Games that came out only in Japan in their time

Plenty of well-known games never left Japan on their original hardware. Translation was expensive, especially for text-heavy role-playing games, and publishers were not always sure Western players would buy them. Fans later made their own translations, and some of these games finally got official Western releases decades later.

The list counts releases up to 2006. When a game reached North America or Europe afterwards, as a re-release or in a collection, the entry shows when and where.