I’m not entirely sure I believe this, but Atlus has announced – rather tersely – that its just-released-in-Japan erotic horror title Catherine will not be wading across any oceans. Specifically, they say this:
Catherine is a Japan-only game and there are no plans for a NA release at this time. Sorry about that!
No plans for a NA release presumably means no plans for a European release either. Still, given the hype this game has had sizzling around it for nearly a year, not localizing it seems like a bad business decision. Catherine debuted at #1 in Japan and sold over 200,000 units in its first week. While an extremely bizarre psychosexual drama filled with nudity and gory eroticism and men with sheep heads probably won’t burn up the sales charts over here the way it will in Japan, Atlus has a built in fanbase and might do okay.
What concerns me is that if they do a worldwide release, they’ll try to tone it down. The whole point of Catherine is that it pushes some boundaries; if they take that out for a global release they’ll have kinda ruined the point. So while I think the above statement is just a smokescreen, I’m not sure if the Catherine we finally wind up getting is the Catherine that was promised.
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The most recent rumour is that this email to Atlus faithful – http://www.siliconera.com/2011/02/25/an-e-mail-from-atlus-usa/ – was a tease regarding Catherine getting a Euro/NA release.
Gamersyde has video of the first 15 minutes of the game: http://gamersyde.com/game_2219_en.html
Catherine looks (looked?) like something worthwhile. It’ll be unfortunate if it doesn’t show up on western shores.
Might be a bit of a shitstorm over at SVGL about this, too! That’s where I first heard about it.
Well, apparently, the tears were premature. The game will apparently get a NA release:
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/115/1152738p1.html
However, what will be left of it once the rating board has had its way with it is another issue…
Come on, Atlus! I SO want to play a weird, sexually frustrated dude with rams horns on my head. It’s been a life long dream. DO NOT CRUSH MY TENDER, TENDER DREAMS.
I’d like to hear Jarrod’s thoughts on the possible travesty of NA/EU receiving a watered down version of Catherine.
Do you see much of that in Upside Down Land?
http://www.catherinethegame.com/kat.html
The trailer appears to be borked. 🙁
I haven’t heard too much about it down here, rating-wise yet. I’ll have a scour over at Kotaku and see if it’s being mentioned.
I was a little disappointed when I read somewhere that the gameplay is basically a platformer, where you jump from cube to cube, climbing a big wall. That doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Such a shame, because the story and cut scenes and everything else about the game looks awesome and intriguing. But I don’t want the tedium of jumping on boxes, just to unleash awesomeness.
I’ve been worried about that too, Jarrod. It doesn’t look like this will be a Persona-style RPG.
I don’t mind the occasional platformer, but it seems pretty peculiar for a horror game. I think we might have to wait for English-language reviews.
How often do games get edited in order to have release Down Under? More and more I hear of devpubs just saying they won’t bother to release there, which seems a terrible waste to me. But certain games, if edited, would lose the… flavor.
Hrmmm… I remember hearing about a couple that were edited. Mostly publishers appeal the decision, and more often than not the old decision is over-ruled, and the game is allowed in on a MA15+ rating (the highest we have here at the moment).
I guess it’d be a financial decision whether companies wanted to edit.
(Predicted Income) – (Editing Costs) > (Apathy)?
I just made that up.
Anyway, a couple of miniscule tweaks here and there shouldn’t break any game. If levels of blood are reduces by 25%, no consumer is going to care, nor if gore splatter is reduced to one eye-ball instead of two. But take something like the new Mortal Kombat (which is thus far refused classification), where perhaps every single fatality, as well as other actual strikes etc would need to be edited? Well, you might need to consider re-making the whole game. And if you do that, then the flavour would definitely be lost.
With regards to Catherine, I don’t know enough about it to gauge what would need to be edited… I don’t know how graphic the sex scenes are – provided they are vanilla, they’ll probably be ok. I don’t know how over the top the violence is, but again, if the levels are similar to average movies, then it’ll probably be ok.
If they start mixing the violence and sex together, then it could be in trouble. If Catherine does that, then it’ll probably be in a cut-scene rather than in gameplay. So then it becomes a question of dropping the scene, or re-doing it. And again, that probably boils down to projected income levels versus paying staff and marketing etc.
To be honest, I think pretty much anything in a cutscene can be done well to a MA15+ rating, especially via allusion. You don’t need to see a hammer shatter a head in order to know that it has happened (or is happening) – there are far more artistic and cooler ways to do that for the creatives involved.
You need both the eyeballs, dude. Both the eyeballs need to come out.
Well, both eyeballs would be nice – but your average joe might not realise that they would have otherwise received both eyeballs on a silver platter.
So they don’t miss it because they didn’t know. Ignorance being bliss, and all that.
Every video I watch of this game maintains my impression that it is bizarre. Hmmmm, I so want it!! 🙂 But not the watered down version of course. Yuck, give it to me as the developers intended it, not the censors.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/03/mortal-kombat-appeal-is-unsuccessful/
Damnit! Another game lost to the wayward morals of the minority fearmongers.
Jarrod, seriously, you gotta get things under control down there. You’re missing the joy of multiple eyeball-popping and so much more!
You have kangaroos for crying out loud. Seems like even the minority fearmongers in a world that has kangaroos would also have a sense of humor!
All we have is… what do we have? Australia has all the cool animals. We have, like… we have dogs. ; )
Sorry about your insane government, God of Winter Time.
Censorship is entirely unacceptable in my books. Individual responsibility is key.
Ah well.
Time to mount some machine guns to aforementioned kangaroos and use them as mounts for my uprising!
Hopefully we’ll get the game at some stage, in some capacity. I don’t know if I’d pay full retail for it, but after 6 months when it drops to around half price, I’d pick it up then.
We can put our fears to rest: Atlus USA reports that Catherine will see release on our fair shores; the date is July 26. It will be released for both Xbox 360 and PS3.
There’s even a “Love is Over” deluxe edition: http://www.catherinethegame.com/purchase.html
You know you want it. 😀