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    Trope Namer 
  • Tingle is a short, chubby Manchild from The Legend of Zelda series. He's obsessed with hunting for fairies and rupees, dances a lot, flies around using balloons tied to his butt, is incredibly eccentric, and his face is... odd, to say the least (it is believed to be based on Koji Kondo). In Japan, people think of him as a hilarious character and a nice Fandom Nod to Otakus. In the North America, his design and mannerisms make people think he's an annoying Memetic Molester due to Values Dissonance.
    • He's popular enough in Japan and parts of Europe to get his own games, but loathed enough in the Americas for those games to never reach their shores and to have only four other roles in main games following his first appearance in Majora's Mask: Oracle of Ages, The Wind Waker, Four Swords Adventures, and The Minish Cap... which still gives him way more appearances than nearly anyone not named Link, Zelda, Ganon, or Impa.
    • Tingle's role in the main series has been largely reduced; he doesn't appear in Twilight Princess (Purlo's appearance was based on him, but they have vastly different personalities, and there are portraits of him in Snowpeak Ruins; they're blurry, but just try and say they're not him) and gets only non-speaking cameos in Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and Skyward Sword (on a "Wanted!" Poster, a statue/portrait, and a doll respectively).
    • He is at his weirdest in The Wind Waker, wherein he refers to Link, a nine/twelve-year-old child, as "Mr. Fairy", and forces his brothers—and one random guy who's in debt slavery to him—to dress exactly like him and perform slave labor. He also forces the player to pay him ridiculous sums of money in exchange for information on where to find eight MacGuffins. With all of his annoying traits, it's no wonder that fans joke about him being a sex offender when they're breaking him out of prison as part of the plot of the game (his canon crime was just petty theft). In addition, people have taken the skulls in the room where he hid the Pictograph (through the small tunnel at the back of his prison cell) to mean that he's not only a sex offender, but also a kidnapper and serial killer.
    • To give another idea of just how reviled he is by the US Zelda fanbase, NOA actually considered localizing Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, one of Tingle's Spin-Off games, and held an online poll asking fans if they wanted it imported or not. The votes to cancel its release won by a landslide, and the import was cancelled. Yes, Americans hate him that much that, in a day and age where any game failing to leave its home country is a cause for major controversy, they specifically asked Nintendo not to bring a game with him in it over.
    • The Too Much Tingle Pack is such an appropriately named piece of software one wonders if it was intentional: effectively being just a novelty with features like a calculator, fortune teller, and timer, it's not available in the west because any amount of Tingle is simply too much for an American audience.
    • In Four Swords Adventures, where whenever there are force gems around, if you fail to collect them in time, he'll swoop in and steal them all.
    • Joking aside, the main reason why Tingle is hated so much is that he is a Manchild, a character archetype that Western audiences have little sympathy for. In Japan, he's seen as a symbol of whimsy. To most Western audiences, however, his behavior and appearance just comes off as annoying at best and creepy at worst (especially the speedo). Interestingly, most find him tolerable in Majora's Mask because his maps were reasonably priced, it was completely optional to talk to him, and he managed to fit in the general tone of that game. In The Wind Waker, though, he gains a lot more spotlight, is considered far more obnoxious (he was never this rupee-grubbing before now) and you cannot complete the game without him. Even Word of God is aware of this as shown in this article. He hopes to make Tingle popular one day. One of the bigger changes for the HD edition of the game was that they got rid of five Triforce charts, meaning that you only need to visit Tingle three times in the game to get them translated, as opposed to eight times. To a lesser extent, the Tingle Tuner was replaced with the Tingle Bottle, which also makes him less prominent than in the GameCube version.
    • Amusingly, Ricky the kangaroo from the Oracle games is shown to not be too fond of him upon encountering him in Oracle of Ages.
    • A set of Tingle equipment was added as DLC to Breath of the Wild. It has horrible defense, and wearing the entire set increases walking speed at night (which isn't a set bonus exclusive to this equipment) and also causes NPCs to react in horror if Link gets too close to them.
    • And then he was made a playable fighter via DLC in Hyrule Warriors, beating out Skull Kid and any number of other potential Majora's Mask characters. American fans were not amused. True to form, this was entirely because he was the top-voted character that the Japanese audience wanted to see added in. Ironically, this version of Tingle actually did get a little respect, as he's a Fighting Clown whose schtick includes a lot of Amusing Injuries as side-effects of his attacks. His features have been redesigned to be far less hideously gonky, and his generally negative reception in the West is given playful lampshading, making him the least annoying or creepy Tingle yet. It helps that Legends finally added Skull Kid to the playable roster.

    Final Fantasy 
  • Final Fantasy V: Krile is quite liked in Japan, where cute princesses with pure hearts and amazing potential are an archetype enjoyed by everyone (including young men), but in the West, where her archetype is considered grating and exclusively for preteen girls, she's resented for upstaging Lenna and Faris and being a Replacement Scrappy for the (at least in the West's eyes) much more likeable Galuf.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
  • Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Rinoa is a very popular character and a pop culture icon in Japan. In the West, she's something of a Base-Breaking Character. This is at least partly due to the translation, as most of her dialog (that was intended to be cute and childlike, highlighting her innocence compared to the military-trained SeeDs), got replaced with lines that just made her sound like an immature Spoiled Brat. The fact that she has to be rescued quite often only adds fuel to the hate.
    • Squall, while less hated than Rinoa, also suffers from this. The English version gave him "Whatever" as a catchphrase, with all its connotations of an insufferable '90s teen, and phrased his dialogue to emphasise his most adolescent and Jerkass qualities. In the Japanese version his speaking pattern comes across as more socially awkward than mean, and his catchphrase is "...warukatta" ("...my bad").
  • Final Fantasy XII's Vaan is widely hated in the West, and Square Enix's Executive Meddling to make him the protagonist is criticized since Vaan gets sidelined in main story and is the typical pretty boy character avatar for the player. In Japan, he has enough of a fanbase to get him big roles in two spin-offs and added into Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy. He was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in Final Fantasy Tactics A2, with him much more mature and edgier.
  • Final Fantasy XIII itself, as well as Lightning, are this in the West. A Japanese publication wanted to give the game a 120 out of 100, while Western reviewers tended to blast the game for its linearity, among other issues. The company even came out and said that the game was reviewed poorly in the West because of different cultural expectations of RPGs. Lightning herself is a symbol of the game, and also some of its flaws, such as her unintentional Supporting Protagonist status. What makes this worse is how sequels, references to Lightning, and cameos keep popping up, making it impossible for those who disliked the game to avoid it.
  • Minfilia in Final Fantasy XIV is widely hated by Western players. Her role is essentially Mission Control and she herself is a noncombatant, while the other Scions are badass field agents, so she ends up being resented for giving orders to the Player Character and not being able to defend herself when the base gets invaded. Her supposed sacrifice for Hydaelyn in 3.2 had her haters celebrating with much rejoice no matter how much the story tried to play up her sacrifice as a sad moment that affected all of the Scions. In Japan, she is popular enough that she was considered for the representative of Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), and the decision to go with Y'shtola instead was primarily based on her consistent popularity between Japan and the West (and between the 1.0 and Realm Reborn playerbases).
  • Final Fantasy XV:
    • Ignis in Japanese was gentle and familiar with Noct, although he did use more sophisticated language than the others. The English localisation went a British Stuffiness route, resulting in him having a much colder and more closed-off feel to his character that made many players wonder if he even liked the Prince. Shipping Ignis with Noctis is a lot more popular in Japan than in the West as a result. In addition, his English accent is exaggerated to What the Hell Is That Accent? levels, which many English players found difficult to listen to. It should be noted that both Ignis himself, and shipping Ignis with Noctis, became a lot more popular when Episode Ignis was released, followed not long after by additional Ignis material in Royal Edition, in which Ignis's love of the Prince is made completely explicit and in which his voice actor's performance tones down the accent to a realistic RP, as well as playing him in a more developed way.
    • There's no shortage of players who find the Japanese-voiced Prompto very cute and appealing, and the American-voiced Prompto irritating. His American voice performance emphasises Prompto's Stepford Smiler enthusiasm in a way that some find charming and others find reminiscent of a hollering bro; his Japanese voice performance is more mellow and brooding.
  • Many characters/character portrayals in the first Dissidia Final Fantasy are criticised in the West, but were well-received in Japan. This is because the entire cast suffered from poor English dubs due to the severe directing and editing issues the dub had; even many reliable veteran voice actors were stuck. Cloud, in particular, suffers, communicating entirely in flat-affected paused interruptions that made him come across as anhedonic and without will as a result of what he was going through; his Japanese voice actor, faced with better conditions in the recording studio, produced a more ironic, emotive performance that gave more of an impression that Cloud was trying to fight off his depression with snark, but was powerless to do so, a portrayal that was more appealing.

    Street Fighter 
  • Street Fighter:
    • Mexicans really hate T. Hawk, perhaps because he's supposed to be Mexican but obviously isn't. El Fuerte has gathered better reception from them. Even then, he's received some pushback from being a Lethal Chef Joke Character when so many other characters got (at least by Street Fighter standards) dramatic storylines.
    • The Jamaican kickboxer Dee Jay, who was added to the Street Fighter II roster under the suggestion of American playtester James Goddard, is beloved by the North American fanbase and in his home country. In Japan, he rarely appears, and when he does, he doesn't do much of anything.
      • Humorously enough, Dee Jay and T. Hawk both happen to be the only new characters from Super Street Fighter II left out from the console versions of Street Fighter IV (which included Cammy and Fei Long); however, both ended up returning in Super Street Fighter IV. Surprisingly, Dee Jay is also one of the Super Street Fighter II newcomers returning as part of the base roster of Street Fighter 6 along with Cammy, while T. Hawk gets a successor in form of Lily (while Fei Long is not seen anywhere).
    • Ingrid, whose only appearance so far was in Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX, a non-canon, portable Updated Re-release of the PlayStation classic. She's a popularity chart-topper in Japan, but everywhere else, she's one of the most universally reviled characters in the series. She's a Physical Goddess who looks like a schoolgirl, would canonically be the most powerful character (if she were canon), fixed Ryu's Superpowered Evil Side just by beating him in battle, and claims that M. Bison copied her Psycho Power. Oh, and she throws sparkles everywhere.

    Tales Of Series 
  • Tales of Destiny:
    • Bruiser Khang is very popular among Japanese fans, especially after his personality got expanded in the game's remake, where he becomes something of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. But since many of these Tales remakes and spin-offs never leave Japan, North American audiences, meanwhile, get stuck with the Jerkass Khang seen in the PlayStation version, and don't understand why he's appeared in so many spin-offs.
    • Reala, from the sequel, does not have many western fans. As well as her ridiculously girly appearance (which is so unrealistically thin that it seems inhuman), there's the fact that her story is unpopular with many Western players: She's a one-woman Spotlight-Stealing Squad who also happens to be the daughter of a goddess, on a mission to find a "hero", who is doomed to be erased from time if she kills her mother, but comes Back from the Dead anyway just so she can be with Kyle. Japan is far more tolerant of her or simply liked her for those traits in the first place.
  • Tales of Legendia: Shirley Fennes is a Base-Breaking Character in Japan, but in the West she's seen as an annoying Yandere Damsel Scrappy, and her Love Martyr tendencies are viewed as an extreme overreaction to Senel rejecting her Anguished Declaration of Love. The game also puts a lot of the blame for Shirley's Face–Heel Turn squarely on Senel's shoulders. While Senel isn't entirely blameless - it was shown that had Senel just opened his mouth about his Dark Secret, things might have gone a lot smoother - Western fans viewed it as the game trying to absolve Shirley of any wrongdoing. Gameplay-wise, she only has one spell that is unique just to her, and it isn't acquired until very late in the game, meaning she doesn't stand out much in combat, either. A few fan portrayals of Shirley play up her bad qualities in order to ship Senel with Chloe instead.
  • Tales of the Abyss: While Anise showed up in Japanese character popularity polls, she's often disliked in the Western fandom for being a huge hypocrite for hating Luke for stupid actions while she is actively doing much of the same behaviour, betraying the party and not trusting them enough to tell them her parents are being held hostage by the villains. She is also seen as being to blame for Arietta's death because she refuses to give Arietta a proper explanation as to why she was replaced as Ion's guard, which among other things makes Arietta attack the party. Unlike Luke, who goes through a Trauma Conga Line, Anise is never so much as reprimanded for her actions, which doesn't help.
  • Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World: In the fifth Tales of Character Popularity Poll in Japan, Emil Castagnier came in 12th out of every character in every Tales game. The majority of overseas fans hate him for being whiny, cowardly, and annoying. It certainly doesn't help that up until a certain point, in every fight he has to rely on his Superpowered Evil Side to fight for him, or that he takes over for Lloyd, who was, by contrast, brave and optimistic and immensely popular. That said, there are some American fans who want to give Emil a hug.
  • Tales of Graces: Cheria is very popular in Japan, but a lot of American fans dislike her for her Damsel in Distress behaviour (even though she only gets officially kidnapped once) and the perception that her only important characteristic is her awkwardly executed crush on Asbel, who she constantly mistreats to the point where even Asbel calls her out in it. Still, as with Emil, she has a few passionate defenders.
  • Tales of Xillia: Many Western fans see Milla as having had way too much undeserved shilling, or simply dislike her because of poor quality voice acting. Jude often gets placed in the same position in the West vs the East because he is one of the worst shills for Milla, as well as being a medical genius in university at the age of 15, widely believed to be highly unrealistic.
  • Tales of Zestiria: Alisha Diphda is a very loved character in Japan but she is more of a Base-Breaking Character in the west as the number of Western fans that feel either indifferent or outright hate her for causing a Hype Backlash in Japan or having a bad DLC story is about equal to the people that love her. Any hate for her among western fans increased as the anime made her a more prominent character but at the same time contributed nothing to the story and took away vital development for everyone else, especially the main character Sorey along with throwing off the pacing of the anime.

