And I’m still mad that SEGA/NISA refused to translate the remake of the first game. It would have tied in perfectly with the available manga, first OVA, TV-series, theatrical feature, second OVA and the Sumire OVA. They better have some serious reason for giving the established fanbase the boot. If it really was all about reaching a larger target audience, then SEGA’s acquired marketing sickness runs deeper than I wanted to imagine.

Japanese marketing people in general have to stop caring about what Americans want. People like me are interested in Japanese games exactly because they are heavily engineered towards a Japanese audience and hence end up being so different from what local developers here keep churning out. NISA knows this very well, and I’m thankful to them for keeping with the SRPG and 2D-RPG niches for so long. Therefore I sincerely have to believe that they were trying their utmost to deliver us a Sakura Taisen game, and that the choice of title and the additional burdens like a cheap and dubbed Wii-version (the number one console most commonly associated with shovelware titles outside of Japan) were demands made by SEGA.

What is a pity in itself, given that SEGA used to have an extremely arcade-heavy (and therefore niche oriented) background. Even SEGA of America put quality service over mass appeal back when they denied to join the censorship race with Nintendo of America. Probably their degeneration started when they stopped being dependent on their arcade business to finance their home console innovations.