play fire emblem, even in 2023, they over-localized everything in every language. It's a disaster.
I can't claim to be super familiar with this because I primarily play my games in Japanese, but there have been times I've launched a Switch game in Dutch out of pure curiosity, and I've noticed that often times, translations of names or dialogue tend to feel closer to the Japanese script than the English.
This kinda caught me by surprise, because there probably aren't many people aside from me that fluently speak both Japanese and Dutch in order to translate, so I guess I just assumed they'd base the translation on the English version.
There's a similar phenomenon with manga and anime, the Americans had a tendency to change characters' names, remove harsh language and erotic elements, but always keep the violence. Here in Europe, depending on the country the violence may be censored, but everything else was kept as close to a direct translation.
The reason Fatal Frame is called Project Zero is because the original Japanese name is "Zero". In Europe they tend to be more respectful to the original material, and I honestly prefeer that.
Sure, it's more respectful, but Project Zero is still a terrible title even in its original language
@@nisnastits a good title in japanese because its atleast wordplay
This is also in media. Especially german media will have all of the wordplay in sentences/cultural things kept in. Very prominent is characters saying “sir” or “ma’am” in german translations of American media. Only example I can find of this in any American translation is how the exclamation “Yes!” is used like it is in Japanese in The Great Ace Attorney.
On the PAL vs NTSC issue, it goes both ways when you take a lot of retro computers into account. If you're a US collector of Commodore 64, Atari ST, or Amiga games, then the domestic releases are only a fifth or so of the total software library for those systems. Many of the best games on those computers were developed in Europe and designed to run at 50 hz, which means they're often a headache to get working on an NTSC system.
For example, the Commodore Amiga port of Pac-mania flickers heavily on NTSC systems (I think this port wasn't released outside Europe).
Yep, it's the same problem in reverse of what the consoles had, but in this case, games run too fast for the US market on the Amiga.
Also, Pal could deliver a higher resolution, which likely didn't matter for consoles but for home computers like the Amiga, it allowed games to have a higher resolution.
Personally, it's probably best to get the game that runs at the correct speed it was designed for, so a lot of home computer games usually run best at 50hz whereas most console games run best at 60hz, but there are many exceptions, many games from Japan ended up being released in the EU market but didn't get a release in the US, you could get the Japanese version of the game that will run fine at 60hz but it will be in Japanese, being as the same game was also released in the EU market at the time, it's got English, so in that case, the PAL version is better.
In any case, the market back then was a mess, some games being released in the EU, some in the US, many of which having all sorts of changes from each other and even from the Japanese version and in any event, there are many games that made it to the EU market but never made it to the US market and vice versa and one example was a fireman game for the SNES, forgot the name of it but it was released in the EU and Japan only, I know this because I was looking for the US version a few years ago and it never got released over there, it's the same for countless others.
@@paul1979uk2000 _> "Also, Pal could deliver a higher resolution, which likely didn't matter for consoles but for home computers like the Amiga, it allowed games to have a higher resolution."_
Why wouldn't it matter? Higher resolution is a nicer looking image. Plus I've seen games developed for PAL having to change things to fit on the lower resolution NTSC.
@@Liggliluff People scoff at 50fps but the resolution was always better.
In France we had what was then the French branch of GameStop : Micromania. But the price for second hand was usually not good... People would call them Escroc Mania (Scammer Mania) instead 😂 !
Gamecash is so much better tho
Do they have CEX in France?
@@JohanCruyff-wj4pf no, but we have stuff like "cash converters", it's kinda the same thing (but more messy and not focused on electronics)!
I remember Micromafia instead.
@@adrienplazas554 that's a better one indeed!
I really enjoyed hearing the perspective from across the pond it's really cool hearing how the market was so different. I'm actually very interested in digging into this myself now, thank you!
Comments like these really makes me happy I made this video :D
Im a video game collector from Poland, and finding games here is quite interesting too, as its a ex communist country, there were simply no games available back then. Well there were, in the form of Pegasus (a communist copy of a NES). But it all changed when CD Projekt started to distribute (and translate) video games in the mid-to end 90s. However the PS1 never really catched on, i guess it was still a bit too new and too expensive. But from the PS2 onward, there would be many games with Polish translations, cover text and booklets. And sadly retro games are more expensive than most other European countries. Funny enough the Polish version of certain games are high valued at times than the English ones..
I love getting all these comments from people experience collecting in the EU. There are so many small differences between countries that it was impossible for me to catalogue them all and put them in this video so receiving info life this is so awesome
Pretty funny how polish versions of some cheap games like God of War in our language are like twice the price. That's why I buy only english cover games, but at the other hand German games are rather cheap but most of people don't speak german so its pointless for many of game collectors in Poland. For example you can buy Obsucre for PS2 for like 3 times less than english version.