    Super Smash Bros. 
  • Dark Pit from Kid Icarus: Uprising, when he was revealed for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, was widely loathed by the western fanbase. Reasons for this included him being an "edgy Palette Swap OC" and a Moveset Clone of Pit, him "stealing a slot" from a more unique character, and accusations of "Sakurai bias", as Masahiro Sakurai was the director of both games. However, not only do Japanese fans love Dark Pit, but he's widely loved by players of Uprising around the world, making this a case of "Smash Fans Hate Dark Pit" as well. By contrast, Lucina and Dr. Mario, despite being Moveset Clones from equally-prominent franchises, are quite popular both in Japan and overseas. Dark Pit being reclassified as an Echo Fighter of Pit in Ultimate cooled the waters, given that this more clearly indicates his niche, and other well-loved characters like Daisy, Dark Samus, and the aforementioned Lucina are also echoes.
  • An older example today seems to be Roy. While he made his physical debut in Melee specifically because the western playtesters thought he was cool, he became a popular target for mockery with western fans during his absence between Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Often-cited reasons are that he's an overrated, low-tier Marth clone, who isn't a particularly strong character in the Fire Emblem series either (not helped by his own game never officially being exported). Roy does have fans in the Western Fire Emblem fanbase — in Japan, however, he was among the top requests for DLC, and is regarded with great deal of respect and open love in both fanbases, being portrayed as a more down-to-earth character as opposed to the Memetic Loser persona popularized in the west by Awkward Zombie.
  • While even Sakurai was concerned that the Fire Emblem series was starting to become a case of Spotlight-Stealing Crossover, his team managed to convince him that Corrin was a unique character and pointed out that the series has had a history of promoting Fire Emblem since Melee, hence why Corrin became a new first-party DLC character for 3DS/Wii U when it came time to find a character to promote a recent release. The character ended up being very divisive in the West, even among fans of the Fire Emblem series, both for the perceived spotlight issue (expounded by how Corrin was revealed before the release of Fates outside of Japan due to differing release dates) and because Fates itself proved to be a divisive entry in part due to Corrin's characterization.
  • When the Hero was revealed as DLC for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Japanese fanbase, predictably, exploded with joy. The Western fanbase's reaction? Unless they were also a fan of Dragon Quest, it was mostly "meh." Dragon Quest as a whole has suffered from this trope in the West for a long time, despite efforts to make it more popular in the region. Combined with the game already featuring a surplus of Fire Emblem characters, there was quite a lot of bile toward the Hero over what some players saw as "yet another generic anime swordsman". Ironically, the reverse was not true for the more Western-favored Banjo and Kazooie, who are just as beloved in Japan.
  • The reveal of Min Min from ARMS was highly well-received in Japan, but receptions overseas were more mixed, as Spring Man and Twintelle are more popular, and were expected to be the frontrunners. This was even acknowledged in the trailer (Sakurai's personal favorite was revealed to be Ninjara). When she was released, however, the tables turned; the Japanese tournament scene hated Min Min for her effective keep-away tools against the cast, while Min Min received something of a Popularity Polynomial overseas, and she's generally seen as a solid, if not stand-out, fighter.
  • Sakurai himself has openly acknowledged the American fanbase's hatred for Tingle as a reason why he won't be a playable character.
  • Starting with the release of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, international players tend to prefer the competitive aspects of Super Smash Bros., and ignore or outright dislike the elements aimed at casual players, such as items or elaborate stage gimmicks. It's more common in Japan to see casual Smash players use the default score-based rules with items and stage hazards on, while international players often use the competitive "no items, flat stage, timed stock battle" rules even when playing for fun. This can be attributed to competitive Smash receiving a bump in western popularity around the time 3DS and Wii U were revealed (thanks to the development of Project M, the release of The Smash Brothers, and Melee appearing at EVO 2013), and that most of 3DS and Wii U's new gimmicks are seen as annoying and intrusive to competitive play.
    • By extension, while Japan considers Assist Trophies and Mii costumes based on popular requests more of an acceptable compromise for characters can't be playable characters, Westerners see it as a mockery, even saying they "didn't make it in" despite both Assist Trophies and costumes meaning they technically have presence in the game. This is because, in practice, they'll never see them (as Assist Trophies are items and thus usually disabled, while Mii costumes are seen as a feature aimed toward casual players).

    Game Platforms 
  • The Xbox brand performed dismally in Japan for years. While the Xbox 360 enjoyed a brief period of moderate popularity and some exclusive titles (because for a while the PlayStation 3 architecture was hard to program and the Wii targeted different demographics), the Xbox One had the worst launch sales figures of any console, with almost empty queue lines and only beating the Neo Geo Pocket, and its average monthly sales were around three figures if they're lucky. Microsoft had frequently fought to turn this around by obtaining exclusive titles that appeal to Japanese audiences; outside of a few brief sales spikes connected to the release of certain games (like The Idolmaster), it eventually faltered. Keiji Inafune has suggested that consumer nationalism played a role in Japan's rejection of the Xbox brandnote , while Bob Chipman pointed out that the systems are considered (on both sides of the Pacific) to be delivery platforms for FPS games. Meanwhile, this Eurogamer article suggests that Microsoft didn't do enough market research and, as a result, completely started off with the wrong foot with the original Xbox's marketing. While many foreign brands do find success in Japan, they often do so by specifically tailoring their products and marketing to appeal to Japanese tastes. However, Microsoft's ad campaign for the Xbox leaned heavily into the fact that it was an American console, an approach best exemplified by a billboard featuring a close up of Bill Gates holding the redesigned Japanese controller in one hand, and a hamburger in the other. It took until the Xbox Series X|S for the brand to enjoy any real popularity in Japan, due to its compact design and competitive pricing.
  • After the brief boost enjoyed by the Xbox 360 (due to the Wii being less preferred by those countries with typically smaller and denser homes and populace), the Xbox brand sells far less in other countries outside of the USA as well. This affected the global sales of the Xbox One due to its initially higher price and smaller game library compared to its direct competitors, to the point that as of 2018 Microsoft gave up on exclusivity for their products and have made their games also available on PC, often through Steam and subject to regional pricing. As with the Japanese example above, the XBOX Series starts getting noticeable amount of sales and fanbase thanks to the Gamepass.
  • Outside of Japan, traditional gaming consoles were initially Banned in China (outside of Hong Kong and Macau) until 2013 and are generally unaffordable in Korea, and in both countries Nintendo and Sony run into nationalism-related issues and anti-Japanese sentiment and were also banned due to a law against Japanese cultural imports that was in place until 2004. In the 1980s-1990s in Korea, Sega's and Nintendo's consoles were distributed by local companies, Samsung and Hynix respectvely, due to said law. Nintendo consoles (with the exception of the Switch) sold poorly in South Korea compared to their competitors.
  • Over in Western countries, the Sega Saturn used to be considered one of the worst video game consoles ever released due to its poor line of gamesnote , its lack of a mainline Sonic the Hedgehog gamenote , horrible advertising, its botched North American launch,note  and its infamously convoluted hardware, which made it harder to develop for than the Nintendo 64 and especially the PlayStation. By contrast, in Japan, it's often listed as one of the more remembered consoles and generally was a lot better received, even outselling the Nintendo 64 in its home market. Not only was its 1994 holiday release much smoother and list of games more diverse, it also had a really effective advertising campaign in the form of Segata Sanshiro.
  • While the Nintendo Entertainment System was the icon of The 8-bit Era of Console Video Games in North America, it was rejected in the UK, where the technically inferior but much cheaper home computers already dominated the market by the time the console was distributed in 1987. Rare, despite being based in the UK, had to produce its early NES games mainly for the North American market. This had a knock-on effect, as several internationally popular franchises that thrived on the NES received a much colder reception in the UK — Mega Man being the most apparent. This video further elaborates on why the NES wasn't successful in this region.
  • Nintendo consoles in general are not exactly popular in Russia. The NES was represented by the Dendy, an unlicensed hardware clone. Attempts to introduce the SNES were made by Steepler (who owned the Dendy brand), but it was too expensive for the economical hellhole that was post-Soviet-collapse Russia in the '90s. The PlayStation Portable also topped Nintendo's handhelds in numbers of units sold (the Game Boy Advance being the sole exception), mostly due to horrible marketing. As for the Nintendo 64 or Nintendo GameCube — if you find a Russian who owned one or even knew that they existed before the Internet became widespread, you'd be ridiculously lucky.
  • The Nintendo 3DS initially struggled outside Japan, but in time, it turned out to be a subversion and became a smash hit worldwide. The StreetPass feature of the 3DS, however, perpetually struggled to get any use outside of Japan. The feature was designed with a highly urban, densely populated nation like Japan in mind, which makes things harder in places where suburban or rural regions are more common, like most of North America. Nintendo later made changes to their Nintendo Zone hotspots to have them serve as a relay, by holding each tag to be shared with the next 3DS to encounter it, but even hotspots were difficult to come by outside of big cities. It eventually came to be that the highest densities of StreetPasses in North America were at fan conventions and not in daily life.
  • In any place where Nintendo online and official sales support is not supported (outside North America, Japan, Australia, and parts of Europe), Nintendo consoles are niche or have a cult following at best, especially during the eighth generation of video games when online support became almost mandatory. In general, Nintendo is less successful in Europe than the other two regions followed by most (North America and Japan), which is considered part of the reason Sony is able to often outsell Nintendo products (as Sony does particularly well in the same region). However, since the release of the Switch, Nintendo has been taking strides in opening more markets of its store and generally making it easier for people from different regions to play, including the complete removal of region locking; time will tell if this results in higher sales than previous systems in other markets, but general analysis seem to suggest so.
  • The Sony PSP is an odd example. The PSP itself sold amazingly in Japan, but it was niche elsewhere compared to the Nintendo DS and iOS devices. American-made games for the PSP sold well in the United States, but with the exception of certain games like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Dissidia Final Fantasy, and Persona 3 Portable, the JRPGs did not sell nearly as well. Perhaps as a result, it was considered a dying market in North America at a time when new games of all kinds were still being produced in Japan. The PSP was incredibly popular in Russia, but that is more due to Periphery Demographic (the PSP was considered somewhat of a status indicator) and the main competitor, Nintendo's handhelds, were not marketed very well (though the Game Boy Advance had a cult following).
    • The PlayStation Vita was successful in Japan and nowhere else. Handheld consoles like the Vita fit into the Japanese lifestyle (typically only one TV in a house, far more reliance on mass transit) far better than they do the American one, meaning that Japanese Vita games could top the charts for all consoles in Japan and go entirely ignored in the US. Furthermore, Sony of America dropped the ball when it came to marketing the Vita in the US, focusing on how it could connect to a PlayStation 4 and be used to play PS4 games remotely (a function that's only really useful around the house, where somebody would have a PS4 and the TV it's connected to right there, defeating the purpose) and how it could provide a 'console-quality' gaming experience on the go (even though the PS3 far exceeded its capabilities, to say nothing of the PS4). The fact that the system only officially supported an expensive proprietary memory card format (its predecessor supported memory sticks which, while still a Sony-created format, was also manufactured by other companies and could easily be read by computers), while the 3DS, its recently price-dropped competitor, supported cheaper SD cards didn't help. Retailers also seemed to have somewhat of a disdain for it - apart from Best Buy, Toys'R'Us, or the occasional Walmart that might have splurged for an interactive display unit. The Vita was normally shoved to the back of its gaming section, not helped by its amount of download-only games (during the early 2010s, many people in North America lacked decent internet and digital distribution was still in its relative infancy, so it was not expected for anything such as a handheld to have such a wide download-only market. The expensive proprietary memory cards also made the issue worse, as downloadable games required a lot of storage capacity.). Sony quickly abandoned any attempts to salvage the system outside of Japan, instead porting its most popular games to the PS4 and leaving the Vita lineup with quirky Japanese games and Western indie games, such that its main Western niche is among Occidental Otaku or homebrew players wanting an all-in-one emulation machine (the emulation part is already superseded by Android mobile devices as of 2020 due to sheer hardware specifications).
  • The Wii U system is often considered a colossal failure in Nintendo's gaming history, second only to the Virtual Boy in terms of poor sales. However, despite under-performing in the Americas and most of Europe due to terrible marketing and weak third-party support, the traditionally Nintendo-loving countries of Japan and France saw the system have a decent amount of success. France in particular saw the Wii U stay ahead of the Xbox One for most of its lifespan.
  • This seems to have been zigzagged several times in Denmark. The Sony PlayStation was a bigger console hit than the Nintendo 64. The PlayStation 2 was more frequent in Danish homes than the Xbox or GameCubeAlthough.... Even during the 7th generation of consoles, the PS3 was a highly sold console in Denmark, even after the Xbox 360 have had a longer and cheaper run. Still, Denmark seems to be favoring the American consoles over the Japanese longrunner after the Xbox 360's larger library of 7th generation titles. As for the 8th generation, it's rather unclear since the Xbox One is delayed in Denmark* and multiple European countries until October, but Sony has recognized their European fans, releasing their PS4 internationally in most, if not all, European countries.
  • Playing video games on the Apple Macintosh is admittedly already a niche in the West but in Japan there are like only 20 Macintosh games released there. This even worries the rival company Microsoft, to the point that Microsoft released a collection of their games (appropriately called Microsoft Mac Games Collection) on the Japanese version of the Mac. Much like the Western market however this is not a huge deal in Japan as most people who buy a Mac (if at all, since the entire Macintosh platform as a whole is unpopular and expensive in Japan (most Japanese Mac customers are anime and manga studios), as detailed in the Technology folder on main page) do not buy it because of its games.
  • This is one reason why Nintendo made the Nintendo Switch; the Japanese prefer playing on portable consoles due to limited space for regular ones, whereas Westerners prefer playing on home consoles or PC. This lead Nintendo to Take a Third Option to try and appease both sides of the Pacific in regards to game development by making a console that could easily switch between being played at home or on the go. It worked phenomenally well.
  • The educational Sega Pico console was so popular in Japan that games were produced from its release in 1993 up until 2005, when it was replaced by its successor, the Advanced Pico Beena. Several clones were made, including one by Yamaha. Outside of Japan, however, between Sega's horrible mismarketing, the preferences of Western gamers, conservative parents' groups at the time seeing no educational value in video game consoles in general, and the fact that there already existed a competitive market of edutainment games in the West, the console died in 1998, only four years after its Western release. Majesco attempted to rerelease the console in the US the following year at a lower price, but saw no more success than Sega did.
  • Atari released a modified version of the Atari 2600 in Japan dubbed the Atari 2800. It was no match for the juggernaut that was the Famicom. It was also released in the U.S. as the Sears Tele-games Video Arcade II. The case design was then reused for the Atari 7800, where it was once again no match against the NES.
  • While the Wii was very successful in the main gaming markets (Japan, Europe, and North America), it was a total disaster in Brazil, being crushed by the Xbox 360 and defeated by the PS3. This is more evident knowing the last three top-selling consoles in the country (PS1, PS2, and 360) had a "useful jailbreak" to run pirated games. Despite the Wii being another console with easy access to piracy, the lack of popular titles like Grand Theft Auto, and the motion controls unsuitable for smaller and denser areas, made most of the gamers in the country give up on Nintendo. And at the time, Brazil was promoting its domestically made console tailored for casual and low-budget gamers, called the Zeebo, which has its own version of famous games such as Resident Evil 4 and the port of the PSP version of Need for Speed Carbon. It only lasted for three years though before the company went belly up.
  • As a whole, console gaming became increasingly niche in Southeast Asia onwards since 2014, due to mandatory online content (granted, the third to sixth generation of videogaming had a lot of console gaming fanbase due to piracy making games available in a low-to-almost-none cost, particularly the PlayStation, however since PS4, online access is increasingly mandatory as well as online is refused for modded consoles) as well as the relatively high price tags of consoles and console games relative to the average person's income as well as the mandatory online subscription requirements. Generally speaking, Southeast Asians are more interested in PC and Mobile gaming due to:
    • The proliferation of "free-to-play" games, and the free online play on PC and mobile games not requiring expensive subscriptions,
    • Low-cost Digital Distribution games, helped by stores such as Steam allowing local non-credit card payment,
    • And PC cafes allowing one to rent a gaming-class PC without having to buy one. Gaming consoles since then were not exactly hated (with the exception of online subscription, which is widely reviled there), but overall they became 'luxury items' for lower-income gamers (which form the majority) unlike before and were generally looked down by mainstream and PC gamers as elitists and isolationists who tie themselves to subscription ecosystems (with the Vocal Minority parts of console gamers looking down on the mainstream in response, causing a largely one-sided Fandom Rivalry). Not helping matters is that Nintendo, the most beloved Japanese console game making company in the eyes of the West, had no actual service in Southeast Asia—a Nintendo Online account required a Western or Japanese address and cards, adding an extra complication on top of the high price tag.
  • Kinda same situation used to be in Russia, since in the 90s and beginning of 00s many people couldn't afford console, so they played on cheap PCs instead. Some console were famous though, like "Dendy" (a famiclone), GBA and PSP (listed below), however others often weren't so known. Plus, many people prefer PCs because of mods, customisation and... easiness to get games illegally.
  • Arcade gaming also followed suit come 2020. While they initially have updated lineup with online and account features, as well as crowded arcade gatherings despite the increased cost, during the latter half of 2010s arcade places are steadily decreasing, with the arcade centers on 21, the largest Indonesian cinema theatre chain, being removed, as well as fewer arcade center besides Timezone and Fun World features updated arcade lineup. By the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, it's all but dead, if not dormant.
  • Mobile Phone Games and platforms (Android and iOS) are accepted within the Asian (especially Chinese) markets, but very reviled within the Western markets. So much that the Fandom Rivalry can get really ugly. For an explanation on how each regions end up forming their opinions as is, see here.
  • The exA-Arcadia game platform, by the company of the same name. Its mission statement is that unlike other modern Japanese Arcade Game distribution models (such as Sega's All-Net and Taito's NESiCAxLive), which see the arcade renting the games rather than actually owning them and paying a cut of the revenue earned from these games to the platform and have always-online DRM to enforce this, exA's games do not require an internet connection and do not operate on a revenue-share model; the operator does not have to pay any cut of the revenue earned to exA. This works well in Japan, and while exA sells theirs to the global market, they are far less successful in Western markets. The problem with exA games is that they are priced higher than games on its competitors' platforms, which might be seen as a fair tradeoff by Japanese operators because in time they'll make back the money and then some, but in non-Japanese countries, because there is no competing service for the sort of games offered on exA, most arcades are content to instead get games that are cheaper. In the West in particular, arcade operators (mainly those of bar-arcade hybrids and multi-entertainment centers) can't be bothered to spend thousands of dollars on the hardware and each individual game when they can get Western-made games with a better ROI as well as refurbished cabinets of classic arcade games, since most games offered on exA are niche Japanese-made games (most notably Shoot 'Em Up games) that aren't exactly high demand in the West, so for many Western arcade, exA is largely Awesome, but Impractical. As a result, the only places you'll see an exA cabinet in public Western are a small handful of Round 1 locations in the United States and an even smaller handful of independent arcades that specifically cater to fans of Japanese games. And if you do see an exA in a Round 1, it'll most likely be carrying exclusively Fighting Games and not other genres of games.

