Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been delayed in Europe until Q3/Q4 2008. This news has sent shockwaves throughout Europe and I am asking the nation of gamers out there to sign a petition against this treatment of European gamers. All gamers know what we Europeans have to put up with and I hope our American and Japanese counterparts can lend us some much needed support. All you have to do is give your name and e-mail address, and your e-mail will be protected to prevent spammers harvesting it. Please sign this petition to help us make our voice heard,

http://www.petitiononline.com/noe123/petition.html

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Wow, lol:  http://www.videogamer.com/news/06-12-2007-7047.html

You guys in Europe haven't got Zach & Wiki yet, or Ghost Squad, Battalion Wars 2, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings... that's just ridiculous.  What about Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn?  I don't see it on the list.  Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles?  Do you have Dewy's Adventure or Link's Crossbow Training?

That's definitely more than a two week delay, which counters what the Aussie Nintendo president said.  What is really lame is that SSBB is an online game and, not that I dismiss the possibility that people in Japan or North America will still be playing it, but they'd have months of practice.

I am still curious what problem Nintendo has with this.  Other than the PAL issues and the various translations (the latter of which could be helped by the three languages in NA - English, French, and Spanish), what else is left?  I'm certain they have a strategy, and are working to get out as many games as possible while giving 3rd party games a chance, plus they are having to catch up on a back-catalog, but I don't see how SSBB should be delayed no later than March.

At least you guys got Doshin the Giant and that Tingle game.  And Advance Wars DS 2 is coming out around the same time as NA.  That's plenty, right there.

We got Resi UC last friday and Link's Crossbow Training is out tomorrow, that's about it though, BWii is set for 15th Feb. Please sign the petition, when I get my Zapper tomorrow, I'm taking a pen and paper and gathering signatures, this is absolutely intolerable. I'm sick of this all the time. Very little info is required just your name and e-mail, so please show your support, we can't let this continue.

Nintendo hates Europe. Thing is, anyone who has bought a Nintendo product since the NES in Europe should be well used to this. I can't imagine spamming websites on soundtracks will help.

When it comes to Nintendo in Europe, importing is a must, plain and simple.

Man, why are there so many cynics in the world? Just believe in change people, the Nintendo announcement Ryu posted up yesterday PROVES that Nintendo will listen to a big enough noise. All I'm asking is for some help, we have to try.

Ok, I'm looking further into it and I've learned a few things:

1) You guys haven't received a EU Pokémon Battle Revolution yet.  That's sad.

2) From Wiki:  "Nintendo Europe, the European division, is based in Großostheim, Germany. Nintendo of Europe use a system to separate different language versions. On European releases, retail boxes have a triangle printed at the bottom corner of the paper insert sleeve side. The colour of the triangle can be used to identify which country/region the particular title is intended for and which manual languages are included. There are 49 different coloured triangles used and all Nintendo GameCube, Wii and DS games use the system."  49 different colored triangles?  For 49 different regions/languages?  The NOE site only caters to 6 different languages with two of them duplicated for Belgium, so can anyone explain this?

3) Judging from what I found through Wiki and the NOE site, it seems safe to assume that they do NOT use the NA language translations, which explains the lengthy wait.

4) I saw no contact information for the English NOE site... not only do they hate Europe, but they don't give a rat's ass what you think.

5) Remember that the info I posted yesterday was from Nintendo of Australia.  Their site at least welcomes contact with the consumer.

The NoE site is down and has been for over a week while they prepare a "new and exciting website". They have never given a rat's ass and getting a reply from them is like getting blood out of a stone. We have american english in our games, FACT! PBR is set for release tomorrow, Fire Emblem is cancelled and errrr..... everything is a big pile of **** to be honest. Now you know why I hate the UK so much.

I am so angry right now I knew that something like this would happen. They timed this to coincide with the website being down, fortunately I actually have their street address so if it comes to it, I'll make them know. Translation as an excuse is no longer existant, and Brawl may very well be in Australia before Europe even though the same PAL conversion will have been done, leading to mass importing and NoE's sales sliding into oblivion. And bear in mind Australia's games are all handled by NoE, so they actually don't have an excuse, I was going to finish UC today, but this now takes precendence over everything.

OVER 50 SIGNATURES ALREADY!

We nearly have 100 sigs and almost half are american, thank you guys soo much!

I remember when I visited Europe for a couple of months, Nintendo Games were impossible to find for the most part(european launch date), I tried to buy Super Mario Sunshine but they had only one copy, guy who was standing in line before me bought it, several weeks have passed before I could actually buy it.
I suppose now it's better than couple of years ago but still an issue apparently.

You know, I can tolerate people hating me, arguing with me and being downright offensive to both me and my family, but what really gets on my metaphorical tits is when people mess me around like the people who are "helping" me with this petition. Screw em, I'll destroy 'em and poxy Nintendo with 'em. DIE LYING SCUM!!!

I've had enough of this, it's time to really burn some face/ass, same thing

Oh and I genuinely appreciate your support. There's not a single goddamn reason why they should be able to get away with this.

I just know I'm going to regret asking this but what the hell are you talking about?

Well, you see my english/european counterparts are supposed to be helping me gather signatures for the petition in the first post, but it seems now that they've had a sleep that it's no longer important to them, at least not important enough to do anything other then bemoan it intermittently in the same thread in the same forum thinking that NoE are going to just turn around and give Brawl for getting 192 sigs, in a crappy, poorly-worded embarrassment of a petition.