In Croatia nobody really cared about Famiclones, as home computers were available even in Yugoslavia, though you had to go to Austria or Italy to get one and sometimes you had to jump though hoops like buying them component per component. The PS1 was very popular in the early 2000s as the budget option, as was the PS2 slim in the late 2000s.
Nintendo stuff was mostly relegated to those who had family members in Germany, Sweden or Austria. I suppose because Nintendo stuff was considered nerdy and niche much like anime was outside of areas with Italian TV reception. Sony was considered the cool and premium brand.
If I recall, Sony entered Poland in the PS1 era (and Czech, Turkish and Russian markets too), but 4-language PS1 cover games (RU PL CZ TR) are extremely rare today. I'm a Russian national and I can relate to a lot of facts in this video since we had our games imported from Europe. Piracy was still a major factor, too, and, despite genuine games being available, though rare, since around mid 90s, bootlegs were only phased out by late 2000s (PS3 era). Sony had been an absolute winner in Russia for generations from 5 to 8, but even Playstation is always second to PC here.
Indeed! Sometimes I feel that It would be cheaper to buy a sealed copy of NES game on Ebay than some Polish releases of rather common games.
I also wish we could have more stores with retro games. Maybe one day. :)
As a Moroccan, I mainly collect from Europe using eBay, we don't have Shops for retro games here, only flea markets with very used games (European versions).
Where in morocco do you life?
fun fact: PAL runs at a higher resolution (20% more horizontal lines), compared to NTSC which was the intended way for devs so its like PAL is the original version while NTSC are the "modified" ones.
@@JoenHarlverkeep telling yourself that but the retro releases run 12% slower than intended so your argument goes completely out the window.
@@HammerStudioGames no the argument still stands, some games were intended to be on PAL and there were even documentations about some games had issues to release an NTSC version since they uintentional made the game harder as it should be, therefor the EU had some games that ppl find pretty easy to beat while US had way smaller window to react and made it "frustrating" to play. so some games even changed the pacing. Also your argument was the same i said, it ran slower. so said: still higher res over fps. Games that were developed from the ground up for NTSC had obv no problem, common sense. - but it seems i have to include that everytime and write a assay about useless facts
@@JoenHarlver pal also had superior color display.
I've always thought that European versions having simpler language was for translation purposes. "Nice" is WAY easier to translate than "Booyah"!
This was awesome to see talked about! I love learning about the difference in UK/European versions, it was crazy to learn that Star Fox was called Lylatt Wars here at one point...
It's not that it's easier too translate, translators typically know the languages well enough to understand puns and the like, but rather that players who play in English are quite likely to be non-native speakers whose languages don't get official translations and they might not understand uncommon words.
It's also that in most(not all tho) cases, the european localization is more direct from japanese. At least it used to be like that, the US/EU-split in english settings still technically exists, but much less games make use of it these days.
The Spyro music being mono in Europe was definitely because of all the language files, though the series just had weird stuff going on with its music in general, with the first game having some completely different tracks between NA and EU versions, and the third game having four different versions (original and 1.1 in both regions) that had messed up music in all but one - tracks missing or playing in the wrong levels and one release even playing peaceful hubworld music during the final boss.
@gomam0n702 Ah, C3 Racing, developed in France for PAL made for 50 Hz, with tracks all over the world. Ported to USA where the cars are pickups, and the tracks are now said to be different parts of USA, because USA, despite using the exact same graphics. Then also running the game at 60 Hz with no compensation so the game runs too fast. they also changed "km" to "m" (miles) without applying any modifier, so C3 Racing will say a distance is "1.0 km" and the US port will say "1.0 m" (miles).
@gomam0n702 Yeah I'm kinda ignoring that one for now. It's not as silly as the North American release.
What I find so interesting with collecting here in Europe, is that on the spine of Nintendo games at the bottom, you can see a colored triangle. This actually shows from which country/region the game is!
Here in Belgium, we don't really have a color associated to us, so you will find TONS of different colored ones! We can sometimes have some from Netherlands, but also from the UK, France, Germany, etc. This is ESPECIALLY apparent when it comes to used games here in game stores or retro stores.
I really like to look at my collection and see all the different colors, trying to find out which country/region it's associated to!
- Light Blue is the Netherlands
- Green is the UK
- Red is for France
- A very dark Purple/Blue/Indigo is from Germany
- Purple is usually the color you'll find on games that come from Limited Editions/Collector's Editions, so they're for all of europe.
- Pastel Purple seem to be for Spain and Italy? (Maybe Portugal aswell?)
- Marine Blue seems to be the same as Purple, this being for all of Europe, but not for limited editions? Still not 100% sure about this one xD
These are all the colors i know of so far! You can check this yourself on any box in Europe, check the color of the triangle and then look at the product code on the box, usually right above the barcode!