    Miscellaneous 
  • 2D games are appreciated in Japan about as much as high-quality 3D games, and hand-drawn sprites are common. However, outside of Japan and some other countries, around the late 90s, they began being seen as kiddy and "primitive", with "SNES Sprites" throw around as mocking. With the rise of digital distribution and the Retraux wave in the 2010s, this sentiment has diminished, but 2D games (and even 2½D games) are still seen as solely the realm of smaller scale games and indie projects, with Fighting Games being the only ones that can get away presenting themselves as big, AAA releases. This conflict began in the early part of The Fifth Generation of Console Video Games when 3D games started hitting the scene. Western audiences, critics and consumers alike, saw these more 3D, realistic-looking games as an evolution of the medium that completely invalidated sprite-based games, which were now seen as being objectively low-tech and primitive. If it wasn't a handheld game, magazines would instantly take off points just for a game being in 2D. This phenomenon can be best be seen with the Sega Saturn era, during which Sega of America outright refused to even localize any 2D games — which had the side effect of leaving the console with a very sparse library in the West.
  • Relating to Pokémon, but also other games with this mechanic: One Game for the Price of Two is widely considered a Scrappy Mechanic in the West, while Japan loves it and considers it a Socialization Bonus. This comes down mostly to handheld gaming in general being much more popular in Japan, combined with greater population density and higher use of public transport equating to easier access to others with the game. Since the games with this trait tend to be developed in Japan, a lot of them feature mechanics like this, and even before StreetPass was introduced, Expies of it showed up in games like The World Ends with You and Dragon Quest IX. Furthermore, Japanese games often have achievements that involve trading with people X amount of times, or passing people X times, which nearly always become That One Achievement in the West. The hate is even evident in the trope title itself, which shows that, while Japan considers it an encouragement to socialize, westerners see it as an encouragement to buy both games and two consoles. It also doesn't help that, unlike Japan, most Western cities are spread out and are rarely condensed, which makes it harder for people to find other people in public that have the same game they do so that they can exchange characters or items.note  And, unlike in Japannote , the notion of people using common sense by keeping their handheld consoles out of view in public is the norm, as unsuspecting criminals and thieves take it as the opportunity to steal, or at worse, mug, the owner before cashing in online or at the local pawn shop.
  • Digital Distribution and download-only games are very common worldwide thanks to how the lack of physical item dramatically cut down shipping costs, allowing cheaper games to be sold. In Japan, however, it's used to be pretty marginal, as most would stick to buying a game in retail whenever available as Japanese pride involves showing off physical material. However with the increasing price of living and smaller property space for new generation of citizens or those who sold their larger properties to make a living, such pride is brushed off in favor of practicality. The ever-popular Mobile Phone Game also rarely has physical copies.
  • Head-to-head play in the Puzzle Game genre is incredibly rare in the Western world, a core part of both the SEGA interpretation of Tetris and the Puyo Puyo series. Western players would much rather play by themselves, either to beat the clock or go for high scores, a cultural trait cemented by the aforementioned Game Boy version of Tetris and seen in other popular puzzle titles. Multiplayer is instead viewed as either a novelty or a bonus mode, rather than one of the central aspects of a puzzle game. Hence, even people who could look past the Girl-Show Ghetto look of the Puyo Puyo games are still likely to be turned off in how even its single-player modes will provide AI opponents most of the time. Other multiplayer-oriented puzzle games like SEGA Tetris, Panel de Pon, and Magical Drop are also niche at best.
  • Many Rated M for Money games, like the God of War series, sell horribly in Japan. While God of War III was a massive hit in America, where it sold over two-and-a-half million copies, it barely made it past 100,000 copies in Japan. This is all despite the existence of Japanese "guro" genre, though it isn't mainstream and fans and artists of it are often caught in a backlash. Likewise, Kratos is popular for his manliness and excessive Gorn, two things that wouldn't click very much for Japanese players as much as for Americans.
  • The Mon genre has historically had a lot of difficulty establishing itself in the west and is still often seen as kind of a niche genre, mainly for the same reason Magical Girl anime and Toku series are subjected to this trope; America was first exposed to it through one of its biggest success stories, Pokémon, causing mainstream audiences to mistakenly presume that other Mon franchises imported later, like Digimon, Medabots, or Yo-kai Watch, were cheap knockoffs made to cash in on the craze, rather than merely different series in a thriving genre. Many Mon series have established cult followings in the USA, but none have managed to rival Pokémon in terms of popularity and recognition, nor have they ever fully escaped its shadow.
  • One Brazilian Youtuber made a video of games hated in the country. The straight cases were Death Stranding (for being just a "postman game" with incessant walking), and futuristic shooters (with some exception to Cyberpunk-influenced ones; Energy Weapons seem to be a particular sore point for the gamers). But there were "popular but not that much" cases in Garena Free Fire (a Love It or Hate It affair), and FIFA Soccer (even fans have issues with how EA treats the series, specially in making little effort to improve between installments).
  • For non-Japanese Fighting Game fans, netcode (without getting too technical, how the game handles lag in online matches) is very Serious Business, with rollback-based netcode being practically considered mandatory for a game to be good, especially when the COVID-19 Pandemic made it necessary for tournaments to be played online instead of locally. Since Japan is a small country, netcode has less of an impact on the quality of matches, so Japanese game developers are less pressured to add rollback to their games, although this has started to change following the release of Guilty Gear STRIVE and Arc System Works adding rollback to some of their older games.
  • In the Japanese arcade game community, rapid-fire features that are not part of the original game are widely accepted by players; many Shoot 'Em Up cabs in Japan have rapid-fire functions modded into them (often with multiple options for rapid-fire frequencies), and high score record magazines and online leaderboards for modern ports of arcade games accept scores with them enabled. However, it is a Broken Base topic in the Western arcade game community, with a common argument against it being "it makes the game easier, therefore it's cheating, being able to rapidly tap the fire button is an integral part of player skill," to the point where Western high score organizations like Twin Galaxies mandate that rapid-fire features not present in the game itself be not used. In fact, some modern dedicated arcades in the US even outright disable autofire on their cabs and refuse to enable it if it's a non-default feature.
  • Hunting simulation games have a small but acknowledgeable fan community in the United States; however, in some other countries like France, they are niche at best. This is explained by the fact that, even in real life, hunting is already an unpopular sport in these countries, compared to english-speaking North America, due to the local hunting populations being really small and controversies linked to environmental and ethical issues there. This is why games, like theHunter: Call of the Wild, are among the few to have made it into some of these countries, whereas, for example, for the video game series Deer Hunter, only three games of this series have been translated from english.
  • Rhythm Games on mobile devices (both smartphones and smart-tablets) are disliked in American rhythm game communities because, in addition to all the grievances that Americans have with mobile games as a whole (see the Analysis page on this trope for details), American rhythm game players don't like touchscreen rhythm games due to lacking tactile controls (such as the recessed panels on a DanceDanceRevolution arcade stage) and tactile feedback (such as pressing physical buttons), which they consider essential to a good gameplay experience. Many of these mobile rhythm games are best played on a tablet as opposed to a mobile phone, another turn-off for many Americans who would rather play games on PC or consoles than invest a few hundred dollars in a smart-tablet just for these games and find a good surface to put them down on and use grippy mats to prevent their device from slipping around. As a result, Asian rhythm game players may be surprised to learn that games like Arcaea, Phigros, and Cytus, despite being veritable hits in rhythm game circles on their side of the Pacific, are glossed over amongst fellow rhythm game players in the U.S. In addition, many mobile rhythm games are made by indie Asia-based developers, and as such mainly feature music by small-name Asian musicians (mostly ones who produce music for BMS contests) that may not be as familiar to Americans and therefore don't give the game as much appeal as compared to American musicians, making these games impermeable to those who aren't already familiar with the rhythm game music scene; American gamers generally expect rhythm games to carry familiar songs (due to the success of games like Guitar Hero and Just Dance, both of which use soundtracks with big-name licenses), and if a particular game doesn't, they will just ignore it.


