I'm curious: for you Jtor readers, what were the Japanese import games you want? I could only think of two, but they were Catherine and the Toradora PSP game.

There's a Code Geass VN for the PS2/PSP IIRC and I was quite interested in playing it and to some degree, still am.

Other than that? Catherin'e the only thing I absolutely want to see come out.

For games and anime: I always prefer a dub. But sub only isn't going to turn me away.

is it really that hard to have both? i would hate to play a game where the subtitles are alway's on, but if there was an option to turn them off, even if dub stayed in japanese, i would be okay with that

It honestly depends on the voice actors. It really takes me out of it to hear the same actors I've heard a hundred times before in english dubs.

Besides the obvious choices like galges, BL games (I'm serious, I pay full retail for my BL games), visual novels and console games based on anime, these are some on top of my head:

Catherine
Love Plus 3D
Macross Frontier PSP game
Project Diva (although you can quickly get used to the Japanese options, so it's not 100% necessary)
Kichiku Megane (yes a BL I'd kill someone important to get this in English)

And any other game that will likely never make it to this side of the pond, but special emphasis on galge/BL games.

BTW Japanese dubs with English subtitles is a GREAT way to play Japanese imports; one of the reasons I loved two Atlus games (Grimgrimoire and Odin Sphere). They're usually more polished than its English counterpart, so why waste time and resources on a crappy dub.

Usually Subs.
BlazBlue for instance, sounds a lot better with Japanese voice actors.

And Muramasa would have been bad with English voice acting.

hmm lets see, i will choose all hard to license game

super robot wars
jump games (jump super star, jump ultimate star)
namco x capcom (or at least with the same theme)


catherine is guaranteed
adventure/eroge hmm i doubt they'll even look at it

Subs all the way. Annoys the heck out of me when there's no option for Japanese voices/subs, because it'd be super easy to add in since you already have a translation and the Japanese track.

Oh yeah, and I listed Catherine, the Haruhi PS3 game, and Project Diva as my most-wanted.

I would have put the BRS game, but supposedly that was licensed already.

@Yaku

Wasn't Grimgrimoire an NIS game?

Anyways am I the only one who had a bit of trouble navigating that survey. It just seemed like the questions and survey its self could have been better constructed, but maybe my comprehension is just off. The games I listed are,

Tokyo Mono Hara Shi: Karasu no Mori Gakuen Kitan
Zwei!!
xanadu next

I would have listed Cathrine and Valkyria Chronicles 3 but my guess is their already being prepped to come out.

Project Diva
Suzumiya Haruhi PS3
Valkyria Chronicles 3

I really want to play Xenoblade and The Last Story!

I prefer original JP VA. Why? It sounds better. Simple. The majority of people who dub anime or Japanese games are horrible at what they do. It's that damn simple. I'm not a weeaboo, I don't think the voices are superior just because it's Japanese. People who dub these things are shit.

If the english voices are good then I will listen to them (Eureka seveN, Hellsing, Metal Gear Solid). I don't care what language it's spoken in I just want it to sound good.

Forgot to add the games.
The Last Story, Xenoblade and Earth Seeker.

I wish there was an edit button. Since no company has a say with a Nintendo I.P. I will remove TLS/Xenoblade and add Yggdra Unison, Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 Duo

Somebody, please, please, PLEASE, translate 428: Fūsa Sareta Shibuya de. Really.

I also wrote in Retro Game Challenge 2 (even if it is getting a fan translation, maybe) and Love Plus +. Excitement.

I don't care too much about most localization changes to Japanese games, but what REALLY matters to me is how Question 5 is being used.

I prefer subs with LEARNING possibility, that I can learn japan :)) I want to learn japaaan, awsome language

''Your answers will be DIRECTLY influencing a significant decision on an upcoming title.''

I hope it's Catherine! ^o^

Even if it's not (worth a shot, right?) I really hope that this does make a difference. If only the message could get out to all the other Japanese publishers.

Subs, ftw. Seriously. I truly wish more/all games left the option to have it simply subbed if you wanted it to be.

Just to give an actual answer and not sit on the fence, I'd say subs. Really, though, it depends on if the dub is good, or if the Japanese cast give a performance that is on par or worse than the English dub.

Subs of course. Games I want:
Galgun
Index PSP
Toradora PSP
Project Diva Games
I would love some dating sims, just wish a company would give them a shot on console/portables, even if download only.

Dubs (with the option to turn on the original Japanese) because I'm not a weeaboo and I enjoy good English voice acting.

Love Plus
AKB 1/48 Fall In Love With An Idol
Galgun
Project Diva
Dengeki Gakuen RPG: Cross Of Venus Special

If I can only have one, I'd go with a dub... I'd really prefer to have both options available.

Dubs. Some of my favorite dubs are from games. Disgaea 3 being one of the more recent favorites. If done right dubs can be just as good or better then the Japanese(Final Fantasy XII was a example of this as certain things were changed but they worked in their own way and stood apart from the original Japanese).

It's always nice to have the option for the original voice track but if I had to have only one I would go with dub.

For me, it depends on the game. If the game takes place in Japan, then I want them to speak Japanese, but if the setting is on another planet, for example, I'm ok with English dubs.