For example, my copy of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Limited Edition is: DOL-GZLP-HOL
The DOL is to indicate which system it is for, which i find really cool that this is called DOL, which is the codename for the Gamecube, that being Dolphin. Thats why you also have RVL for the Wii for example, this standing for Revolution.
The next couple of numbers indicates a unique code that identifies the game. Fun fact: Seeing as Breath of the Wild is the first release on switch, this is why it's unique code is "AAAAA" seemingly the beginning of the alphanumeric code! "TRA-HAC-AAAAA-HOL" in full for example
and the HOL showing which country it is from, this case it being Holland/Netherlands.
You won't find the colored triangles on cardboard gameboxes like for GB(C) and GBA for example, instead, you'll find these on the instruction manuel! :D I think this is super fascinating and always something I pay extra attention to!
Actually the italian games have the blue triangle. Not the pastel purple one. Source: I'm Italian, and almost all my games are italian copies
@@giasca Nice! Thanks so much for letting me know! I can be more accurate with this information now! :D
The BoTW box art was changed to look like ‘Wonderer above the sea of fog’, a famous German painting which really matches the game well. Maybe the Euro team there are classical art fans or the rest of the world isn’t expected to recognise the Mona Lisa of Germany.
i've heard of cases where an American game being ported to a PAL was retooled to fix the 50hz problem. for example, the creators of the first Crash Bandicoot were very involved in the PAL version, and Crash runs faster in those releases because of it
As a UK citizen, I find collecting PAL games to be the only nationalistic/jingoistic aspect of my personality. I love collecting PAL games and proud of it for no other reason than they're PAL.
I like collecting the exclusive European games that only came out here since its something that not a lot of collectors based in the US would have. It makes me feel that my game collection is somewhat special and unique despite a lot of uk collectors probably having the same version. There's some games that I could just import from Japan as it would be cheaper than buying a PAL copy, mainly being the PS2 Persona Games but I still save up and buy the PAL version.
I tend to also emulate the PAL versions of older games and a lot of people would say is just because I'm patriotic about the UK that I'd rather have 50hz or 60hz but to ke it feels natural playing the game how it was intended to play here.
You don’t have pride for your nation?
ive been collecting games in the Netherlands for about 3 years now and never have i related more with a youtube video, Im not kidding. Thank you for making this it was very fun ! :)
Thats a huge compliment!!! Thank you so so much!!!
(14:00) Similar to a previous point, probably to have simpler English better suited for Europeans who don't grasp English as much. A common counter-argument I've heard is "play it in your language then", but Splatoon isn't available in: Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, Czech, Romanian, Serbian, Albanian, Greek, Turkish, ... and more. A lot of Europeans have to pick English, German, Spanish instead, where English is the most common option.
I've also heard Splatoon in Europe has the English translation better match the Japanese translation. Plus, how many Europeans say booyah anyway?
In the 90s, EU/UK would get the shit end of the stick when it came to games. First up, it would take 6 - 12 months to hit our shores after they came out in the US and Japan. Games would also run slower to their NTSC counterparts. Finally, we'd pay the higher prices for our games compared to the US and Japanese folks as well. All in all, it really did feel like we was loved the least when it came to gaming.
I think when it comes to gaming in Europe you have to go back to the start. It was predominantly a home computer market, your spectrums, c64's Amstrad cpu's and the like, then into the 16bit era with Atari St and Amiga's. By the time I had even heard of the NES let alone seen one it had been and gone as a thing and I was on an Amiga. The SNES made a minor impact, and the mega drive/Genesis a little more (I had at least seen both those systems 'in the flesh'), but even then they were rare to see at a mates house compared to any of the home computers of the era. Consoles were just not a thing really until the PlayStation came along when many were looking to upgrade from their 16bit computers but the emerging pc market was to expensive an alternative. The combination of consoles having much improved graphics over the 16bit home computers and the lack of viable alternatives is what drove a large part of the console market in Europe into being. And it was similar for European software companies like RARE or the emergent Rockstar (still DMA Design then) who also began moving more and more from the home computer market in Europe into developing for the new consoles.
Am from Belgium and had An Atari Pong , Phillips videopac , Nes , C64 , megadrive, SNES , N64 ,gamecube ,Gameboy and a Neogeo pocket color.I come from a normal workerfamily ...so gaming was a thing in Europe
What you describe is Britain. For example here in the Netherlands it's more Atari, Megadrive, SNES, C64, Videopac, MSX, N64, Gamecube, Gameboy and Amiga. Spectrum wasn't popular here, Amstrad is basically unheard of (and was licensed by a German company here), SNES was significantly more popular than the megadrive, Atari 2600 became the budget system till the early 90's, Playstation toke the Atari spot late in the 5th generation. CDi's are also relatively common, though mostly due to the their adoption by businesspeople as their original inteded design, being functionally powerpoint machines (Which is also why when you find them here you tend to find the earlier luxury models with the IR remote rather than the newer consolized version with the game controller).