Other Video Games:

    A-C 
  • When Huang Di was first revealed to be one of the minor gods in Age of Mythology: Tale of the Dragon, some Chinese players disliked the unflattering depiction of the mythological progenitor of the Chinese civilization and people.
  • The Nintendo Switch port of Arcaea, while otherwise an admirable port with both traditional touchscreen controls and version-exclusive Joy-Con controls, gathered a lot of controversy from the moment it was announced amongst the game's pre-existing plurality foreign userbase in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc.), where Nintendo platforms are typically unpopular due to being outside the average person's price range. This harkens back to the PC vs Mobile conflict, where Asians love the mobile format and practices, while Westerners hate it with a passion. This resulted in Arcaea, which wasn't a smash hit in the West in the first place, actually having a warmer reception in the West (not exactly a smash hit, but at least it isn't met with outright scorn).
  • Shoot Em Ups with turn-and-thrust controls, such as Asteroids, never caught on in Japan.
  • BEMANI:
    • Although REFLEC BEAT has somewhat of a fanbase in its native territory of Japan, Western BEMANI fans have a very low opinion of it, citing the randomized and chaotic-looking way the notes fall. Amongst a certain section of the fanbase that likes to crack BEMANI arcade software, Reflec Beat gets the least development of any active BEMANI series (although this could have more to do with there being an iOS port that's very close to the original sans screen size). However, this has changed in 2014, as the crack of Reflec Beat colette was released to very popular reception, encouraging many fans to buy multi-touch screens to play the game.
    • Although Dance Evolution was big enough of a hit in its native country of Japan to have an arcade version that continously gets updates, the same cannot be said in North America (where the game is known as DanceMasters), where the arcade version does not exist and the Xbox 360 version flopped due to having to compete with fellow Kinect Rhythm Games Dance Central and Just Dance, which easily smoked Dance Masters in sales and popularity.
    • The beatmania franchise never cracked the United States, compared to its legendary status in Japan, where it was a progenitor of the rhythm genre as a whole and found enduring success after the Spin-Off beatmania IIDX perfected its formula. While beatmania machines were relatively visible in stateside arcades after the success of DanceDanceRevolution, the series flopped miserably when it was finally ported to the American PS2 in 2006, nearly a decade since its debut and after the release of Guitar Hero. Compared to the stiff competition it had inspired, beatmania alienated Americans with its difficult learning curve and unintuitive design, which had not been streamlined from the original games released in the '90s. Ultimately, audiences in the United States latched onto its eventual counterpart DJ Hero, leaving beatmania and IIDX in complete obscurity outside of the Bemani community.
    • DJ YOSHITAKA, while popular in Japan, is reviled by many Western players who see his songs as tiresome and too similar to each other. It's not helped by his position as the director of several BEMANI series (SOUND VOLTEX, Popn Music, beatmania IIDX, Reflec Beat), which has been met with negative reception by the same demographic.
    • The various announcers of DanceDanceRevolution are seen as iconic staples by Japanese players, but Western players see them as annoying nuisances more than anything else and long for the option to turn them off in arcade versions.
    • This hit GITADORA in the West after Guitar Hero was released; Guitar Hero was created specifically to capitalize on the Japanese success of GITADORA, which had flopped in the US, by tweaking its gameplay to be more appealing to international players. This then affected later attempts to bring the series outside of Japan. Detractors dislike the reduced number of fret buttons (alhtough XG addresses this), the differences in guitar chart design, the lack of Western songs (then again, when the series is primarily Asia-only, this is inevitable), and songs being cut down to 2 1/4 minutes or less (due to the game offering 3-5 stages per credit). In turn, Guitar Hero never really caught on in Japan, lacking the arcade-like appeal that made GITADORA so successful.
    • For that matter, Asian-developed arcade music games in general took a dive in what little international popularity they had when Guitar Hero and Rock Band came along, due to the aforementioned song lengths and lack of recognizable songs. The lack of exports and various rhythm game developers' decisions to move to subscription-based arcade cabinet leasing models exclusive to Asia certainly don't help. Today, BEMANI games are Cult Classics at best outside of Asia; it's not hard to find longtime Konami fans in the West who have never heard of games like jubeat or SOUND VOLTEX.
  • BlazBlue:
  • Bombergirl is a MOBA-styled arcade spin-off of the Bomberman franchise. While the game in Japan has a cult following, with many being able to look past the overt Hotter and Sexier tone and appreciate the gameplay on its own merits, most of the western fanbase for the series views Bombergirl's moe, fanservicey art style as tacky Fetish Retardant if not an outright insult to the franchise's legacy (not unlike Bomberman Act:Zero with its Darker and Edgier artstyle, which came out 13 years earlier). It is also strongly associated with Konami's toxic reputation post-2015, with Bombergirl drawing some comparisons to the Castlevania: Erotic Violence pachinko machine put out shortly after the Metal Gear Solid V debacle.
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) was acclaimed by Western gamers and critics alike as a return to form for a series once thought to have lost its way, with the single-player campaign in particular acclaimed as one of the best in the series. Where there was controversy, it concerned questions about whether or not it went too far in its depiction of the horrors of war, which was hardly a new complaint about the Call of Duty series even in its better installments. Russian gamers, on the other hand, absolutely despised the single-player campaign for its portrayal of the Russian military as thuggish and brutal villains with shades of various real-life conflicts from recent Russian history (including the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, The Chechnya Wars, and the Syrian Civil War), to the point where they called it "American propaganda" and drove its Metacritic user score into the gutter in response. Sony's Russian division even refused to sell the game on the Russian PlayStation Store as a result. One particular sticking point involved a reference to a "highway of death" caused in the game by the Russians, even though the real incident it was based on was the work of the American-led coalition during the Gulf War.
  • According to the Sega Technical Institute, the management at Sega of Japan absolutely loathed Comix Zone and said that "it embodied everything wrong with American culture". The STI took these words as praise.
  • While Company of Heroes 2 was well-received in the West, gamers in Russia and other Eastern European countries hated it so much that it was pulled from sale. Most of this has to do with a perceived negative portrayal of the Red Army and the Eastern Front of World War II, especially compared to the first game's lionization of the Western Allies. Even the Nazis got a more sympathetic portrayal in their campaigns in the first game than the Red Army got in the second. Elaborated here.
  • CrossFire is an extremely popular South Korea-made free-to-play first-person shooter franchise in East and South East Asia, but it's virtually unheard of in the West. How popular is it? By player count, it's the most popular game of all time with over one billion players, and has grossed over twelve billion dollars, spawning a movie and a popular live-action television show in China, which has been watched nearly two billion times. The games have no real audience in the West since they're just less polished Counter-Strike knockoffs and riddled with microtransactions, with little to offer versus other FPS games like Battlefield, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, or, as aforementioned, Counter-Strike. It's speculated that its lack of polish may help its regional popularity, since it can run well even on low-end PCs. That being said, XBOX Game Studios help fund the developers for an all-new XBOX exclusive sequel called Crossfire X... which was widely derided for its Cliché Storm story mode and cookie-cutter multiplayer mode, and permanently shut down after only fifteen months.

