It’s a strange time in gaming, folks.

It seems so recent that great RPGs, games that set themselves apart from the rest with their strongly emotional narratives, open worlds, descriptive characters, and grand adventures, were a dime a dozen. Now, we are in a generation populated with casual markets and big-budget FPS titles. For those of us left in the lurch by the games we hold dearest, things have gotten even worse. Honestly, two people can count the number of RPGs available on PS3 on all of their fingers, and they would even have a few fingers left uncounted.

So we heard the announcement for Xenoblade. Then we heard of The Last Story, of Pandora’s Tower. Not only have these titles been garnished with triple-A accolades, but they are created by some of the biggest, most talented names and studios in the entirehistory of the RPG genre. As Americans, we swelled with pride and knew we were entitled to our piece of the translation pie.

But not now.

Nintendo, in a strange and angering move, announced that we would receive none of these titles on our shores. Appalled and enraged by this blatant disregard for a core fanbase that helped build the entire gaming industry with our wallets, fans of RPGs, of Xenosaga, of video-games themselves united. In a soon to be historical event in the gaming world, Xenoblade’s pre-orders exploded into the number 1 slot on Amazon. Fans assaulted Nintendo’s social networking pages with demands for those games. But in response to all this, we received just one tersely written message:

Thank you for your enthusiasm. We promised an update, so here it is. We never say “never,” but we can confirm that there are no plans to bring these three games to the Americas at this time. Thanks so much for your passion, and for being such great fans!

A horrid and ungratifying message, Nintendo left us in the lurch once again. The true horror of the fact that Nintendo is withholding these games from us is not their desire to turn Nintendo into a publisher of strictly casual games, not that they alienate all their third-party developers, and not even that they leave the Wii as virtually a stretched wasteland peppered with only a few gems: It’s that for the first time, North Americans will miss out on big budget, studio-developed RPGs. This fact, coupled with the trickling stream of releases in this genre for the past four years, could mean the end of the genre. Or at the very least, the continuation of this beloved form of fun, interaction, and storytelling to be nothing more than a niche market of unreleased gems. Nintendo is sitting on these developers, and it isn’t fair to the makers of the games, nor to the fans.

So, as an outcry, Operation Rainfall was started. Garnishing notoriety all across the internet, even being the subject of many an article or feature on sites even unrelated to gaming, this collective of gamers seeks to bring these titles to the US. The hope of Operation Rainfall is not just to bring Xenoblade, Pandora’s Tower, and The Last Story to our shores, but also to show the importance of this genre. Many are hoping that this even will even convince publishers to release games previously though unsaleable to certain regions. In such a diverse and populated code, region-locking systems and not translating popular games is just another way to further the divide between races and peoples. It’s an unnecessary and tired form of media separatism.

So, to join the cause, to mail letters to Nintendo, to e-mail, call and to share your feelings and desires with gamers just like you, please visit these sources, and try and help the cause in any creative way that you deem acceptable, honest, respectful, and most of all, prideful for what you love and what you want.

http://OpRainfall.com
http://twitter.com/OpRainfall
http://facebook.com/OperationRainfall
http://youtube.com/OperationRainfall
http://oprainfall.freeforums.org/

http://www.petitiononline.com/OpRain01/petition.html