(11:45) European collectors tend to say they overall prefer European covers, but not all. North American collectors tend to say they overall prefer the North American covers, but not all. It's either due to nostalgia, or that they just know their audience when it comes to changing the covers.
So im gonna butt in here with what its like down here in australia (from my own experience) because we are weird, my main gripe here is with the ds library because it changed from the pal boxes to the north american ones leaving your library with this weird half massive boxes (that don't require the massive boxes because nearly all of australia speaks english) and the north american ones and we also get a weird mix between north american and europen names and box arts and spines like for the wii we got the actual game logos on it like in north america but we also usually get the europen names for games and systems now i could have gotten a lot of that wrong because i am just starting collecting but this is how i have noticed it.
(8:00) It is weird that games didn't come with Spanish and French translations in North America since there are Spanish and French monolinguals. If they're going to translate the game to Spanish and French anyway for Europe (at least for games they know they'll release in Europe), then that would reach a wider audience without any extra work (it was already going to be translated).
This was extremely interesting and very imformative. My own personal game collection consists of 80% PAL versions of games since that's what I was brought up with (I'm from Scotland) but as time passed, I learned about the slower speed thing and I started collecting US/JP versions of my favourites to get the best playing experience as possible. Not only that but I'm a sucker for the different box art so I collect the different versions for that too. I also love that some games have noticable gameplay differences between regions too.
(12:45) One reason for changing names can be similar to changing covers, to find a title that overall works better for the global European market. Sometimes titles are changed to be more basic English, and a great example is "Squeak Squad" which is changed to "Mouse Attack"; words that non-English speakers are more familiar with. "Huge Adventure" being "XS" and so on. But "Ripto's Rage!" being "Gateway to Glimmer", no idea.
However, sometimes titles are changed in Europe from North America to be similar to the original Japanese title. In Japan, a game known as Kuri Kuri Mix was renamed to The Adventures of Cookie and Cream in North American, and then titled Kuri Kuri Mix in Europe.
Well it's something that Sony of Europe liked the name Gateway to Glimmer better for some reason
I am assuming you're dutch from the blue labels on the games. I'm belgian myself and really like seeing someone with the same experience in collecting as i do, i can only get my games from flanders and the netherlands so i really appriciate the video talking about how it is.
Fellow Dutch and game collector here. Glad to see an European perspective, in contrast to the American youtubers. Please do continue.
Fantastic video! I'm from the Netherlands as well, so a lot of this was very relatable.
I mostly collect for the 3DS, and while it sucks that we missed out on some cool physical games, we don't have the insane prices that America has. I never paid more than MSRP for a game. Picked up a brand-new copy of Yo-Kai Watch 2: Psychic Specters a few weeks ago for €12, even though it goes for over $100 in the US. I'll gladly take that.
Fun fact Contra/Probotector was released on 8 bit home micros as Gryzor adding to the confusion.
“Game collecting is cheaper in Europe”
*Cries in Australian*
We do have the option to import from Europe + UK as we’re also a PAL territory but the cost of importing is quite high here. Some games even have a unique Australian version with further tweaks (Super Smash Bros 64 being a notable case in the competitive community with balance changes unique to the Australian release).
Australian releases also had different box arts again. Yknow how European SNES & N64 games had those thick borders on the front? Not down here, we have full box arts. It’s interesting there are changes at all considering we have such a small population (26 million)
I’ve been collecting for 11 years and I cannot say it’s been a cheap journey at all. Quite the opposite. My collection of about 300 ‘90s games has run me over $30,000 AUD and counting. Definitely not cheap, and certain games are very hard to come by as a lot of sellers just won’t ship to Australia.
On the flip side if I ever do decide to move to the UK I won’t have to worry about compatibility. My video game collection is one of many reasons I’d never move to North America.
I have a modified Mega Drive & SEGA CD that allowed me to play games in both PAL & NTSC. The difference is unbelievable. Sonic & Streets of Rage play so differently. Something America has as well is loads of independent Game run stores by other collectors and fans. In Europe, especially in the UK we don't really have that. So we're victim to the price structure of country wide company's
Im Belgian and thank you for your video, I didn't know your games was different than ours. It's very interesting
In England we don’t really have garage sales. We have something called a car boot. Basically a bunch of stalls usually in a field. Where people sell stuff from their boot/ back hood of their cars. It’s usually really cheap and if u go to a big one you can find big stalls with boxes on boxes full of games and accessories. I remember GameCube games being very prevalent in the early 2010s. Car boots used to be fairly common then and happen every weekend not like now where it’s every month.
Sigh how life’s changed
In Europe you have a lot of local laws to consider. For example, in Germany the swastica couldn't be used, and that made the need to censor those games like Wolfenstein. I believe it is no longer the case.
yeah it's a very recent change, and I believe even the modern Wolfenstein games still had to remove swastikas
Oh my, when Starlight Zone kicked in I could immediately notice it was the European version.