    D 
  • The original Darius was a big success in Japan and is still very much beloved (a 2019 poll had it voted as the favorite installment, with nearly half of the votes) but among western fans, it's usually dismissed as a lackluster shooter only notable for its odd theme and gimmicky cabinet. Because of the large and expensive cabinet, the game didn't get as much circulation in western arcades and none of its home console ports were released outside Japan, meaning most western's players exposure to it would be years after the fact through emulation, without the benefits of the flashy cabinet and with the stuff that made the game so impressive and groundbreaking in 1987 taken for granted. Even for the demographic that wouldn't necessarily reject Darius old-school take on checkpointing and punishment for death, a lack of western awareness of the game's "New" and "Extra" revisions (which do many subtle tweaks to improve the difficult curve) meant many players gave up trying to learn the game as the original release is seriously unbalanced difficulty-wise. Its reputation is improving with the release of the Darius Cozmic Collection (which includes said balancing patches), although you'll still be hard-pressed to find any western fans call the original Darius their favorite.
  • Dead or Alive: In this fighting game series where the Action Girls are the stars of the show, Marie Rose stands heads above the rest among Japanese audiences. However the fact she not only looks fourteen (she's 18) but also acts like a small girl and caused some western players to regard her as sexualised and earned some dislike.
  • While Death Smiles is seen as yet another CAVE game in Japan and amongst the more hardcore parts of the shmup fanbase, when it was introduced in America it was NOT well-received due to the "loli" art and the tagline on the back of the box ("Death smiles at us all – Lolis smile back!").
  • Downplayed in the Disgaea fandom on various occasions. Plenair, Raspberyl, and Champloo while not hated are significantly less popular in America than in Japannote .
  • Donkey Konga, made by the team most known for Taiko no Tatsujin, was popular enough in Japan to make it up to a third installment, but in the West, only two of the games were released, and the games were widely considered a part of Donkey Kong's Audience-Alienating Era. The main problem was the track selection. While the Japanese tracks were a mix of Nintendo tunes, anime openings, tunes from The Anime of the Game for Nintendo's respective franchises, and other popular Japanese songs (typical of a Taiko no Tatsujin game), the Western releases had track lists that were mostly pop hits in their countries, with only the occasional Nintendo songs (the NA release of Donkey Konga 2 was particularly bad about this, because it had no Nintendo or game music other than the game's own opening theme). The result was that the series came off as In Name Only, and it didn't help that Taiko no Tatsujin was not widely known outside of Japan. A 2022 interview revealed that even Nintendo of America head honcho Reggie Fils-Aimé shared this view, stating that he hated it and thought it could negatively impact the Donkey Kong franchise.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • The series is by far the #1 Cash-Cow Franchise in Japan, where it's revered as the trailblazer for the Eastern RPG genre. It took far longer to catch on in North America, and even then, sales are nowhere near as mighty as in Japan. Some critics pin this on the colorful, cartoony graphics and generally lighthearted fantasy tone leading to the franchise being perceived as "kiddy", but more critical to its relative failure is timing. Despite being groundbreaking upon its 1986 Japanese release, it didn't make it across the Pacific Ocean until 1989, by which point there were pretty mature CRPGs such as Wasteland already on the market, not to mention the aesthetically similar The Legend of Zelda had been on American shelves for two years and set a completely different standard for the RPG genre in the west.note  By 1989, when the series debuted in America, it came across as a tedious, indistinguishable fantasy game in a sea of more fleshed-out alternatives. Even after turn-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy and Pokémon became hits in North America, Dragon Quest has still struggled to find a footing in the US, largely due to incredibly uninspired marketing. Case in point, a commercial for Dragon Quest IX. While they did get Seth Green to promote it, the commercial makes the game look like an incredibly generic sword and sorcery RPG, saying nothing unique or interesting at all about it. Europe does, however, seem to go for a middle ground, perhaps because of the game's medieval European setting and their general love for Akira Toriyama.
    • This is also why the inclusion of the series' main characters (who are all collectively referred to as 'The Hero') in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate were met with polarizing reactions by Western fans, whereas the Japanese trailer is the most viewed Smash DLC trailer of all time. With that said, the inclusion of Hero was largely meant to help the Dragon Quest series do better in Western countries by being featured in a game that was popular in the West. Dragon Quest XI (whose Nintendo Switch version released a few months after the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC) did end up becoming the best-selling game in the series in the West — though still not to the same extent as its popularity in Japan.
    • Within the Dragon Quest series, Maribel from Dragon Quest VII is fairly popular. Out of all the characters from the game, she's appeared in the most spinoffs. In the western fanbase, she was fairly unpopular for being kinda rude and spoiled, pre Character Development, and because she leaves the party at one point. This changes in the 3DS version, wherein the localisation team make her more amusing and gameplay buffs make her a pretty good party member.
  • The Dynasty Warriors series of games are huge sellers in Japan. The UK is more forgiving, but in America it's considered a cult series at best, with common complaints referring to its repetitiveness. It's more or less the Asian equivalent of Call of Duty — down to the fact that many people hate it on-sight, criticizing it without even bothering to play it.
    • The games tend to assume the player is already familiar with the original story. It's a reasonable assumption in Eastern nations — not so much in the West.
    • Character-wise, the Two Qiaos. The complaints are majorly because they're not contributing to anything in the story, only existing as "Sun Ce and Zhou Yu's wife." The Japanese have no problem with that. Their young looks fit well to their fandom of Joshikousei and Token Mini-Moe sorts. In the western areas? They, especially Xiao Qiao, are accused of being bratty-annoying little girls that have no place in the battlefield and due to Values Dissonance, western fans are creeped out with their presence because it's making Sun Ce and Zhou Yu look like pedophiles, for them anyway.
    • Also character-wise, you have Naotora Ii (spelt ii) from the spin-off/sister series Samurai Warriors. She is a Shy with Moe tendencies that keeps apologizing during her attacks, All while having a skimpy wardrobe in the middle of a battlefield. These traits make her endearing to the Japanese audience, which resulted in her appearing on 9th place on Samurai Warriors 4's character poll, a "deified" form on Warriors Orochi 4, being the sole female representative of her series in Warriors All-Stars and a playable appearance in the PC version of Dead or Alive 5. In the US, her traits, like many other characters that share her personality are received with annoyance than endearment.
    • The company behind these games, Koei Tecmo, put up a survey/poll for their Japanese audience in October of 2015, asking which franchises that they would like to see crossed over with their popular Warriors series. Seeing as how Koei Tecmo is no foreigner to crossover video games, and that they have quite a positive track record of them, fans were eager to have their voices be heard in hopes of seeing their favorite anime or video game franchise be given the Warriors treatment. Unsurprisingly, western fans of both anime and Koei Tecmo alike caught whiff of the existence of such a survey, and effectively hijacked it from the Japanese netizens, hoping to drown out their voices with their own choices of which series they would like to see. Since tastes in media on both sides of the ocean differ greatly, this lead to a flame war on the survey page, with the Japanese fans responding with both confusion and anger, and western fans responding in earnest. When the results of the poll were finally compiled and tallied, western fans were not happy with the results, especially in regards to the unexpected franchise that took the #1 spot, making this a classic example.

    F-L 
  • Fire Emblem:
    • While the games where Marth is the protagonist (Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem) are loved in Japan, with Mystery of the Emblem being the highest selling game in the franchise for decades and held as the point when the series officially solidified itself as a mainstay, the rest of the world sees them as some of the weakest or least played parts in the series. One of the reasons for this is that the series was mostly unknown outside of Japan for over ten years, until Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.", and the games set in Marth's world are often given Nostalgia Filter treatment or "I liked this world the best." The non-Japanese fanbase started out with the adventures of Eliwood, Lyn, and Hector, with a later Newbie Boom bringing in a lot of fans who journeyed with Chrom. Even among fans who go out of their way to seek out the franchise's untranslated past, you're more likely to find fans of the more complex and experimental Jugdral games, or the one with Roy. As a result, Marth's games are seen as merely outdated. A major reason for this is that the series tends to recycle and toy with story elements a lot, which means every character and plot point from Marth's games feels, at best, rather familiar, and usually lack the clever twists that later incarnations would put on their template: Camus's whole Noble Top Enforcer persona is harder to get into when nearly every game has featured a similar character, many of whom had more buildup or character development.
    • Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade: Raigh is a pretty popular character in Japan, in part thanks to his sympathetic backstory and unique status as a child dark mage, to the point where he was among the first units introduced in Fire Emblem Heroes. Western fans however show apathy at best, and hatred at worst, mainly thanks to his game not leaving Japan thus fans not having the same amount of attachment to him, his mother Nino becoming surprisingly popular thus making Raigh less justified in his resentment of her, and his only official Western appearances being in Awakening's Einherjar where he is fought in the Rogues & Redeemers pack (placed with other notable villains thus making him look like one without prior knowledge) and Heroes (where the powercreep turned him from somewhat useful to near-useless and along with controversial art and Flanderization made him one of the most hated units in-game).
    • From Fire Emblem: Awakening (but also Fates) is Tharja, Gaius, and Cordelia. These three characters appear in Fates as expies (implied to be reincarnations) in the second generation thanks to their popularity in Japan (which is also why Owain, Inigo, and Severa appear as well). While Gaius is well liked in the west, Cordelia is seen as more annoying and often Unintentionally Unsympathetic, while Tharja is base-breaking and seen as creepy thanks to her obsession for Robin (which itself is pretty rare for female characters). The fact that the poll was only in Japan was also a bit of an annoyance.
    • Also from Awakening we have Nowi, who while not as popular as the above three, is respected enough in Japan thanks to her innocent personality and tragic Hidden Depths, allowing her to be among the first dragon units in Heroes and to have gotten both a Seasonal Alt and a Resplendent Outfit. To say she's controversial on the other side of the Pacific however would be an understatement, as a good majority of Western fans are creeped out by her outfit and personality not meshing well with each other, with many baffled as to why of all the things censored for the Western release, she wasn't one of them.
  • Aside from the obvious ban in Korea, Homefront is horribly unpopular in East Asia, and it's not too hard to see why.
  • Halo, despite the Master Chief Collection being released in a heavily reduced price in Steam, is played by only few peoples outside the US, due to the heavy focus on movement, instant kill deathtraps such as the Covenant sticky grenades and death by being rammed, and higher time-to-kill in average. It got to the point that in October 2023, due to the few number of players (especially how most of the multiplayer scene worldwide has moved on to Halo Infinite, which was offered for free apart from in app purchases and campaign), XBOX Game Studios ramp up the price of the Steam version of the collection into an AAA level pricing (in average equivalent to $60, when it used to be equivalent to $15, or $5 in price cut events)
  • Hydlide and its sequels are well-loved in Japan, but in America it's seen as a piece of crap. This was all based on a matter of timing; Hydlide debuted on the Japanese PC-6001 and PC-8801 microcomputers in 1984, making the Ur-Example of a Wide-Open Sandbox Action RPG with some pretty ambitious gameplay mechanics that inspired many like it, including 1986's The Legend of Zelda on the Famicom/NES. However, this was not the west's first exposure to the franchise — the North American console ports didn't appear until 1989, and said NES title was a messy Porting Disaster that made many wrongfully assume Hydlide to be a low-grade Zelda ripoff despite technically predating it by a few years. Super Hydlide was acclaimed for its impressive mechanics upon being released in Japan in 1987, but by the time it arrived to America in 1990, it was already seen as outdone by its contemporaries.
  • In the Groove, a clone of DanceDanceRevolution meant to provide a fresh experience for players tired of DanceDanceRevolution EXTREME (following EXTREME, there were no more new arcade DDR games until SuperNOVA four years later). Part of ITG's infamy in its home territory is the absurd difficulty of charts; ITG charts rated 12 and 13 were extremely hard for their time, putting DDR boss songs to shame.note  While it proved very popular amongst arcade Rhythm Game enthusiasts in its native territory of North America, it failed to find an audience in Japan, where DDR originated from; Japanese players cite the differing songlist and philosophy in step chart design as turn-offs to ITG. This may have backfired when Konami started pumping out arcade DDR games again, as top American ITG players were able to easily clean out the new boss songs while Japanese players had to play catchup. When DDR A got an official North American release, with network support and all, American players officially become some of the best players in the world, with several of them becoming regulars at the Konami Arcade Championship in Japan and one of them becoming champion twice.
    • At the height of In the Groove's popularity, the American audiences for DDR and ITG were almost mutually exclusive – for many of the same reasons that the series flopped in Japan. Those who preferred ITG saw DDR as a stagnant franchise with boring charts aimed at the lowest common denominator, lauding ITG as the more advanced and sophisticated experience. Americans who still held true to DDR typically derided ITG as a soulless ripoff of DDR with charts that were difficult for the sake of difficulty, while lacking the flavor and polish that they felt characterized DDR.
  • Jak II: Renegade's Tone Shift to a Darker and Edgier epic as opposed to the first game's generally up-beat Collect-a-Thon Platformer was met with a bit of whiplash from the American and European communities, but is still considered one of the PlayStation 2's best games and a worthy follow-up to The Precursor Legacy. Japan, who loved the first game along with Naughty Dog's Crash Bandicoot trilogy, absolutely hated this direction, with the Japanese version having the least amount of sales and Naughty Dog themselves recognizing that they've completely alienated their Japanese userbase with this decision. It's telling that neither Jak 3 or Jak X got proper Japanese releases until the PS4 remasters (and even then they were entirely untranslated), with Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier being the only other Jak and Daxter game to fill that gap in the meantime.
  • KanColle is hugely popular in Japan, but not so much in places like Hawaii (and especially WWII veterans or families of WWII veterans who fought in the Pacific front), since nearly all the protagonists are personified Japanese warships from World War II; while the antagonists are demonic in nature, and though not outright said to be American military, are strongly implied to be. Also, this game isn't well liked in Korea since it's been accused of "glorifying Japanese imperialism" and shifting the political spectrum of young people to the far right. This stance started changing with reveal of Iowa, the first American ship to be implemented with the Play Station Vita version of the game, which also debunks the implication of the Abyssals being the Allies. Unsurprisingly, she's a huge hit with the American Kancolle community. Despite this, the high concentration of very young-looking cute girls keeps it a niche-within-a-niche in America, where most people consider interest in that sort of thing creepy. (Iowa is popular overseas partly because she's mature-looking and well-endowed.
  • Kart Rider is a huge deal in Korea, but is obscure in other countries. This got worse, from mere obscurity to full on hatred with the game's mobile iteration, KartRider Rush+, due to the aggressive monetization practices requiring players to constantly invest in the newest, fastest Karts to remain competitive, something that is frowned upon outside of Asia, as well as the Western and South-East Asian versions only receiving updates a whole year after they came out on the Korean and Chinese versions. This video goes into more detail.
  • The King of Fighters
    • Third protagonist and first sidekick Ash Crimson and Benimaru Nikaido are off-putting to some Western audiences, both due to their mannerisms (Benimaru evokes imagery of stereotypical gay men and Ash has some very effeminate quirks). Likely this is caused by the opinion that a fighting game character should look like they could actually hold their own in a fight, of which both characters do not exude. However, Benimaru has garnered much less hatred than Ash due to his more masculine appearance, more genial personality, being around since the very first game, increasing muscularity in recent games, and being a confirmed heterosexual. Ash himself would eventually be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap in XIII due to revelations regarding his true character and his ultimate fate.
    • K9999 ended up falling victim to a variation of this. Eastern audiences did take kindly to his heavy resemblance to AKIRA's Tetsuo Shima (down to having his VA) and saw it as a well-intentioned Shout-Out. In the West, though? He ended up so utterly despised for those very same qualities, which they viewed as outright plagiarism, that SNK refused to even acknowledge him for two decades up until XV, and even then not without a heavy redesign. Or at least that's the story SNK decided to roll with when they reintroduced him, they pretended that K9999 was giving them so much problems that they had to retcon him altogether, but in truth, they just couldn't fit him in the story until XV. When K9999, as Krohnen, returned, even the Westerners welcomed him due to having his own Character Development and being made to be less of a plagiarized character, and they end up being amused at the prank SNK played against them for years.
    • Sylvie Paula Paula, a walking homage to pop idol Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, proved to be one of the most popular newcomers from KOF XIV in Japan and other Asian regions. The west, however, sees Sylvie as SNK unapologetically attempting to make their own counterpart to Lucky Chloe, and she is hated by them just the same as Chloe is.
  • Kingdom Hearts does poorly in Europe. It's very noticeable due to the huge gap in sales between Europe, compared to Japan and North America. It's bizarre, as Disney-licensed games are usually very big in Europe, to the point that Sega used the Mickey Mouse license to create Mickey's Castle of Illusion to make sure that the Mega Drive had a good European launch, and JRPGs tend to be enormous hits, as with Dragon Quest, Secret of Mana and Terranigma. Disney has a "family friendly" image and a near monopoly on animation, so it's likely Kingdom Hearts suffers from what issues plagued Euro Disneyland, and especially for gamers who probably don't like the idea of Disney encroaching on other creators' video games. This is also likely why non-English European dubs of the games were discontinued from Re: Chain of Memories onwards (even for the HD re-releases of older games).
  • The Last of Us Part II is a Contested Sequel in the West due to some contentious plot choices (namely killing off Joel from the first game and then having you play as his killer, while the game attempts to make you sympathize with her), but it managed to be critically acclaimed (though subject to extreme Critical Dissonance). Gamers elsewhere, however—especially in East Asian countries like Japan and South Korea—almost universally loathed the game, to the point that stores had to deny refunds for the game completely because so many customers were returning it. Critical reviews were slightly less harsh, but they tended to be lower on average than the overwhelmingly positive critical reviews in the West. Several streamers even went as far as to destroy the game's Blu-Ray disc on-stream to express their disgust, the most famous example being a Korean streamer who destroyed his copy with a pair of scissors.
  • Like a Dragon: Daigo Dojima gets this a lot. In Asia, Daigo is generally in the top ten most popular characters in the franchise, and is seen as a dutiful man trying to build on his father's legacy as a pillar of the Tojo Clan, in spite of nearly insurmountable challenges he faces from both inside and outside his organization. However, he is nearly universally disliked in the West, where he's seen as an incompetent leader who can't keep his subordinates in line and as an overly prideful man who clings to a leadership position he is unqualified for and gained through his father's reputation and Kiryu's favoritism, refusing to hand over the reins to any of his vastly more competent and charismatic subordinates.
  • In Live A Live, Streibough is adored in Japan for his design and his friendship with Oersted pre-betrayal, and generally the whole events are accepted as a tragedy on both sides. Everywhere else, he's despised for said betrayal and his life-ruining jealousy, and the tragedy is more focused on poor Oersted being the victim of misfortune; the sense of tragedy is not shared for Streibough, who's considered more petty and unworthy of being considered tragic.
  • Live Powerful Pro Baseball is a Konami sports franchise with no Western presence outside of two out of four spinoffs based on the MLB. A 1997 Gamespot review of Pawapuro 4 considers it "inconsequential", slow-paced and is put off by the cartoony aesthetic. In Japan, it was advertised as "THE BASEBALL GAME" and enjoyed such success that the sequel spawned a side-series that lasted until 2012. This is no different with said series, Power Pro-kun Pocket. A 2006 preview also from Gamespot spends over a paragraph complaining about getting lost on what's the actual main draw of the series — the Dating Sim scenario that awards ballplayers for successful runs (which happens to be something butchered out on the only time a DS Power Pros game was released overseas). Namco's Famista, the older major Japanese baseball franchise, is so seen in the same light that the RBI Baseball localization of the NES installment developed into its own thing with a more realistic design direction. After Konami's reputation plummetted, they somehow still managed to give utmost care to Power Pros games and not letting them leave Japan any further, resulting the franchise to be one of its main moneymaker in Japan with the Westerners forgetting that it even existed (thus fueling the condemning meme of "Konami doesn't make games anymore.").