I really love the Yakuza games, but I didn't care much for the first one because of the (bad) English dub. It just didn't make sense for everyone in the game to speak English when they're in Japan, so it didn't really pull me into the story like 2 or 3 did. I can't wait to play Yakuza 4 now. I'm hoping Of The End gets released eventually in the US as well. I'd love Kenzan, but I doubt it will happen.

@ShortyBoo.
Wow, you literally took the words right out of my mouth. When it came to Yakuza. I couldn't help but laugh at the silly, "yet supposed to be taken seriously" dub.

Subs are always a 'go'. In my book. It just seems to weird to watch anime and play certain games in dubs. -shrugs- That's just me
Anyway, I can't wait to play Yakuza 4, and I am not too sure if "Black Panther" the Yakuza spin-off for the PSP is coming to the US. I surely hope so. D:

Given the choice, I would prefer the original audio. It's not that I prefer subs over dubs, but there's an inherent risk with dubs and if it strikes out, people will hate the game for no better reason than that the addition to it wasn't up to their standard. Keeping the original audio eliminates that risk but introduces another. In an ideal world, all games would keep all tracks. Then there's the unscrupulous souls who deal in "undubs" of games they didn't like the dubs for. I don't know how many gamers want subs in relation to how many anime fans aggressively prefer subs, but all of the above can be avoided by keeping the original audio. That said, I always say to give all dubs a chance. Not all Japanese tracks are better, and I long for the day when everyone realizes that.

Also, I picked the first three Sakura Wars games because I couldn't think of anything better at the time. Fat lot of help it did me to invest in the fifth game's limited edition without any knowledge of the series.

I put Gal Gun, SD G Gundam World (too long to remember the full title), and Gungnir.

In an ideal world, there would be both a dub and a Japanese/subbed option. If I had to pick one, though, I'd have to go with dub - not only does it make the game more accessible to the world at large, but the dubs themselves these days are either just as good as the Japanese audio or so bad it crosses over into funny (making it even more entertaining). But I'm talking mainly about fighting games here, for which I'm not too fond of Japanese voices - every time I hear a loli character make squeaky "AHN AHN" sounds when hit makes me wish there was a dub.

As for games I'd love to see hit the US, I'd love to see more of the Taiko no Tatsujin series, Melty Blood: Actress Again, and some more of the Cho-Aniki games.

To add to my other comment(wish there was a edit button) and to touch on something a few are saying here.

I agree that some games should be subbed just by their nature but I don't agree that any game that takes place in Japan with Japanese characters should by default be subbed.

The big example used was Yakuza and that is a game I agree 100% works better with subs. The reason being is that the characters clearly look Japanese and the game itself is very Japanese. It's about the Yakuza(Japanese Mafia) and they leave in all the quirks from japan. Like the big arcades with UFO games and Hostess clubs and what not. Everything about the game feels Japanese. So the subs fit and it just works.

On the other hand you have games like Persona 3-4. Yes the games take place in Japan and the characters are all presumably Japanese but they don't look overtly Japanese(anime style characters in general don't tend to look like what nationality they are intended to be unless they are intended as parody or Satire) and there is very little about the games aside from the setting that is Japanese. The whole story and all the themes throughout both games are universal not just Japanese. Games like this would be better off with a dub(or choice between the two at the very least). Not to mention there being game play reasons to want a dub for a game like that as there was always a bunch of battle chatter going on and having to read that instead of hearing it would be flat out annoying. I personally loved the dubs for Persona 3 and 4 and I know I'm not the only one who did. Many reviews praised the games for their dubs.

The point is that it does really depend on the game but it's not as simple as some make it out to be(IE if in Japan subs if not dubs).

Personally if the game in question here is indeed Cathrine(Which i'm pretty sure it is because of the convenient timing of the ATLUS tease and this survey) I would really love to see a dub. Pretty much all of ATLUS games that have been released in the US had great dubs and I don't see why Cathrine would be any different. Plus the game looks incredible I would rather spend my time looking at it then reading the bottom of the screen :P

I prefer subs definitely. Most people that have come to like english dubs in generally fall into 2 categories. In the first are people that either don't like to read, can't follow what's going while reading, are simply lazy, or some combination of the 3. The second group I compare to bums getting to eat a Mcdonalds. It's barely edible, but to them is great. They have listened to bad dubs for so long that even the sub sub par ones have become good to them. A really good recent example would be Persona 4. If anyone thought that the english voice actor for Chie did a decent job compared to Horie Yui, they need to see a doctor right away because they have some sort of horrible disease in their ears.

Imports wanted:
Catherine
Shining Hearts
Last Story
Ryu ga Gotoku: Kenzan
Rune Factory Oceans

I never really cared what language it was in as a long as its entertaining, DBZ was introduce in dub in English by a Canadian Media dubing company known as Ocean Group only lasted 1 season 13 episodes then International Channal re-airing it in Japanese thanks to that Channal it made DBZ more popular and it sure manage to get another season or 2 in English thanks to the Japanese version.