I learned a lot from this video! Even as someone who has been playing games all my life and has collected a fair amount, I didn’t know about a lot of this. And it was a joy to watch, too!
As a Game Gear collector I love the differences in the European market. So many exclusives and obscurities. Granted the USA, Japan, and Brazilian markets all have their exclusives, but Europe has my favorites.
gotta say, also live in Europe, but didn't notice that slow 50 hz in any genesis game ever played, in fact, the music ran faster
About the different translations between English and American English, it's actually the other way around. They take the more straightforward original translation and punch it up for the US market.
As a Dutch game collector who moved to Japan this videos speaks to my soul haha
I remember hearing the “slow version” of Green hill zone but searching the music on UA-cam it was always faster, and as a kid I was confused. What an interesting thing lol
Interesting video, I know about some of these, but didn’t know how deep the rabbithole went.
Btw whenever you cut to the face cam there is an ear-splitting high pitch ringing.
I think the biggest difference is missing. In the 80s & 90s EU gaming was very much home computer and later PC based.
To me, the SNES cartridges in the USA were the oddballs, not the European ones, which were basically the Super Famicom design. In that sense, the whole NES and SNES releases in the US were weird, where both, the Famicom and the Super Famicom were considered to look too much like a toy. So if you want to talk about the looks of covers, we should compare things to the real deal, which often enough used to be the Japanese releases. For example: Look up the cover art of Super Mario World in Japan. To me, that should be the holy grail of SNES game collecting. It’s the only release, that was actually called Super Mario Bros. 4: Mario World. And the looks of the box art were truly unique.
It's surprising to hear that the situation is so bad that GameStop seems preferable by comparison. We used to have a bunch of small local game stores, some would even have multiple store locations, that were mainly focused on things like older generations going all the way back to the NES, imported games, and even peripherals, at decent prices. GameStop/EBGames would handle the more modern used games, and these other stores specialized in the rest, where you could pick up an NES Advantage controller for $2 and plenty of games to go with it. When GameStop took off, they bought up and replaced basically any independent shop big enough to have local TV ads and you have to look hard to find brick and mortar classic game stores anywhere that isn't some rural village with a 1-2 theater cinema showing year+ old movies. GameStop swept through, getting rid of almost all older stuff. Everything was current gen with previous gen in the disorganized "bargain" bin. Getting a game used would usually only save you a few dollars off of a $60 pricetag, while the person that traded it in only got a sliver of that. And, they started dedicating more and more of their limited shelf space to funco pops and the like. I'll never forgive them for buying up my favorite retro stores and replacing them practically overnight, but to hear that the stores there are everything bad about shopping at GameStop, but even worse, I'm sorry you have to deal with that. Hopefully they at least treat their employees better.
Feel like you a brief bit talking about the European triangles on the spine would of been a nice touch as well.
This was a very nice deep dive into the regional differences in game collecting very fun watch. I wanted to say a couple things so am sorry if this comment gets too long. 1stly I think the audio and video editing were really well done and my only complaint is there seemed to be a high pitched humming sound when you did the video of yourself segments. Idk if it's just on my end but every other part was fine. 2ndly, I first wanna say it was very cool to learn about the tradition of "King's day" I'd never heard of it, but I do wanna let you know flee market/garage sale game hunting in the US is not really a viable option, as many online posts make it out to be (at least not anymore. Whether because of the success of video games or game hunters most yard sales don't have them/have them at not the best prices. And most are got via online or game conventions.), and lastly as much love and nostalgia that I have for GameStop I gotta say they are not seen in the best light in the states (both cause they buy SUPER low and sell pretty high for games that people wanna trade in/sell. As well as a lot of scummy buissness practices. Though that could just be a symptom of being American 😆), and are actually close to/already financially going under. Now this isn't to say you can't like them, I get it, I have tons of fond memories too, I just wanted to give a GS "regular" 's point of view. If you took the time to read this far, thank you, and hope you have a good one.
I''ve been to the US since making this video and Gamestop was noticably worse then last time I went so I kinda regret saying "I love Gamestop" haha
I'm from Portugal, and I can understand your point of view. Collecting video games in Europe is a truly enjoyable experience and not as bad as some people make it out to be.
Thank you for representing our European perspective.
I also started collecting, one of my favorites is my sealed kuon copy, i got some rare games for ps1/2/3, but once i finish playin em, i wanna go for xbox games. Nice vid, youre a true gamer dude
Are you dutch? Do you know Thor? :)
Game collecting is easily the best in Japan, but there too you have to pay a lot for the best/rarest games, so no matter where you go you have to prioritize, or be rich.