    M 
  • maimai is stupendously popular in Japan and has a decent following in other countries in Eastern and Southeastern Asia. However, interest for the US location test is low if not outright nonexistent and most people in Western rhythm game communities don't really care much for it, instead favoring more Nintendo Hard games using falling or upward-scrolling notes (rather than maimai's radial-scrolling notes) such as DanceDanceRevolution, SOUND VOLTEX, and especially beatmania IIDX, and would much prefer to get CHUNITHM, SEGA's other major arcade rhythm game property that suffers even more of No Export for You than maimai. (Though the circumstances of the loctest — no All.net, expensive pricing that was requested by SEGA, and a lot of missing songs — are also to blame for the location test being poorly-received.)
  • Mario Kart:
    • Most Americans see Metal Mario's addition in Mario Kart 7 as a worthless and unoriginal Mario clone, while Japanese players and Smash Bros. fans love giving him Alternative Character Interpretation, playing as him and treating him as The Rival to Mario. This was amplified in Mario Kart 8 with Pink Gold Peach (a completely new addition that left a lot of American and European players dumbfounded, but Japanese players tolerated).
    • Likewise, the baby characters have a pretty big fanbase in Japan due to their cuteness, while overseas, they're by and large seen as uninspired clones that steal slots from more deserving characters.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom: Although the MvC series is popular on the other side of the pond (as noted by this trope's polar opposite), Japanese reaction to the series as a whole is, at best, a resounding "meh" (even when taking Tatsunoko vs. Capcom into account), at worst, a series of legendary kusoge ("shitty game"). Fighting game website shoryuken.com goes into detail on just how bad MvC2 and UMvC3's reputations are in Japan in this article.
  • The Mass Effect games, while extremely popular in the West, were pretty obscure in Japan due to minimal effort of promotion despite featuring Visual Novel esque multiple choices and gameplay tailored to casual audiences. This is because said multiple choices are morality choices, and Japanese players are used to morality choices in video games having "right" and "wrong" answers, with wrong answers leading to a Nonstandard Game Over, the NPCs not trusting the choice, or the choice being presented again. Mass Effect, on the other hand, has branching story paths, which confuses Japanese players on which one they felt is "right." The series does, however, rank up high scores at Famitsu.
  • MechWarrior Living Legends' variety of Space Planes and Future Copters are popular with the game's native Western audience, but unpopular with Eastern European players, many Eastern clans prefer sniping and kiting, which the aircraft directly counter, while Western units often prefer close-in brutal combat. The majority of Russian-made custom maps do not feature aircraft factories, or limit it to the weak (but more annoying) VTOL aircraft.
  • The Mega Man series is well-respected in Japan and North America and considered an icon not just of the NES era, but video games in general. In Europe, however, things were a different story. The NES and SNES didn't catch on in most of Europe for several reasons, and by the time Mega Man games started coming out on consoles Europeans actually owned, their short length, colorful, generally 2D graphics, and frequent release schedule caused the majority of players and magazines to dismiss them as shovelware. (Both of these aspects were criticized in North American mags as well, but not nearly as viciously.) Though the series was eventually Vindicated by History, European sales lag behind Japanese and American numbers to this day.
  • Metal Gear:
    • Raiden wasn't as hated in Japan as much as he was in America and Europe when Metal Gear Solid 2 first came out. Most of the complaints players had in Japan wasn't with Raiden himself per se, but from not being able to play as Solid Snake. This is probably because being Bishōnen, as Raiden is, isn't a big deal to Japanese gamers, whereas in the West, such characters are seen as overly effeminate, especially in an action game. It helps that Kenyū Horiuchi, Raiden's Japanese voice actor, actually made him sound like a real adult, giving him a voice almost as deep as Akio Ōtsuka's performance as Solid Snake, as opposed to the higher-pitched approach that Quinton Flynn went with. The hatred around him eventually died down, partly because Raiden's portrayal in Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was much more well-received, partly because most people in the West really think that he is meant to be a critique for players who look at Solid Snake for power fantasy. People would rather look at the game's writing, which has been subjected to Values Resonance.
    • Japanese fans were extremely critical of the fact that the opening cutscene of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty shows Solid Snake casually tossing a cigarette butt off a bridge. In a culture where schools are cleaned by their own students, the consideration of others' needs is paramount, and with a semi-religious faith in the idea of items having a proper resting place, littering is considered revolting, pointless Jerkass behaviour that is genuinely upsetting to see done by a cool and likeable hero. Later games made a point of showing Snake (and his father) dispose properly of everything they smoke, with the opening cutscene of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater giving the fate of the thrown-away cigar special attention. In the West, littering isn't particularly liked, but it's a petty enough crime that it's extremely unlikely that any Western fans even noticed that Snake was littering in that scene.
  • Metroid games are generally average sellers in Japan, while being much more popular in America, to the point where the second game was advertised to Japanese audiences as being the "hit video game in America." There's a variety of debate as to why that is, with Nintendo themselves placing the dissonance on the fact that the two genres most of the series titles are in aren't the most popular in the region. Metroid: Other M attempted to address this by being a more actionized third-person affair, but sales remained the same and what Japan fans there were ended up being mildly disappointed (while Western fans came to loathe it due to its increased linearity).
  • Milon's Secret Castle was a really popular game in Japan, but when it came to the USA, Americans found the game frustratingly difficult due to lack of mercy invincibility and quickly respawning enemies, lack of direction and secretive gameplay that practically necessitated a walkthrough, Checkpoint Starvation (unless you knew a cheat code), and an underwhelming protagonist who appeared to wear pajamas and shot bubbles at foes.
  • Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a mobile MOBA game, made in China and somehow made it big in the Asian region, especially the Southeast Asian ones. In the West, however, the game is generally reviled and ridiculed as a 'cheap mobile League of Legends knockoff', not helped with how some heroes were 'inspired' by League champions to the point of almost copycatting and that MLBB simplified the mechanics of a MOBA genre (in which League of Legends has already been considered 'simplified' compared to its main competitor) to cater with the mobile controls, and yet grew popular enough to warrant its high-grossing championship mostly in Southeast Asia, so that gave more fuels for the Western MOBA fanbase to claim that it's even more braindead. The Westerners are very baffled when they hear someone praise MLBB or think of it as their preferred MOBA and were pissed that it's still ahead in popularity compared to League of Legends: Wild Rift, the mobile version of League, for them, MLBB will forever be considered a 'cheap Chinese bootleg copycat undeserving of their fandom'. (It also doesn't help that their developer, Moonton, was caught in a long-since settled legal copyright battle against Riot Games due to design similarities, it's still often used by the Westerners as a weapon to talk smack on MLBB)
  • The Curse of Monkey Island has an in-universe example, as Guybrush reads a book about the history of the Goodsoup family, finding out their chain of restaurants never became popular in the South Pacific.
  • Monster Hunter:
    • The series in general, despite being one of the most popular gaming franchises of all time in Japan, has only established a small, dedicated following in North America, particularly Mexico and the U.S. Some Western gamers dislike the games because of the heavy grinding needed to craft items and armor, lack of enemy targeting, and lack of visible Life Meters for boss monsters. This sadly means if you live outside of Japan, portable games up until Monster Hunter 4 become exercises in patience and loneliness due to the lack of an online mode. This seems to be changing with 4 Ultimate, which sold a good 290,000 copies in North America in its first month, but it's still far from the household name that it is in Japan. Then there are Western fans who would enjoy MonHun more if the last three games (4, 4G/4 Ultimate, and X/Generations) had console releases, despite the series being a Cash-Cow Franchise in Japan because it's primarily on handheld platforms. Monster Hunter: World in particular is an effort to address Western criticisms, by being on consoles rather than handhelds and having a lot of quality-of-life improvements to address mechanics that are seen as staples by hardcore fans but turn-offs by prospective players.
    • In World, the Handler is a popular and cute sidekick character in Japan, but Americans tend to see her as an Annoying Video Game Helper who contributes nothing to hunts yet takes joint credit for your accomplishments. She's also seen as an idiot in the story, getting into danger from an Odogaron and a Deviljho and needing to be rescued by the player. For the PC release of World, one of the single most popular mods is one that prevents her from ever speaking outside of story dialogue.
  • Mortal Kombat: In Japan, the franchise is at best Cult Classic, at worst forgotten. However, it did see a decent scene up until Mortal Kombat 3 until several factors out of Midway's control forced them to pull back, leaving the franchise in the dust for Japan:
    • While up until Mortal Kombat 3 the franchise was received pretty well, Japan already has a well-established scene of fighting games dominated by Street Fighter and several of its competitors, especially by SNK. The Mortal Kombat cabinets were also different compared to the standard fighting game cabinets in Japan, so it was more considered a 'rare foreigner game' by Japan. While the console ports hit the home consoles such as Super Famicom or Sega Genesis, Midway often half-assed in the localization, never giving Japanese subtitles for local Japanese players to read. And finally, the franchise's signature early installment Perfect Play A.I. proved to be a road-block of difficulty for Japanese players more familiar with their local fighting games.
    • While Midway still strived to give Japan attention, it ended up being more or less sparse, as even they managed to include decent censorship to make them pass Japan's policies. However, that changed with the introduction of CERO rating system, which completely forbade display of human dismemberment (thanks to an incident involving decapitation and dismemberment shaking Japan and changing their view about violence in video games). At that point, Midway decided that localizing to Japan would be a lost cause if they were not allowed to import Mortal Kombat's signature heavy focus on gory violence, in which dismembering humans is par on the course. And thus, the franchise completely stayed away from Japan (with the planned Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance localization cancelled), and only remembered by completely hardcore 90's gamers of Japan.
  • In Russia, Mortal Kombat is synonymous with the fighting game genre. But Russian gamers don't seem to like Japanese fighters, like Street Fighter and Tekken, mainly due to the cartoony graphics of the first one and complex battle systems of both. However, it's not without a small following.
  • The Polish World War II/Time Travel FPS Mortyr 2093-1944 spoiled the Polish press in its day, while it was regarded as a laughingstock abroad, especially in comparison to contemporary FPS games like Half-Life. Penny Arcade notably took a jab at the game in this strip. In contrast, however, its sequel got some flak from the Polish press that time around (didn't help that, by that time, the Polish game industry was wowing the world with Painkiller), while some foreign reviewers regarded it as passable at best.

