Late to the Party - No More Heroes

It often feels like I'm playing catch-up with video games, because I so rarely buy games, even high profile releases, as soon as they're released. With a few exceptions, I often wait to buy games when I have time to play them or when a blind passion consumes me and won't allow me to not buy the game. This is now happening with No More Heroes.

Although I had been in interested in No More Heroes for many months, I haven't had much inclination to buy it until recently. The primary reason was that living in Japan, with my terrible Japanese language ability, I wanted to wait until I could play it in English. I also reasoned that this is a game I would ultimately want to own forever, so I might as well wait until I return to the U.S. this summer to purchase it.

But then, I saw some Japanese TV commercials and game play footage, and realized that the Japanese release of No More Heroes has a surprising amount of English. All of the cutscenes are voiced in English with Japanese subtitles, and it looks like even the menus in Travis' apartment are in English. So it looks like I won't miss out on much by playing through the Japanese version. I also just see people talking about this game quite often, and there's not too much I can add to that conversation since I haven't played it yet.

But all that will change soon. I plan on buying No More Heroes within the next couple of days. Although I'm not expecting it, I also have a faint hope that the game might be discounted by this point, what with the abysmal Japanese sales figures.

This probably happens about once a month. I start seeing a game more and more on the Internet, even older games. I then start finding as much information as I can about it, and my every waking though becomes consumed with acquiring and playing this game. Most recently, this happened with Brawl, which I didn't intend to purchase at all. But I succumbed to fate, I suppose. If I purchase it soon, I'll report in next week on the adventures of Travis Touchdown, which most of you are already very familiar with.