Ask John: Will There Be Any Rurouni Kenshin Video Games in the US?

Question:
Is it possible with the popularity of Rurouni Kenshin that we could see a translation of the RPG come out? Also, how about a GOOD Kenshin fighting game containing characters from the Kyoto arc and moves that are actually in the anime?

Answer:
To be honest, I think it’s very unlikely that we’ll see a US release of either of the Rurouni Kenshin Playstation games, and even less likely that there will be a new game created for the series. Generally, even wildly popular anime series like Sailormoon and Dragonball have not had their video game counterparts come to the US, at least, not with any dependable consistency. (Dragonball: Final Bout was localized for a very short time, but one title in limited release compared to the total number of Dragonball video games available is relatively insignificant.) The Rurouni Kenshin RPG is a pure 2D game, and as far as I can recall, there have been a tiny handful of 100% hand-drawn 2D role-playing game released in the US recently, including Saga Frontier 2, Legend of Mana and Rhapsody, all for for the Playstation. The Rurouni Kenshin RPG is simply part of a genre of games that isn’t financially sound in today’s American video game market. Given the relatively lack-luster quality of the fighting game, it’s unlikely that any publisher would want to spend the money to license, translate and distribute it. Rurouni Kenshin has been relegated to the consciousness of die-hard fans in Japan now, so there certainly isn’t a big enough market in Japan to support a new Kenshin fighting game, and I don’t think that there’s a big enough market for a Rurouni Kenshin fighting game in the US, even with all of the people buying AD Vision’s Samurai X and Media Blaster’s TV series release, to convince an American game publisher to commission a new game or convince a Japanese company to develop a new game just for the US market.