Will We Ever See Pandora’s Tower in the West?

Here at Zelda Informer, we’ve been getting really excited by Pandora’s Tower: Until I Return to Your Side. Ever since we first saw a glimpse of this, we’ve been in love with this Japan-only title. Pandora’s Tower is an action role-playing game developed by Japanese company Ganbarion. From what I’ve seen, I’m not sure how exactly to describe it other that somewhat of a Zelda meets RPG in gameplay, with an original story. The game is both an RPG, and a Zelda-like dungeon crawler.

Pandora’s Tower was released exclusively for Wii in Japan on May 26th this year, receiving reviews in the 70 to 90% range. In its release week it sold 21,445 copies – making it the third best selling game that week. So, while it may not be a massive release, it looks awesome, and we’re really wondering whether we will ever see this game get a localization and release in the west.

With the internet and modern technology, Japanese-only games are much more well known around the world these days. It seems almost like punishment for us to get to see some of these titles, but never experience them. Thankfully, in recent times we’ve been seeing a lot less games remain exclusive to Japan, with games making it out here eventually. Dragon Quest, for instance, makes it out of Japan around a year delayed. Xenoblade Chronicles is coming to the west later this year (including North America, Europe and Australia), and The Last Story is making it’s way to Europe at the least.

What that means is that similar action-RPG games that are initially exclusive to Japan, do tend to get localized for elsewhere eventually – even if its over a year later. So as I sit here hoping that we get to see Pandora’s Tower, localization for the west may already be planned or even have begun. With all of the attention it has gotten here in the west, it would definitely be worth releasing

Let’s hope that it makes it out to Europe, North America, and Australia. While the first two are likely, localization for the “high-risk” smaller gaming market in Australia isn’t as likely. On the plus side, the European PAL version could just be imported anyway. So here’s to hoping that at E3 we hear of Pandora’s Tower for the west. I’m confident that we’ll be lucky enough to eventually get this title.

What about you? Do you want to see Pandora’s Tower localized for outside of Japan?