THE BUZZ: Rising Star Games—a major publisher of Japanese games in Europe—has decided to help bring more great titles to North America.

EGM’s TAKE: As a huge fan of Japanese games, some of my favorite game publishers are companies like Atlus, Aksys, XSEED, and NIS America. Publishers like these continually take chances on bringing over some of the more niche Japanese games, and without them, I’d never have received some of my most beloved titles.

Over in Europe, one company famous for making similar efforts of their own is Rising Star Games. Just look at some of their recent releases: Bit.Trip Saga, Rune Factory Oceans, The King of Fighters XIII, DoDonPachi Resurrection, and Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar.

Well, now the publisher has decided to focus some of its efforts on release great Japanese gaming in English here in North America. The company announced that after eight years of concentrating on the European market, they’ve now opened a division right here in my (current) home state of California. The first release? Cave’s latest shooter Akai Katana, set for release on the Xbox 360 in the second quarter of this year.

First off—the more games like these that we get from Japan, the better. Second, many of Cave’s most beloved “bullet hell” shooters still haven’t made it our way, so if companies like Rising Star Games are going to help fix that, then we all have reason to celebrate.

Source: MCV