Like Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog's other classic platformer franchise, Jak and Daxter
also has a rather interesting history in Japan.
You may recall how the Japanese version of Crash was marketed much more cute for the
Japanese market, and that this resulted in the title achieving exceptionally high sales
and popularity for a Western game.
There are some similarities to this in the way Jak and Daxter was handled in Japan.
However, the devs didn't have to change too much, as a Japan-based focus was actually
a big inspiration for the Western release too.
The devs were inspired by popular Japanese video game series such as Final Fantasy, as
well as their earlier success with Crash Bandicoot.
To quote Josh Scherr, who was working as an animator during the original game's development:
“In terms of directive, one thing we were trying to do internally was that we wanted
to create a title that not only had broad appeal to many different age groups, but also
to many different cultures.
To that end, that’s where a lot of the anime stylings of the characters were coming into
play.”
Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells expanded on this, stating:
“We knew we wanted to do a character action game.
I remember spending some time at the dog park with Jason [Rubin] kicking around ideas.
We were inspired by the success of Final Fantasy at the time, the Japanese influence.
That was one of the big things.
We wanted to replicate the success that Crash had in Japan, because back then it was a huge
part of the market.”
This philosophy worked very well, with Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy having great
success worldwide.
No major changes were made to Japanese version, although the box art was made a little more
cute and cheerful to help better market it in the country.
You may also notice that the game's name is stylised a little differently in Japan, with
an "X" symbol substituting for the word "and".
This small difference can be found in all games in the series.
Another interesting little difference can be found within the game's manual, which in
the US and European versions is a fold out poster.
The US version in particular is quite bare bones in information, with the majority of
it being devoted to the main poster image and a map of the world.
The Japanese version comes with a traditional manual, instead, and not a poster hybrid.
It's big, in full colour and contains lots of information about the game and the story.
It also features a lot of illustrations and artwork, as well as a comic alongside the
bottom of the pages.
Moving away from the first game though and onto Jak II, which took a stark departure
from the original.
Whilst for the first game, Naughty Dog were inspired by Japan, this time they took inspiration
from new games that were coming out during this time, such as Grand Theft Auto III.
The industry seemed to be changing and they didn't want to be left behind.
This saw Jak II take not just a much more open world approach, with a big emphasis on
weapons, but also a much darker approach.
Longtime producer Sam Thompson talks about this, explaining:
“Jason felt strongly that we should make the move to a darker play in Jak II, which
completely alienated Japan.
The sales were horrendous for Jak II in Japan.”
“But that was the decision we had to make.
Jason and Andy specifically – and this is with all of the stakeholders at Sony buying
in as well – they had to mature this franchise if they wanted it to compete long term.”
Yep, whilst Jak 1 was a huge success in Japan, Jak II sold extremely poorly - with this thought
to be due to the much darker style.
This time the team didn't try and market it as being more cheerful with the Japanese box
art.
With it being very dark, even in Japan.
Curiously, there was a small difference in the name though.
The Japanese version instead goes by the name "Jak X Daxter 2", unlike the West where Daxter's
name was removed.
The devs did still make a few attempts to lighten the game up for the Japanese market
however.
One of these changes is that Jak no longer has a goatee by default in the Japanese version.
He will instead be portrayed like he was in the original game, without facial hair.
There's no official statements on why this is, but it's likely that this was either just
due to it being different from the first game and, with all the other changes in direction,
they worried about alienating fans even more.
Or perhaps they felt that the goatee-look was too aggressive.
You don't need a Japanese copy of the game to see a clean shaven Jak though.
Western players can also enable this via the secrets menu.
Conversely, Japanese players can instead enable the Western look for Jak.
Another interesting change made to the game relates to the NPCs you can find within the
city.
If you so desire, you can not only attack the civilians but even kill them.
This causes the guards to come after you, in a system that's somewhat like Grand Theft
Auto's police system.
Now, in the Japanese version, you can still attack the population but they can no longer
be killed.
Instead they will just bounce around the stage until you stop attacking them.
The guards will still come after you in the Japanese version though, if you do enough
damage to normally kill them.
This means there's no real gameplay reason for this change.
It's likely that this was done to make things more light-hearted in nature.
Unfortunately for the devs though, these changes of course didn't work.
As mentioned, the game still sold extremely poorly and was classed as a huge failure in
Japan.
So much so in fact that, following Jak II, the franchise would be virtually abandoned
in the Japanese market.
Jak 3 wasn't released in Japan and neither were the spin off games.
Curiously, the YouTube user RedVGFox discovered than an unfinished Japanese translation still
exists in Jak 3's files.
He then managed to hack it into the game via a Gameshark and posted a video about it on
his channel.
Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier was the only other title to be localised in Japan,
with this also being the final game in the franchise and also not being developed by
original developers Naughty Dog.
For some reason, this was only released on PSP in Japan, unlike the West where it was
released on both PSP and PS2.
Furthermore, it was the only game in Japan to get a 12 years and up age rating.
The first two games were rated with the lowest rating possible.
In the US however, it was rated E10+, which is lower than Jak II's Teen rating, but higher
than the first game's E rating.
Not only did other titles not get released, but the PS3 HD Collection also went unreleased,
probably due to the lack of a localization for the third game.
The third game was eventually released though, more than 13 years later, as a PS2 classic
on the PlayStation 4 store.
The game was released December 21st 2017 and is entirely in English, with the text in parenthesis
informing people that it is the "English version".
Jak and Daxter were, of course, still featured in the Japanese version of PlayStation Move
Heroes though, as well as PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
Jak is also still shown with his goatee.
But, for now at least, that remains the full extent of Jax and Daxter presence in the Japanese
market.
The series started out exceedingly strong in Japan, with sales even rivalling Crash
Bandicoot's.
But then, following the change in tone for the 2nd game, all of its momentum died off
and this made the publishers cautious about continuing the franchise over there.
On the flip side, Jak II sold very well over in the West and won numerous awards for its
quality and ambitious change of direction and this really goes to show how differently
markets can react at times.
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