    N-P 
  • While selling well in Japan, Natsuiro High School is greatly disliked by some in the West mostly due to its Audience-Alienating Premise of the protagonist being made to take panty shots of the female characters.
  • Neptunia:
    • This was the initial reception of the first game. Critics trashed the game for its clunky and broken gameplay that looks like it was an Obvious Beta (e.g. enemies appearing out of nowhere, having to pay money in order to buy some items and DLC characters, etc.) and how overtly sexual the female playable characters (particularly Vert and Purple Heart) looked, with even fans of the series consider it the weakest of the series, namely its gameplay. In Japan, it was very well-received, to the point that the next game ended up being a Continuity Reboot after the first game ended with the main CPUs giving up their powers and living their normal lives up until their deaths. Since then, however, many have considered it the best game of the franchise (at least in terms of story).
    • Out of the 4 CPUs, Vert is a far more controversial character in the anglosphere. While she isn't as popular in Japan (not helped by the system she represents selling poorly there), she still has a fanbase. In the West, she is disliked by some fans for her tendency to pursue the other Candidates (especially Nepgear) without their consent, and sometimes goes to far with it (such as showing Ram and Rom "raunchy" pictures and dressing them up in revealing clothing, all while thinking to herself of seeing "those immature, soft bodies wrapped in those naughty, adult costumes", in VII), boasting about her well-endowed figure in front of and mocking the self-conscious Blanc just to get a rage reaction out of her, and prioritizing her CPU duties in favor of playing her games.
  • NieR: while the Replicant version of Nier ("Brother" Nier) is not hated, his popularity is far eclipsed by his older and more grizzled Gestalt counterpart ("Father" Nier) outside of Japan. This comes as little surprise, since the developers made "Father" Nier to pander specifically to western gamers, and succeeded on that front, such that many fans were disappointed that NieR Gestalt didn't receive a next-gen port like NieR Replicant did.
  • Overwatch: Tracer is pretty popular, except in her native UK, where her extremely exaggerated Cockney accent makes her a lot less sexy/endearing and a lot more annoying.
  • The Paper Mario franchise is usually far more popular overseas, but Sticker Star is actually the best-selling Paper Mario title in Japan, whereas it was the worst-selling Paper Mario in North America since the first. This might simply be because it was released on a handheld, because Japanese fans had similar complaints about the sudden shift in gameplay and tone, and Paper Mario: Color Splash performed dismally in both regions — even so, it seems to indicate that the shift in the series' tone isn't as much of a hot-button issue in Japan as it is overseas.
  • Persona:
    • You'd think the proclaimed mascot of Persona 4, Teddie, would be loved. He is critically acclaimed... in Japan. In America, fans see him as nothing more than a childish, annoying nuisance that can't seem to keep his hands off of any girl.
    • Marie is controversial in the American fandom, often compared to Poochie from The Simpsons, due to her tsundere personality and somewhat aggressive inclusion in the remake and spinoffs (to the point that Persona 4: The Golden Animation is largely focused on her). However, perhaps because of her voice actress' popularity, she is much more popular in her native Japan, thus only fuels the hatedom due to the Content Creator Bias.
    • Yosuke Hanamura ranks very high in Japanese popularity polls for being a relatable Everyman, but he's a major Base-Breaking Character in the west, mostly due to being the center of the game's very divisive comedy scenes. These scenes come in two flavours: either he's treating the girls and Kanji in a way that comes off as sexist or homophobic, or he's being an excessively abused Cosmic Plaything that many fans find goes too far to be funny.
    • In Japan, Yukiko is fairly liked due to being a Yamato Nadeshiko done right (inner steel and all that) with her only major flaws being her tendency to laugh heavily about anything and like with nearly all girls in the series being a Lethal Chef. Hence while not exactly hated in the West, like most Yamato Nadeshikos she is still considered a bit of a Flat Character.
    • Persona 5 has Goro Akechi. He's extremely popular in Japan, to the point of being the highest-ranked member of the Phantom Thieves in an official popularity poll covering every game in the Persona series from Persona 3 onwards, and regularly topping other official popularity polls. However, due to Values Dissonance between Japan and the West concerning how society views illegitimate children and how children who are wards of the state are treated and cared for, in the West he's extremely divisive and his problems frequently end up coming off as Wangst to Western fans. He has been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap to many players with Royal due to reworking his Confidant to be one you have to actively pursue rather than one that automatically goes up as you progress through the story, and the new scenes create more of a genuine bond between Joker and him. And then during the new semester, he gained a lot of fans for being a largely unrepentant psychopathic Token Evil Teammate. And his brief period as the navigator is hilarious.
    • As a franchise-wide example, the Hot Springs Episode Running Gag, while popular in Japanese comedies and thus a staple of the games and many anime, has (especially in recent years) been loathed by Western fans, mainly for painting the girls in a negative light and making them out of character. 3 at least got away with it by virtue of the punishment being optional and the guys (sort of) deserving it, but 4 made the abuse on the guys mandatory. Western fans rejoiced when 5 didn't have one, only to groan when Persona 5 Strikers ended up having one and it ended up not changing much compared to previous instances.
  • Phigros, a Rhythm Game for iOS and Android, has over 30 million downloads across both platforms and a considerable following in Asia, including its home country of China, due to being one of the more accessible rhythm games due to its freeware naturenote  and creative chart designs that make use of the game's unique judgement line gimmick. It is less-known in Western countries other than Australia and New Zealand (such as the United States), where the people who have heard the game really don't like it very much. The note presentation lacks the straightforwardness of games that the Western European and American rhythm game communities are more acquainted with (like in DanceDanceRevolution, Pump It Up, and beatmania IIDX)note , the game being exclusive to mobile platforms is an instant turn-off to those particular demographics (as mobile games aren't considered "real games" versus games on console, PC, or — mainly amongst rhythm game players — arcade), and "completely free game" often has connotations of "cheaply made game", i.e. "I don't need crappy free games when I can afford to pay for games with much better production values." The game being developed by a team from China also makes Westerners ambivalent at best, due to the widespread idea that "Chinese-made game = Shoddy Knockoff Product that is not as good as Japanese-, Korean-, or Western-made games."
  • Policenauts is beloved by Hideo Kojima's fanbase in Japan, but in the West it's viewed Kojima's weakest game and generally disliked. Part of this is due to the Fanservice Extra mechanic in the game that allows the player to grope every single female character and provides them with an endless supply of receptionists to try it out on, something that is considered weird and creepy in the West but was so beloved in Japan that a load more of these sequences got added in each time the game got ported. Another part of this is that the Anglosphere only got the game fan translated in the early 2010s, after the release of the divisive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which led to many gamers being less tolerant of it than they would have been if they'd been exposed to it before Kojima had dinged his, until then, unsullied reputation. It also didn't help that gaming fandom - at least, the parts of it that would drop everything to play a Hideo Kojima visual novel from the 90s - had become more critical and discerning in the years since Policenauts's original release, so a game remembered in the Japan of the early 90s for its groundbreaking script and animation sequences (which were genuinely impressive at the time) was criticised in the West of the early 10s for being overwritten and with a bigoted, reactionary tone. Fans also objected to the game's blatant Expy characters (poached from Lethal Weapon) and settings (poached from 2001: A Space Odyssey), viewing it as tacky plagiarism, which in gaming culture at the time of the game's original release, was a plus point ("Lethal Weapon but a video game and in space!!"). The tone-deaf recreation of the racial politics of Lethal Weapon also did not endear the game to Americans who had to endure that racial setting in real life, and the Creator Provincialism and racism was not recognised as the satire of racist 80s/90s Japan Takes Over the World films that the game's Japanese audience read it as, instead coming off as weird Boomerang Bigot recreation of an outdated form of racism.
  • The Professor Layton series of video games, whilst not that successful in America, is at least successful inside Japan and Europe, with perhaps the exception of one country, Belgium. This has mainly to do with the fact that Dutch people in general like the series so much that Level 5 decided to give the series Dutch dubs to boost the sales in the Netherlands. Something Belgian people absolutely hated. In fact, the Belgian people that get interested in the series still don't want to buy it because that's how much they hate the work put into the Dutch dubbing.
  • Puyo Puyo is such a popular video game franchise in Japan that is the Trope Codifier for competitive Falling Blocks games, spawned a lot of imitators during the 90s, and is a rare example of a long running SEGA franchise at 25 years and counting. Outside of Japan though, the series is very obscure for various reasons: Adaptation Displacement caused by the games being presented as spin-offs of other franchises, such as Sonic the Hedgehog or Kirby, the few games that didn't suffer from being reskinned not getting any advertisement and being released on obscure consoles like the Neo Geo Pocket and the N-Gage, cameos and crossovers with Puyo Puyo being rare, and the franchise in general being a notable case of No Export for You. The reason may be because of Girl-Show Ghetto, due the heavy emphasis on cute colorful characters with light-hearted comical stories that rarely take themselves seriously, invoking Values Dissonance outside of Japan. With the western releases of Puyo Puyo Tetris and Champions however, this might be changing.