Yeah ThorHighHeels! Makes great videos and music
Holy shit DS Castlevania games for cheap? That does just NOT happen in my experience, consider yourself real lucky for that one.
Anyway, this was an interesting watch since the European market is so varied and different from just nation to nation. From what I've read my experience as a Swede would be very different from someone from Great Britain (SEGA had a FAR larger market share over there, as we are Nintendo-land), a fairly different market from Germany (fairly even between Sega and Nintendo but also very peculiar censorship), and an ASTRONOMICALLY different experience from Eastern Europe, or rather everything that used to be on the other side of the Iron Curtain (pirate and clone consoles galore, comrade!). I try to look at what people remember of their own childhood when I can, and I think that most of what I see here feels quite the same in the Netherlands as it does here in Sweden. Physical game sales are still a thing here but most of my shopping these days are not in stores but online stores that have big warehouses where physical games are stored and which are just ordered online. And while we don't have a big market day like King's day we have frequent conventions where games are sold, but these days I am ALL about Tradera- our foremost online market, where I have bought SO many games, comics and many other things to feed the collection monster in my brain.
And to close off- sci-fi robots are infinitely cooler than boring macho movie-soldiers, and I will support the Probotectors over the Contra's until my dying day.
Another thing about 50hz vs 60hz is that Japan is also on 60hz, so Japanese games would be designed for that speed
There used to be a game shop on my high street called Tork or Torq - we used to buy near mint, boxed Snes and Megadrive games for a couple of pounds.. man I wish I still had all my old consoles and games!
Had a Spectrum, an Amiga, a Game Gear, a Megadrive _and_ a SNES, each with dozens of games 😪
Dit is by far de europese beste video die ik over game collecting heb gezien. Eindelijk iemand die over game collecting in Nederland praat. Hele toffe video, ga zo door❤
In the UK we had fairly distinct 'eras' of gaming. First we had the TV/Games 'Pong' in the late seventies, then the first wave of Consoles in the eighties. The ATARI 2600 being the most popular. Then we had the 8bit 'Home Micro' era, with the mighty ZX Spectrum having a clear lead and the C64 coming in second with probably Amstrad third. Then people went to ether 16bit computers, ATARI ST or AMIGA, or to the SEGA Master System, followed by the Megadrive. Of course I'm by no way saying everybody followed this path, but I think it's fair to say a lot of, if not most, people did. It would be interesting to see what happened in the rest of the world, although the US is fairly well covered.
The Project Zero title is easily explained. Apparently, the kanji for the Japanese title translates as "rei" as well as "zero" and what are Japanese ghosts called? Yurei. Wordplay and puns often don't translate well to English so in the European market, it got the title of Project Zero. It's called Fatal Frame here in the States.
Here is a German game collector 🙋♂️ Thanks for the great video 🙏
They also changed the German version of Turok where the enemies are robots instead of humans just like super contra=probotector. Violence in video games was a big issue in the German gaming market back in the days. Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 were the first video games to be confiscated in Germany in 1994 due to violence. Only the possession of items already purchased by customers was permitted. This decision was revised in 2019.
Splatoon's changes seem like they might have been made to be more easily understood by people who don't know English that well, and be more culturally neutral. "Nice" is a word that's well-understood across Europe and frequently borrowed into other languages. "Booyah" is an American expression that I could imagine might be confusing for some
Wow man, Nice subject. great editing and research. Also great accent for a fellow dutchman.
Great video, thank you for the your point of view on game collecting. I'm sure some of us would help with importing games your way. Good be a fun business idea 🤔
Very informative! I’m interested in select Euro titles, like the German RE Director’s Cut.
The 50hz always kept me away from retro, but I have a number of 7th gen titles from Europe as they are somewhat easy to find in Japan. Cheers!
Nintendo has separate localizations into American English and British English, which is why text in Splatoon is different. This is due an offensive word in British version of Mario Party 8 which made Nintendo recall the game, and establish British English localization teams to avoid this from happening again.
As a fellow Dutchie I'm happy to hear someone speak english without a super thick accent :)
Finally, someone doing justice to euro collectors! Couple of things to add:
- The N64 Castlevania box arts are also so much better over here, then in the US. And those are the only one to be even better than the Japanese.
- US and JP N64s are identical on the inside, so by cutting some plastic, they become 100% compatible. Sadly, though JP games fit in PAL consoles, they are completely incompatible on a hardware level, making playing imports wirtually impossible, unless you also import a console.
- There's GameStop in your neighbour, Germany. And CeX in the UK is kind of the same experience as well.
- One thing i hate here (at least in Hungary) that you cannot, for the love of god, find good PS1 games in the wild. Or if you do, it's in german. And online prices are a bit too high.
- Same goes for Pokemon games. Now, from the 3DS era, they are multi-language in every region (even in Japan), but from the DS and before, 80% of Pokemon games i find are german, and 20% is shared between french, spanish and english.
