To import or not to import...

[Sarah Kerrigan]

Hello escapist. I have a funny story to tell (well I think it's funny), Recently, I've had the craving to replay Shadows of the Damned. I had given my Xbox copy to my friend who moved to Michigan. She was gracious enough to ship it back to me, until I remembered I sold my Xbox. Alright. Not a big deal. I still have a PS3. So I go to gamestop to buy a PS3 copy. Low and behold the closest gamestop that has it, is nearly 45 minutes away and I was not willing to drive.

Next best thing? Amazon. So I go on amazon looking for it. While there, I noticed importing it from Japan and Buying it was literally the same amount of money. Seeing as I was bored, I went ahead and imported it.

I played a good chunk yesterday with Japanese voices and english subs, and I was happy. I personally loved the japanese voice acting better and the game was still great.

So has anyone come across this? Have you ever debated on buying a game in your native country and also thought about importing it instead? And what was the greatest deal you ever got importing a game?

 

[Frezzato]

I didn't do it for games, but I did buy the Aliens 4-movie collection on Blu-ray (I refuse to use the proper term 'quadrilogy' in context because it's stupid) from Amazon UK.

Back then it should have cost $70, but this was maybe $22, including free shipping...to the United States. I went ahead after seeing the deal on a site (Slickdeals maybe?) and confirmed through several other sources that the movies were region-free.

.

Now, regarding games specifically, if there was one I probably would import, it would be Another Century's Episode R.

 

[Foolery]

Kind of. Mostly the Sengoku Basara series (4, and the HD collection), due to Capcom not bothering to release them over here, other than 3, which sold poorly, so I don't blame them. It's better with the Japanese voices. I've also imported Gundam Breaker (basically, a build-your-own-gundam action game with solo and co-op missions), and Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD.

 

[Sack of Cheese]

Whenever I look at the pricing of Australian released games and online stores based in other countries, online stores win most of the time. Import is like my second nature these days. Although I prefer to buy games of my region (PAL) to support European market.

Talk about Japanese imports, I only do it when there's no English version available, again, to support local market and because Japanese games prices are ridiculously high. I have several Japanese-only games on my shelf like Yakuza games, Gundam, Idolm@ster 2, J stars, Madoka and visual novels. Once you start importing them, you feel more confident to buy more.