    R-S 
  • Radarscope was a massive flop in the U.S., to the point where its unused cabinets were retooled into Donkey Kong, which ended up being far more successful and spawned two of Nintendo's biggest franchises.
  • Resident Evil: Leon S. Kennedy has generally been the more popular of the series' two male protagonists on both sides of the pond, but Chris Redfield's hulking up by Resident Evil 5 and his relationship and working with his partner Piers Nivans in Resident Evil 6, along with the story during his scenario and some Character Development, has boosted Chris' popularity in Japan (in regards to Piers, the seemingly Bara overtones may have something to do with it). Like Rebecca, he's divisive still in the West.
  • The SaGa series has been praised in Japan and almost every installment has sold over the million mark over there. Other than the first three games (which were all given a Final Fantasy Legend moniker to boost sales), SaGa has been hated in the west. While Sa Ga Frontier sold well in the states, critic and fan reviews are very split (and both a weird translation and its confusing stories don't help), and reactions to Unlimited Saga in particular were polar opposites to one another (good reviews in Japan, reviled in the West).
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police is one of the most popular franchises in the PC gaming industry in America. European critics, on the other hand, tend to have a strong dislike for the series. For example, while Season 1 of the Telltale reboot was critically acclaimed in America, it was widely panned in Europe. Just to make the critical reception even more confused, all three seasons of the reboot were generally well reviewed in the UK, with critics responding well to the additional sarcasm and cynicism Telltale had given the characters since their previous incarnations. The casual and needless violence, usually an instant game-breaker for UK adventure titles, was considered so comically excessive (and bloodless) that it was viewed mostly as a parody of violent American media.
  • In the Sengoku Basara universe, the Japanese fans certainly love Oichi and she is the Ensemble Dark Horse of a series seemingly tailored for Yaoi Fangirls. In America? She's considered a useless whiny emo girl, made even worse by the fact that the only "English" SB franchise that features her and can be reached by western audiences is the anime, which downplays her powers severely.
    Oichi: "This is Ichi's fault..."
    Fans: "Yes, we know Ichi... and we're sorr— Wait, what the hell!? It's not your fault, so stop crying and do something, damn it!"
  • Shadowgate, its NES port especially, is viewed as a classic in much of the Western world, praised for its eerie atmosphere among other things. In Japan, about the exact opposite is true, with the NES game frequently showing up on "worst of all time" lists. This is primarily due to a poor localization that kills the game's atmosphere in favor of Narm, as this Legends of Localization article argues. invoked
  • Shin Megami Tensei games outside the Persona sub-series generally do not tend to catch on well on the other side of the Pacific; at best they just slide under the radar and at worst they're disliked by those who know the series better through Persona. This led to a particularly infamous case with Shin Megami Tensei IV, which was released on the heels of Persona 3 and 4 hitting Cash-Cow Franchise status; Western fans compared it unfavorably to Persona, citing the lack of Social Links and the steep difficulty, not helped by most of the difficulty being at the beginning of the game. This is despite IV being the easiest game in the mainline series, but few know this as Shin Megami Tensei I and III are cult classics at best and II has never been released outside of Japan.
    • Fear of this trope in general was one of the reasons early SMT games weren't released outside Japan as gameplay aside, the players killed figures from all mythologies, including Hindu and Abrahamic.
    • The HD Remaster Updated Re-release of Nocturne managed to give the game a second wind in the West with marketing aiming to avoid this trope, with Atlus revealing it at the publicized Nintendo Online Direct and playing up things about the game that were memetic in the West such as Dante from Devil May Cry being featured. As Western Gamers were still more mixed on the game's outdated features, the earlier games have still not been rereleased for modern consoles like the Switch unlike in Japan.
    • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse was loathed by Hindu Indians due to its antagonistic depiction of Krishna.
    • Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is less well recieved in the rest of Asia compared to Japan and the West as despite the game being set in a timeline where Taisho democracy was extended, and villains are themed after fascist Japan, Raidou's clothes and settings are still from the Imperial Japanese era which bring bad memories to Japan's World War II victims. Raidou was even removed in certain releases of Nocturne HD for this reason, and the DLC costumes were omitted from the ports of Persona 5 Royal, which have all the rest of the DLC.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The series is known for being more popular in the West than at home. However:
    • Big the Cat, the large fishing-focused character from Sonic Adventure, is much more liked in Japan than in the West, where he's seen as The Scrappy and his minigames are seen as pointless. Part of this can be attributed to Dub Personality Change; in Japan, Big has a mellow voice and a simple-minded but down-to-earth nature, so his ditziness is endearing rather than annoying. Meanwhile, the English dub cranked up his Simpleton Voice, to the point where even his voice actor hated it, and made him significantly less down-to-earth and more whimsical, which resulted in him being less appealing to western fans.
    • Cream the Rabbit is a popular enough character in Japan that she's become a mainstay in the series, whereas she is much more divisive in the West. A likely reason is because Cream is ultra-polite, submissive, and somewhat withdrawn, putting her firmly in the Moe category. Also, she has a really high-pitched voice. These same traits make her irritating to many Western gamers. Case in point is the fact that Cream has been on the opening roster in every Japanese-made Sonic racing game since her debut but none of the western-made Sonic racing games, not even Team Sonic Racing.
  • Splatoon:
    • Subverted with the Squid Sisters. When originally revealed before the first game's release, their reception was rocky with otherwise interested Westerners. With their existence as idol singers (which is something Japan loves, but many other countries find weird), many fans worried that they'd be little more than moe fanservice. When the game actually came out, Callie and Marie quickly became popular due to their colorful personalities and cute designs, becoming seen as Series Mascots alongside the playable Inklings and having holographic concerts in Japan that fans elsewhere also love watching online. Now Western and Eastern fans alike get excited for the reveal of each game's new idol characters, who also go on to have their own concerts.
    • Played straight with the stage "Moray Towers". Among Western players, it is one of most hated maps in the game due to its high verticality making it a paradise for snipers and hell for everyone else. However, it ranks as one of the most popular stages among the game's native Japanese fanbase, hence its return in the sequel and it being the representative stage for the franchise in the Super Smash Bros. series.
  • Spyro the Dragon is considered a classic in America, but largely disliked and forgotten in Japan, to the point that the third game in the original trilogy, Spyro: Year of the Dragon, didn't got a release there due to how poorly the first two games sold, and would not see a release in Japan until Spyro Reignited Trilogy, several years later, Spyro thus having a long history of No Export for You in the region.note  The conversions for the first two games, which altered the camera to be spaced far above Spyro (but was nearly uncontrollable), significantly slowing down Spyro's movements, and signs (which allow you to read them when you attack them, but are sometimes placed near enemies) are largely blamed for the tepid reception, with the differences ironically meant to offset complaints about motion sickness during the demo period.
  • Star Fox: Slippy Toad is actually pretty popular in Japan. It's the North American fans that despise him, mostly for being a cross between a Annoying Video Game Helper and The Load. His whiny, irritating voice doesn't exactly help, especially thanks to his frequent tendency to shout "Fox, get this guy off me! Thanks, Fox!... Fox, get this guy off me!" This stems almost entirely from Star Fox 64; in the original SNES game, Slippy was no more or less liked than the other wingmen. Even when later games tried to give Slippy a more likeable and masculine-sounding voice actor, and removed him from the role of active pilot altogether, the fans largely rejected him. However, some games like Star Fox 64 3D, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, and Star Fox Zero deliberately got the original Star Fox 64 voice actress back because, in some kind of bizarre Love to Hate scenario, fans seem to actively prefer this version of Slippy despite their complaints. By contrast, Peppy is extremely popular thanks to his catchphrase "Do a Barrel Roll!" and the information he gives to Fox generally being more helpful, and Falco is on par in popularity with Fox and Wolf worldwide.
  • Streets of Rage 3 is a very divisive entry in only the West due to the changes that were made during its localization.

    T-Y 
  • Since the Super Famicom era, Tactics Ogre has been regarded as one of the cornerstone turn-based strategy games in Japan, alongside Fire Emblem. In the West, however, it was largely overshadowed by Final Fantasy Tactics due to being localized a bit late and not having the powerful brand name of Final Fantasy, causing many to consider it just a 'copycat' of Final Fantasy Tactics; in truth, it was actually inspired by Tactics Ogre in the first place. Inversely, Final Fantasy Tactics performed in a less stellar manner in Japan because the Japanese were accustomed to Tactics Ogre series, while the brand recognition of Final Fantasy, despite being big in Japan as well, did little to upset the status quo.
  • Tekken 7's newcomer, Lucky Chloe, is designed to be heavily based on Moe Japanese idols. While the Japanese fanbase had no problem with her concept and largely accepted her, many Western fans, on the other hand, despise Lucky Chloe and demanded that she shouldn't be in the game at all, to the point that Katsuhiro Harada tweeted about replacing her with "muscular bald man" in the Western version. However, it turned out to be a case of Trolling Creator, and many Western fans shared a collective groan over having to suffer her all the same. It's such a big and persistent case of dislike that when her official profile was released, it showed that Harada ascended this hatred by saying in the Tekken-verse, Lucky Chloe is a international music star who's popular in many countries... except in the U.S., where Americans rejected her. The same Americans still prefer her over the reporter that narrates the Story Mode, because at least she has a personality and backstory, unlike the reporter who's a Flat Character and doesn't even have a name.
  • Sega's arcade take on Tetris was incredibly popular in Japan, becoming the top-selling arcade game of 1989 and a perennial arcade fixture. It never caught on in the West, where people were already hooked on other versions, such as Nintendo's iconic Game Boy version. The prevalence of options in the US (such as the Atari versions, which were never exported elsewhere) combined with the decline of arcades in the region meant that there was little room for Sega's version of Tetris to thrive. This also led to competitive Tetris taking diverging paths in the different regions. Japanese players prefer the Sega ruleset, which became the basis of many subsequent titles like the Tetris: The Grand Master series, while the hardcore US fans of Tetris prefer to spend their valuable time and resources to seek out the NES Tengen version instead.
  • The Tower of Druaga is very popular in Japan and considered as iconic as Galaga and Dig Dug there, spawning numerous sequels, spin-offs, an anime, and an amusement park attraction. Westerners who have played this game view it as a sluggish and obtuse exercise in frustration due to its heavy reliance on Trial-and-Error Gameplay. In Japan, where arcades have always been seen as social environments, players would congregate and share tips to help each other progress; overseas, where arcades are traditionally more isolated, test audiences didn't understand this concept and instead got frustrated that they couldn't figure it out on their own. As a result, the arcade version was never exported, and none of the console versions were released outside of Japan until the Compilation Rerelease Namco Museum Vol. 3 twelve years later. Said release included a full walkthrough in the manual, yet still received negative reviews from players outside of Japan. The game continues to appear in Namco compilations due to its enduring Japanese popularity, usually to the confusion of international audiences.
  • Touhou Project has central protagonist Reimu Hakurei, who frequently tops "favorite Touhou character" polls in Japan, but in the West, her being a good but hostile character makes her a Base-Breaking Character at best and there are many memes about how much of a bitch she is.
  • Twisted Metal is extremely popular in America but poorly received everywhere else, where it is considered to be brainless and requiring no strategy. A good example of this is when the PlayStation 3 sequel closed Sony's E3 2010 conference, where it was considered a crowd pleaser by American gamers and bad everywhere else, especially France (because TM2 lets you blow up the Eiffel Tower).
  • Valkyria Chronicles has Edy and Susie, who are popular enough in Japan to get their own DLC alongside other Ensemble Darkhorses as the Edy Detachment and make numerous cameos in sequels. Overseas, Susie is one of the most hated units in the game due to having one of the worst personal potentials in the game: Humanitarian, which can cause her to refuse to attack an enemy. Her hatred is enough that she's a frequent pick to be sacrificed for the Splintered Horn medal alongside Herbert and Cezary. Edy, while not as loathed, is more of a Base-Breaking Character due to her having two personal potentials that decrease attack power (one of the most important qualities of a Shocktrooper,) one of which requires her to be kept away from Rosie (who's guaranteed to be in every mission due to her very presence providing an extra Command Point.)
  • Virtua Fighter has been hit with this starting around the time Sega left the console market. Despite being considered as the most balanced and deepest fighting game series, in America it lags behind other popular fighters like Tekken, Dead or Alive, and Soulcalibur. While it isn't hated in America per se, American gamers are widely apathetic towards the franchise compared to others, and it's joked that no one plays it. The series has had trouble attracting casual players, due to a number of factors:
    • Since the series was created by Sega in the early '90s, it received a number of questionable ports to underperforming consoles.note  This, along with other 3D fighting games entering the scene, caused the series to fade away from the players' minds. It was not until VF4 that the series was ported to non-Sega consoles. This gave the VF series a bit of a resurgence after years of no new entries, and 4 did very well in terms of sales and reception, but now it had to contend with Tekken, which was the big fighting game for the PlayStation consoles.
    • Virtua Fighter games have always focused on the arcade version first, with the console ports being just that, ports. This works fine in Japan and Europe where arcades are still alive and easy to find, but not in America where arcades are almost extinct. In a couple of cases, new editions of 4 and 5 never made it to consoles.
    • Ultimate Showdown was a PS4 exclusive at a time when PC gaming was becoming increasingly popular for playing fighters at home, and featured delay-based netcode when other Japanese fighters were starting to adopt rollback netcode which Westerners believe is much better.
    • Lastly, and probably the most important reasons, Virtua Fighter lacks both the flashiness and the (relatively) strong emphasis on story and lore found in every other fighting game. While many fighting games have Super Natural Martial Arts where the cast can shoot fireballs and throw flaming punches, and each character has a story told through cutscenes in arcade mode, not only is VF far more grounded, but due to its arcade nature, it even lacks cutscenes in nearly all of its entries, aside from a few general intro movies. Only one character in VF, the boss Dural, is fantastic in nature, while every other character is a relative Badass Normal who fights with a mostly accurate representation of his or her assigned fighting style. This is in direct contrast to fighting games whose playable characters include any number of ninja, robots, demons, and animals whose moves constantly defy physics. VF's characters are accused of being bland in comparison, and without cutscenes to flesh them out, they can be seen as one-dimensional, even taking into consideration their bios found in the game manuals. While the gameplay is good, this winds up making the games look boring, and the lack of on-screen Character Development and world-building keeps players from becoming invested in the universe.
    • Much of the material that did flesh out the characters and universe came from other media released only in Japan, such as image albums and manga. An anime series was dubbed into English, but its second season was not due to poor sales of the first season.
    • All of these things wind up making the series very unfriendly to casual players, and with its reputation as being a very difficult game to learn and be good at, it tends to only attract competitive fighting gamers who play at tournaments. Even then, the VF series is rarely seen at EVO despite its pedigree, in favor of more spectacle-filled games such as Marvel vs. Capcom, Mortal Kombat, and the even more niche Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and Skullgirls, instead having smaller separate tournaments organized specifically for Virtua Fighter. In Japan, though, the series is still popular and has several more tournaments, even for some of the older games. Sega may be trying to change this, as members of the Virtua Fighter cast have been popping up as guest fighters and in crossover games.
  • Yo Kai Watch fell victim to this in North America. After becoming a Cash-Cow Franchise in Japan, Level-5 brought the original game to the United States two years later. While gained a small fanbase, mainstream audiences weren't interested, with following reception in Europe being little better. Some suggest the reason for this was Values Dissonance by way of yokai being a concept engrained in Japanese culture while being obscure in the West (outside those highlighted in more globally recognized Japanese folktales), while others believe that the media's positioning of the series as a "Pokémon killer" brought too much comparison between the Mon series, resulting in consumers viewing it as a cheap copy or overall having skewed expectations about the series.

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