I commented on Destructoid already; basically my points were A) it's actually good to have some time between the Japanese and NA releases, because often we get more content or a more bug-free game than the initial release due to that, and B) In a video game, I'm less nitpicky than in anime, and I'll take the dub over subs if it's done really well, but a lot of games aren't, and I almost never dislike a Japanese language track with subs (my Gurren Lagann DVDs are the subs-only set, actually).

The three games I picked were: Xenoblade, The Last Story, and El-Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. I'd list Tales of Xilia, but whether we get that one is probably in our hands now, with how well Tales of Graces F sells.

I will buy a ps3 for tales of graces F I think.

Worst case scenerio I will buy a copy of tales of graces f for my sister who lives far away, but she has a ps3. :P

Anyhow - yes I prefer japanese dubs, as in japanese language with english subtitles.

I prefer the game with English subs.

Subs all the way. I just cannot tolerate american over-accentized english. Seriously, not even in Disney series they talk like this: "Ouuuu! Hellouuu yere!! Hauu did yiuu duu last naich, Yoshhhizawaaa?"

*shudders*

Video-game voice-acting tends to be done on the cheap. Redubbed voice acting for translations is done doubly on the cheap. Consequently, video-game dubs tend to be terribad, and I'd prefer a subtitled version.

Though the whole trend of voice-acting for everything is just a terrible move in general. Good partial voice-acting is way better than bad full voice-acting. Compare Fallout 1 and 2 to Fallout 3, for example.

That's a somewhat complicated question. I genuinely prefer when a game has subtitles (even natively english ones) or (even better) captions (ie, sound effects and other things being displayed as well). I'm somewhat hard of hearing, and with all the different sounds going on simultaneously in some games, it can be easy for me to miss or not understand something that's only in the audio. So I always check for this option and turn it on before starting a game. As English games go, Valve seems to do the best job with these.

But the real point of the question was whether I prefer the original Japanese voice acting or a new English dub, and that really depends on the game. Obviously, the best thing is to have both options, but we're often stuck with one or the other. It would really depend on the game, particularly what genre it is, how intense the action is, and who they're thinking about using for the actors.

If the game is extremely intense and I need to pay attention to even the slightest detail of on-screen action (bullet hell), then English audio is probably best. If it's something with less intense action, like an RPG (lol, menus) then reading subtitles won't screw you over and get you killed.

And again, a lot of the time, just like anime, it's going to depend on the dub cast. Rockman/Megaman 8 had a fantastic cast in Japan, and in America we got some of the worst voice acting this side of Speed Racer.

Argh, the poll is closed. Oh well, this question is a brain-wracker for me. For anime, it's subs all the way, but for games, where I need to pick up on cues really quickly, I could go either way.

Most of the games I'm aware of already come out over here- I guess I'd go with Idolmaster and maybe some VN games like OreImo (SUBBED not dubbed), but those are super nichey. Then again, we get Ar Tonelico and Hyperdimension Neptunia, and those are nichey too.

@Reibooi

I agree with you about Yakuza. Those games are so much better subbed. As you say, it's so Japanese and draws heavily on that culture that any English voices would be weird. With subs it feels authentic and adds to it's awesomeness. (ie. Over the top screaming ^o^)

Subbed all the way. If Akira taught me anything, it's how to read and gawk at the visuals simultaneously.

Plus, the lip-sync with English dubs is way off. Did you see the early FFXIII trailers with the J-dub? They nailed the facial animation to match it. English, er... not so much.

Watching these US dubs is like eating soup with a fork. Nuff said.

Catherine
Tales of Graces
Another Century's Episode R

I've been gaming for over 20 years now and I've learn to become pretty cautious of anything with a dub since I've experienced the worst of it. These days however, dubs have gotten a lot better and in some cases such as Final Fantasy 13, they are actually really good. I guess it depends on the title and the quality of the voice.

I will never buy a game that has been dubbed. I'm lucky enough to know Japanese and buy the original versions but I feel bad for those who don't and have to listen to that horrible crap.

Alright, to everyone that's saying that bubs are always bad, you are wrong. You just are. I do not care if you like subs more than dubs or vice versa, I'm fine with people having a preference. It's when people say that one sucks compared to the other that I get ticked off. This isn't the 80s. 90% of dubs these days are AT LEAST on par with the Japanese version.

@Strey

So lemme see if I understand you right. Everyone who doesn't agree with you and watch and play ONLY subs is either lazy or stupid...... Wow that isn't elitest at all.... Oh wait it is. You know it's people like you that push others away from enjoying something.

Regardless of what YOU think people do enjoy dubs every now and then and guess what! What there also quite a few incredible dubs. Yes there are plenty of bad ones as well but that is just as true for the Japanese and the fact is that unless you speak fluent Japanese you can't say the subs are better or not as you can't really tell how good the acting is(Which a good amount of sub lovers don't speak Japanese and could be praising a terrible performance)

You like subs? Great that's awesome I do to. But I also like dubs and just because I think differently then you doesn't mean I'm stupid or lazy it's means I'm a individual and have personal tastes.

Subs all the way. Japanese voice acting is just too good, even at lower budgets.

Subs. For the love of god, subs.