Topic: Necromancer (A Japanese Text Only Game)

So today the Wii U saw Necromancer released on the Virtual Console. What I find interesting about this is it was never released outside of Japan and thus its Japanese only.

There have been games like that, usually games where the language barrier is not a problem like spacer shooters, etc. however this is a Horror RPG game and the description on the eShop says its Japanese only and only recommended for those that understand the language. That's...certainly something. Konami brings us a game 90% of us can't even play unless we can read Japanese, and very good too being an RPG. XD

Its interesting, yet I just wonder why they thought it was worth bothering with a release at all since most of us won't be able to play it....

yup. this is the same thing i was wondering and about to make a post about it myself...very odd decision.
i was pondering getting this until i started looking into it and seen how text heavy it is. its like another sweet home version. why no english patch is a mystery to me.

Translations are expensive. And the likelihood that there's no surviving source code for this one is pretty high.

That would make a translation even more difficult past the translation itself. Now not only do you need a programmer familiar with whatever programming language that this was done in for a system that hasn't been commercially programmed for in over 20 years, but you also need one to play detective. They would have to dig into the code and reverse engineer it to a degree to implement the changes, since it's a non-trivial matter now to make all the adjustments.

The justification isn't there for an obscure release like this. Nice to see it appear though, but the playability of it seems rather limited over here.