- 2 weeks ago i found Wario World for the Gamecube on a flea market for 3€.
i think the EU resident evil 2 cover is miles better than the US version and not enough people talk about it
When I heard you said a single word, I instantly knew you were Dutch xD
I don't mind collecting/playing games from anywhere in the world as long as I understand the language and my console is able to read said games.
Ape Escape was another game series to use different voice actors for the European vs North American versions.
Also us Europeans played much more games on home computers.
The tech literacy in Europe was much higher due to that too.
Best thing you can do is either hack your old consoles so they output 60hz and rbg (which us Europeans always have in our TVs with the amazing SCART standard, which is far ahead every american standard.
The easiest thing however would be installing RetroArch, it’s absolutely amazing these days.
If you don‘t want software emulation but hardware recreation use an MISTer FPGA.
There’s nothing better than feeding my 29 Trinitron CRT with the lovely RGB signal of my MISTer FPGA.
It is so much better than the original consoles and I absolutely love it.
I very rarely take out my modded consoles anymore, the MISTer replaced them.
With SNAC adapters it is also possible to use the original controllers to have the true feeling.
My experience gaming in Europe throughout the 80s and 90s was that we were very much more Computer focused than game consoles. The Main players in the 80s in the UK were the ZX Spectrum and the C64, then in the early 90s the Amiga was big, followed by PC gaming (Dos and later Windows).
Lots of the large European developers started out developing for home computers, for instance, Rockstar were originally called DMA Design and developed games like Lemmings on the Amiga and RARE were previously called Ultimate Play the Game and released a slew of awesome Spectrum games.
Fantastic video mate. As many have already said, so much of gaming UA-cam is very North American centric, so it’s really cool to see some more local content.
We don't have garage sales in the Netherlands so much, but there are some events outside of Koningsdag you could use! If you live in or are willing to travel to the south, there's a retro gaming market in Tilburg that happens twice a year or so. I've gotten a lot of games from there. There will be people who price them high, but there's often also some great deals. (:
As for Switch games... yeah, those unfortunately rarely drop in price, at least the first party Nintendo ones. Pokemon, Zelda and Mario games are still expensive years later... which sucks!
Mooie, goede en interessante video! Mooi tempo en erg informatief. Ga zo door :)
Nice video with a rare topic! I want to add: sometimes whole systems where diffrent: the pc-engine f.ex. was only relesed in France, England and Spain. On the opposite side, many home computers of the 80ies never stept outside of Europe.
zebra ❤
some strange international inconsistencies briefly mentioned in this video made me think of something, the european snes is virtually the same physically as the japanese "super famicom". it was modified in north america for marketing reasons, but in europe they choose the sfc design with the snes branding, but to be honest, they could have just sold the original NES as the famicom in europe since there was no atari caused "market crash" over there, there was know reason to smuggle it into europe as a media device or toy like there was in the US. personally i feel like it would have sold better there like that.
Over in Australia we got *some* American box arts. Pikmin 2 on the Wii used the American Box Art for Australia. Which is really odd.
"Hey You Pikachu" that was such a shame. N64
Very interesting topic dude, you really made a really good insight of the situation, thanks a lot!
Not just EU - here in Australia we are also PAL format so got the EU versions of most games so those you showed have the same exact covers here too!! I know, as I have them in my collection...lol
I think I actually prefer the European spines, I’m a person who LOVE LOVE LOVES consistency and, while I don’t mind the different logos and fonts on each spine here in North America, it definitely looks better on a shelf when it’s all the same font and style, that’s why I like the Nintendo Switch spines. well, most of them.
And in Latin America, game collecting seems to be pretty similar to Europe despite to have the US and JP versions instead of the European one due to the Japanese Diaspora and some US fanbase (plus the fact that most of the gamers in Latin America are replying in the modchipped consoles due to the late 90's and early 2000's state of gamers that doesn't have the money enough to purchase original games for consoles and/or PC's).
Collecting for NES & SNES is impossibly expensive here in the UK
Master System was far more popular here at the time, hence why we can find Master System copies of Sonic 1 and 2 for £1 each, but SuperMario/Duck Hunt is £20!
1:44 OK, you got it for five Euro but what is it valued at in Europe? What you paid is not the same thing as what it is worth.
Seeing how you are playing these on a LCD - If you're into retro games and from the netherlands, try getting a CRT, you should be able to get them relatively cheap or for free compared to the US. It'll make a huge difference with original hardware.
Really great video dude, amazing work!!!
I had no idea about half this stuff as a Canadian!
