Do Japanese developers really need to westernize their games?
It feels like just yesterday that I was sat in my living room
watching my brother play Sonic 3 and Knuckles on the Mega Drive
as a wide-eyed child. The tropical colors of Angel Island and
mood-lifting music were simply mesmerizing. What made Sega's
console truly amazing to me, though, was that this machine had
been created in a place that was literally on the other side of
the world; it was mysterious. That sense of wonder obviously
diminished as I got older — not just because the enigma of
foreign technology had been lifted but also because in the 18
years since that day, the rest of the world has had time to
catch up.  Slow changes over time are always less noticeable and
more acceptable than sudden ones. Perhaps it's for this reason
that gamers and the industry as a whole have only recently
started to publicize the disheartening news that Japan, arguably
the spiritual home of interactive entertainment, is losing
ground to their Western counter