Join Operation Rainfall, and request release of Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower in the States.
A petition campaign known as Operation Rainfall has formed in the hopes of swaying Nintendo of America towards localizing three of the Wii's most hotly anticipated games this year - Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower.
In March, Xenoblade Chronicles was announced for European release, and The Last Story was confirmed by Nintendo France recently. Xenoblade was originally announced for North America at E3 2009, but no word has been given since then, and at the moment, American fans appear set to miss out on all three titles.
With a limited selection of games coming to Wii this year and knowledge that the RPGs will be receiving English translations, the last straw seemed to come when Nintendo France's Mathieu Minel noted that they couldn't show Xenoblade at E3 since Nintendo of America had no plans to sell the game.
Frustrated gamers across several internet forums decided to take action into their own hands, and the effort culminated on IGN's Nintendo forum community with the formation of Operation Rainfall, and popularity has been snowballing from there. Supporters have been posting messages on Nintendo's official Facebook page, Youtube account, and to their Twitter accounts, as well as contacting Nintendo Customer Service to voice their concern and support for the games.
Fans have since posted thousands of comments on Nintendo's Facebook page in reference to Operation Rainfall and the hopeful release of the games, and several of the games' developers have expressed appreciation of support on Twitter.
People are flocking in droves to Amazon.com, where a listing for Monado: Beginning of the World (the previous title for Xenoblade's English release) is still available for pre-order. Within a day, the game jumped to #1 on Amazon's best sellers list. No such effort has had the chance to show real monetary support through pre-orders, so this is a unique opportunity to show Nintendo of America a fiscal benefit to releasing the game. A secondary benefit is that the game is being exposed to those who were previously unaware of its existence.
Those involved in the movement plan to send off a gigantic number of letters addressed to CEO Reggie Fils-Aime at Nintendo of America headquarters, politely requesting the localization of each game. Operation Rainfall's official site has some template letters already prepared to make the process easier, and recommends including little trinkets, such as a toy sword in the case of Xenoblade, in order to get the point across. The operation plans to send out letters for each game separately during consecutive week periods.
Previous attempts, such as those seeking to have Mother 3 localized, were acknowledged, but ultimately failed in bringing the game stateside. However, in that case, the game had not yet been localized. More recently, Tales series fans successfully influenced Namco Bandai to localize Tales of Graces F.
If you'd like to help out the cause, visit any of the above links. Good luck to all concerned!
