Death to the Region Code

Last Monday, the Smash Bros Dojo site finally stopped updating after almost a year of slowly unveiling my most anticipated game for the Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl. But it had to happen sooner or later. By the time they stopped, Brawl had already been released in both Japan and the USA. I have been waiting almost 3 years now, for this game to be released.

So why am I still waiting for it?

Oh, wait. That's right, Nintendo of Australia have done what I have been fearing ever since they announced this game, they have pushed back the release date about a few months after the USA have had it, in other words, the USA have had it since March. We could take the time difference easier if Nintendo AU had actually told us when Brawl will come out. That's right, Nintendo AU don't even want to tell us when it even shows up here. What a pile of s**t.

And yet this could all be forgiven if we could simply import the game from Japan or the US. But no. Nintendo wants us to suffer as much as we can and so have seen fit to have all Wii consoles Region locked. In other words, my Wii will only play PAL games and PAL games only. That is the final straw. Region code need to be wiped out now if this sort of thing goes on. I can take this whole region locking business if the release dates are in a reasonable enough time frame. But when you break up all the different dates with ridiculous time stretches between them, then all you are doing is pissing off the people who live in the regions that get the bad end of stick even more. Add a sense of ambiguity to the date and then you start to move into utter laziness. It all adds up to one big "F**k you" to all the gamers who are waiting for games like Brawl (and a special mention to gamers who are waiting for Rock Band).

To add to this all, I remember Nintendo announcing the Wii would be region free before contradicting that very statement a day later, back in 2006. A PR person defended it by saying "Very few gamers import games anyway". Bull s**t. There are still gamers who want to play games that won't get released in their region. And if you don't want to cater to the gamers who import, then stop giving them reasons to do it! Hell, even the Virtual Console is region locked (Although I commend Nintendo for that whole Hanbai Festival thing)! And you know, your very own DS handheld is one big contradiction to your emphasis on region locking.

This is all coming from someone who has suffered through this crap before. In 2003 my dad came back from a business trip to the USA and, for a gift to me and my brother, got us both Super Smash Bros Melee and Metroid Prime on the Gamecube (the console I owned). Sadly me and my dad were unaware of region coding at the time and......well......you can guess what happened when I tried to play them. Let's just say that I would never get to own Prime (I did eventually get Melee and I borrowed Prime from my friend. Both were utter masterpieces and that pissed me off even more. I still play Melee even today.). But it was my first taste of the monstrosity that was region locking.

And look at what has happened before, Super Paper Mario was released in April in the US and Nintendo AU wouldn't give us a release date until around July (And announced the date would be in late September. I was also planning to get that game for my birthday in June too. Although in retrospect it was probably not worth it). We only just have Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, a mere 6 months after the US and a year after Japan. Even Zack and Wiki saw a few months added to it's arrival here. At least Super Mario Galaxy had a good release date here. Not to mention we are actually getting Mario Kart Wii here on April 24, before the US! Woo!

But that's enough ranting, in the end, the region code business needs to stop now. Either abolish the code or even out the dates. It's not hard. Just throw all us Australians (and Europeans) a bone. But our final word will go to Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, who has managed to completely sum up the release date issue.

Australia, as most intelligent people know, is populated by the descendants of convicts sentenced to exile for cutting purses and throats on the streets of London Town. As for the people who's purses and throats were cut, their descendants now work in the games industry, and conspire to continue the punishment of Australians by stamping an arbitrary number of months on to every single motherf**king release date.
Zero Punctuation