Irish here, our weather is AWFUL so gaming is crazy popular. So popular that prices are always terrible and its rare to find any shop that sells much good older stuff. I noticed whenever I go to shops in Spain or France where the weather is good the selection and prices are always miles better. I always put it down to their populations actually have the option to go outside
Fun fact: The German version of CounterStrike was modified so that when you kill an enemy, they would SIT DOWN and shake their head in disbelief. This was to appease censors in Germany; they were notoriously sensitive to any depiction of violence in video games. Another example is Soldier of Fortune, where all human enemies were replaced with robots.
great video, but you need to do something about the high pitched noise in the camera segments
I don't know if you've heard of it but for consoles with cartridges you just need to modify or get a "switchless" console.
You can play your PAL games at 60Hz, the only problem is that it won't work very well if it's a "PAL optimized game".
Some games are barely optimized (only aspect ratio) and others heavily optimized (aspect+speed).
You can find lists about optimized pal versions.
Very nice video and insightful, I can see why you got 100k in 4 days, also it is the same as here in Australia, go PAL
The TWRP jumpscare at 6:43 made me go " IS THAT MOTHERFUCKING DOCTOR SUNG????!!!"
I have probotector on the megadrive and I recently found out it's worth a lot. It's s superb game as well thought it would be more common than it is. I've had it for almost 30 years now
Unless my ears deceive me those two Gex voices were Leslie Phillips and Danny John Jules, famous British actors so I guess the localisers wanted to cash in on some star power in a hope to shift more units.
There was also a trend in the NES days of scrubbing any instance of the word 'Ninja' in games, and even media in general. When I was a kid in the UK I watched the "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles," they weren't ninjas at all!
This is a great video! I have always wondered about these weird localisation changes between EU and America. Australia and New Zealand also had really strange changes even though we are also part of the PAL region such as how we sometimes received PS1 games in regular CD cases like America, since there is only a need for English manuals. One of my favourite examples is how all the Ape Escape games received different localisations between America and Europe even though it's still English. Basically everything like the characters names, monkey names, level names and voices are different.
Not in Europe but game collecting in Australia is also very different to North American game collecting and European collecting, we share a lot with both countries but it’s kinda a lucky dip as to wether you’ll get the North American localisation or the British version for example, same with box art. We also have a pretty strict classification board, but there’s little censorship, it’s just kinda funny to see stuff like how Breath of The Wild is rated M here
Also one things that’s very funky, typically with systems that had entirely different boxes in PAL countries, Australia would receive the PAL region box art, but the thinner North American boxes, for example with the DS we got box art from the UK typically, but unlike rhe UK we got the thinner, black boxes for our games. With the PlayStation 1 we got a weird hybrid box art style where we had the PlayStation banner on the bottom and the logo engraved onto the front of the spine like Europe but then with the standard CD jewel case size like the US, obviously the main reason for these changes is people and Australia (and New Zealand as well) vastly speak solely English over any other language, with the only real exception being Maöri in New Zealand but I’ve never seen a game or manual translated into Maöri, usually the only difference between AU and NZ releases of games is the rating system used on the box and spine. Also to note because of this is most consoles that have pain fonts on the spines in Europe have their full English logos for games on their spines.
Also, a prime example of better PAL box art than NTSC for me is Persona 3, every version of the game (vanilla, FES and Portable) has entirely different and supremely better box art in PAL regions which I’d argue are even better than the original Japan art. For the original and FES in the US, they just have silhouettes of characters on generic backgrounds (male main character, Yukari and Junpei for vanilla, just Aigis for FES) and in Europe the original has artwork of the Dark hour with full coloured in images of the characters. Not as sick as the art for the original in Japan but still way better than the NTSC artwork. For FES the EU/AU artwork is by far the best out of any region, it has all the characters in a super vibrant hand drawn art style glancing at their personas. P3P has two different variants, one of them is the artwork for the original P3 soundtrack and one of them kicks ass and is my favourite box art ever; it’s just this super minimal white background with outlines of coffins and this really detailed art of both the main characters holding skill cards. The US and Japan artwork never did anything for me so I was pretty surprised when I found two copies of P3P on eBay from Europe and here in Aus with way better box art
Some of the European exclusive games look awesome to play
I'm not a colletor myself but i do own a lot of old consoles(NTSC though) however i live in Europe Sweden.
1 game that wasn't very famous at it's release Lufia 2, as it it was released at the very end of the SNES era, and FF6 took the gloryprice. This game is now a very expensive game for NTSC
However it was released in Europe in German and Netherland, and the only known english PAL release was in Australia. Just a single copy of the cartridge is usually 100-200E.
This game also has some strange and notable differences between the PAL and NTSC version(some bugs even)
Gamestop in Germany sells used games for about the same price as a new game. Never buy games in Gamestop, as other shops always sell them for cheaper.
Great video! You should really do more video's about collecting in the PAL region, especially the Netherlands. 😉
So in summary, if a game didn't sell well in the US they just didn't bother for EU, instead of gaging what types of games were selling well in what regions. On the other hand, if a game was weird and risky in the first place, Europe got it instead. We got the leftovers America didn't want.