Shin Megami Tensei hits Europe

Many great games don't even get released in Europe. Not only we get most games later than then rest of the world but we also miss some of the biggest gaming treasures out there, even from internationally famous companies. That is sad indeed. Most of the times Europe even gets the worst videgame convertions since it is a lot of trouble for japanese companies to convert NTSC to PAL and translate them to the several european languages. And I'm talking about BIG companies like Square and so. Many countries care a lot if a game's in their original language or not. I'm not that sort: as much as the game's in English I'm fine with that. And it's been like that since I was 7 or so. Not everything's negative though. There are certain companies that care to do things right and make sure we also get good quality games. Konami and Capcom, for instance, seem to care about that. Even Square-Enix came up with a good conversion for Final Fantasy XII this time (or so it seems).

The Picture above shows one game series that is well-known in Japan and even America but was unknown to many people in Europe: Shin Megami Tensei. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first game to be released in PAL territories was Lucifer's Call (Nocturne). So far I've been targeting the SMT saga for PS2. In my collection I currently have Lucifer's Call, Digital Devil Saga Collector's Edition, Digital Devil Saga regular edition, Digital Devil Saga 2 Collector's Edition and bonus Soundtrack.

The Digital Devil Saga Collector's Edition exists in extremely low numbers. It was only available for purchase by pre-order in Ghostlight's uk site (the official distributors I think). If you preordered the game, you would see your name written in the last pages of the manual. Theoricaly, if you count the names you would know how many copies of this version exist but I can't be bothered doing that (maybe some day...). Despite that, the only difference is the shiny cover instead of the regular print and it came with a bonus T-shirt. I totally missed this because I didn't know about the pre-order. I only know two people from this country that preordered this game. When I first heard about it, I knew I had to get it. I managed to purchase one copy from Germany (thanks a lot to the seller who didn't mind posting to my country). I surely don't have my name in the manual, but I couldn't care less. As for the Digital Devil Saga 2 Collector's edition, well one could not make the same mistake twice so when I heard about its release I started to watch Ghostlight's site to see if they would do the preorder thing again. And they did. But the game is available to public in UK shops for a very limited time though . It seems, however, that people who preorder also received a bonus soundtrack disc and a poster. The poster was a bonus added later because Sony dellayed the game release for a few days and Ghostlight added the poster to compensate for the delay after apologizing by e-mail.

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Celebration

I did not really want to post this image right now, was keeping it to another time but who cares anyway... Most people don't even care about these items. But to me they are very important and extremely rare. These are the PS1 and PS2 commemorative editions I own. They are mostly available to Sony employees only so it took me quite a bit of time to get all these. First, a Tekken 2 Limited Edition to celebrate production of 10 millionth European Playstation disc. Then it's the Rapid Racer to celebrate production of the 50 millionth European Playstation disc. The first two are rare indeed. The Gran Turismo edition was released to celebrate the production of 100 million European Playstation discs. The last one, Tekken 3, is a commemorative disc celebrating the SCEE conference in Athens. Don't know what happened there to make them release such an edition.

Finally, two other similar editions for PS2. The Getaway celebrating the production of 100.000.000 discs. There are 1000 of these, each individually numbered. As for the Hadware Online Arena, that is quite a treasure. It was released to celebrate production of 150.000.000 ps2 game discs. However, there are only 100 of these and mine seems to be the number 1 edition of all the 100 available since its number is 150.000.001. There are certainly other editions available, I'll keep searching for these like I've been doing for almost 3 years now...

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New stuff soon

I added some new stuff in my collection. I think I might have finally obtained the 4th commemorative disc for PS1 but to tell the truth I do not know if there are others. Same goes for PS2. Something really important is also coming to my collection but I'll leave that to another time (at least I won't post it until I get my hands on it). This post also means I will stop purchasing games for a while, a few months maybe. I'm nearly broke and I seriously need some time to recover my bank account. I might still pick some important second-hand games I come across. My PS2 game collection is already pretty good, with nearly 150 regular games. From my perspective, once I reach about 210 games I should have cleared my PS2 wishlist and will give priority to older consoles. By the end of the year I expect to clear my Saturn wishlist as well. This is just the beginning of my collection.

While not purchasing new games for a while, I will take this time to add the rest of my collection, from regular games to other special boxes not posted yet. I'll keep updating this slowly. Playstation 3 is almost here but It will be nearly impossible for me to purchase it at this point unless I have the support from close relatives but I'm not the sort that rellies on others just like that.

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