A popular Japan-only Doraemon game is finally coming to the West, 40 years after its original release
The Famicom action adventure is releasing outside of Japan for the first time
One of the first games starring Doraemon is finally getting a Western release after 40 years.
There have been more than 80 video games starring the much-loved manga character, but the vast majority of these were only released in Japan.
One of the earliest and most popular examples was a Famicom game simply titled Doraemon, which was developed by Hudson Soft and released in Japan in 1986, reportedly selling over a million copies.
The game never officially made it outside of Japan, but that finally changes today, as Doraemon is the latest release in Hamster Corporation’s Console Archives retro series.
Console Archives: Doraemon is available today on PS5 and Switch 2, priced at £5.79 / $7.99.
Originally launched in February, Console Archives is a new companion series to Hamster’s long-running Arcade Archives series, which started 12 years ago and has been releasing retro arcade games on a weekly basis for the past nine of those years.
Whereas Arcade Archives focuses solely on coin-op arcade games, Console Archives naturally focuses on games released on home gaming systems. So far the series has only featured Famicom / NES and PlayStation games.
Doraemon is an action adventure which consists of three ‘worlds’, which essentially act as entirely separate games. The first is an overhead exploration game with side-scrolling platforming, the second is a shoot ’em up and the third is a side-scrolling underwater adventure.
Console Archives releases don’t translate in-game text at all, opting instead to ensure each release is as faithful to the original as possible. This has been problematic with some releases – a number of Console Archive releases are strategy or RPG games which are virtually unplayable because they were only released in Japan and have lots of Japanese text.
While Doraemon is also presented here in its untouched Japanese form, the fact it’s mainly an action game means it’s generally playable without the need to know Japanese.
A total of 24 Console Archive games have been released so far since the series launched in February. Highlights include PS1 games Cool Boarders, Sonic Wings Special and Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, and NES games Ninja Gaiden 2, Ninja Gaiden 3 and Terra Cresta.
