While US and European players will not have the same jacket as Japanese players for Hokuto ga Gotoku, better known by us under the name of Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, the Japanese publisher Sega finally gives explanations.
During a conference held by Sega and dedicated mainly to the localization of Japanese games during the PAX West 2018, Sam Mullen, head of the western release of the publisher’s Japanese games, explained to fans why the jacket designed by Tetsuo Hara (illustrator of Yoshiyuki Okamura aka Buronson’s manga Hokuto no Ken) was not selected for the European version of Hokuto ga Gotoku : “Many fans have realized that for the release in North America, the look of the jacket has changed. This is one of the problems that the localization team often faces. In fact, we can not offer the visual on the left (the Japanese jacket of Hokuto ga Gotoku) as a jacket in the West. The reason for this is that it has a small element that causes a signal from the various classification agencies and makes them say ‘sorry but we will not approve the marketing of your jacket’. ”
What is this element that bothers so much? ” The problem is that Yuria is showing slightly the side of her breasts. The classification agencies gave us an answer like ‘you can not put that on the shelves’, it was clearly a categorical no. Even if Sega had answered that “No, dead to the authorities, we will do it anyway”, we would have had no recourse. So we created a new jacket. But there was such a demand from the fans for the original jacket that they really liked, and we obviously like, that we were able to integrate it as a reversible jacket. So if you buy the game, you can remove the jacket, turn it over and enjoy the original Japanese jacket. ”
A trailer for Hokuto ga Gotoku
Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise will be available in North America and Europe on PS4 as of October 2nd.