So nothing really, it seems the Aussies care more than the unappreciative morons who think it's fine to let me only have half an hour's sleep because I was working my ass off in this petition (which I didn't get to write), and then pass the buck when it's their turn to help out. I really DO NOT KNOW WHY I BOTHER!! These complaining idiots need a slap to wake them up, you don't get change by sitting on your fanny all day. DAMN, I'm angry about this!

Well I admire your motivation. I'm not sure Nintendo will pay heed to an online petition though - there seem to be so many online petitions and I don't know if they've ever done anything. Maybe they have.

Would it be an idea to write actual physical letters to them? I imagine a huge amount of individual letters would be harder to ignore. And you could also write to the UK and European games magazines maybe.

The Official Nintendo Magazine (ONM) are the new UK trendy representatives of Nintendo, with about as much credibility between them a bunch of mechanics discussing flower arrangements. They are absolutely clueless and I've been all over their forums looking for someone with one iota of common sense, and one was all I found.

I'm having trouble finding out enough about their rival mags and Nintendo in the UK only have a service center for battered consoles to get essential repairs. Also, knowing the "quality" of our postal system, I doubt any letters would ever reach their intended targets.

Man, I'm beat! I've had my Zapper for over 5 hours and I still haven't opened the box! Cybernator came on the VC today so I'll play that.

Any suggestion or help with any of this would be greatly appreciated.

How about hitting EDGE or GamesTM? It's not like they won't be aware of the issue but the fact that the likes of MS have stepped up and really improved the situation show up NoE even worse.

Oh dear, it seems ALL other UK magazine forums have locked my e-mail out and banned me for not being agreeable to their snotty monopoly. They are all run by each other, and they have a monopoly choking the industry, I honestly have only just found this out.

I am in utter disbelief that they think that this is OK. Fortunately, with a few clicks I'll set up 5 new e-mail addresses and 5 all-new fake profiles, you think Nintendo Power is bad? They are saints in comparison to the gutter trash I have to put up with and I, for one, will see this monopoly crumble by my own hand.

They've sucked the life out of their rivals and bought up all competition, what would you Americans do at a time like this? They are going to pay for screwing me over!

Anyone know any hackers? Or people willing to contest this farcical situation. As you are mostly Americans, or at least that's what I've always thought (sorry if I'm wrong), you can easily help, simply by signing up to their forums, and disagreeing with their actions. First we will need to force them on to their back foot, so un-banning me would be a start.

Hackers? Wow. I'm beginning to suspect you're a total nut job. Don't do anything crazy.

You see, now there's masses of spyware all over me, and everything now has a delay before working. Not only that but I now can't check my e-mail. Someone is SERIOUSLY screwing me over, there is absolutely 0% doubt about that! ANYONE would be angry in my position.

Aren't you slightly paranoid?
Don't you really have anything better to do in your life?
I can understand that you may be a bit angry at Nintendo for their policy,but please stop pestering about the whole world.
Sorry if it sounds rude,but may I ask you if you have a girlfriend,and may I also know how old you are?

You can always spite them and import.

But there's the whole PAL vs. NTSC thing, right? Strangely I hadn't a problem when I dipped for Shenmue II on DC...

Q3/Q4? Wow, that's kinda harsh...

I must agree with Svenlove. "Extremely Important Announcement!" come on... Perhaps you were being facetious, but it doesn't seem like it. Also, I might be mistaken, but I gather you're in your late teens? People here are older than that, and posting non-stop and complaining non-stop just doesn't get you friends. And yeah, as Jay said, I think quite a few of us are pondering if all your marbles are in tact. My advice, relax...

-avatar!

Well, you see, it may not mean much to you, but some people understand being screwed over countless times for over 20 years really gets to you after a while. That's why so many Americans signed the petition, they understand our situation, and Q3/Q4 is pretty harsh.

Nintendo has always been pretty ignorant with Europe and after Gamecube I thought it was time to import the next console, Wii, because knowing Nintendo, this type of things are bound to happen. It sucks but Nintendo doesn't seem to care. Luckily though, importing nowadays is not necessarily even more expensive; I got Wii+SMG for 310 € from Canada including postage and it would have cost 320 € here. The games are definitely cheaper in the US even with postage costs and are released earlier and used game market is bigger too, so I don't see much reason to buy anything locally anymore.

I have many friends who are going to be pissed about this, and I guess they all will be coming over to my house to curse Nintendo and to play Brawl when it's released in the States.

310 € is $457.96 Canadian is $455.04 US.  Was this an eBay or some other auction site thing?  For just the Wii and SMG it should've only been $300 US (not including sales tax and shipping costs), although I see on the Canadian Best Buy site that the system is $20 higher than it should be.  I'm curious how much shipping costs would be... in what country in Europe are you, Echo, and how quickly did you get it?  I'm not trying to point out you got ripped off, because Nintendo obviously does that domestically there and you still got a good deal in comparison; I'm just curious how much the mark up was.

That sounds like about the right price if it was from ebay.  You still can't just go into a store and buy them over here, so the ebay prices are stupidly high.

Well here's a rather lengthy explanation. I got it from Videogamesplus because it was the only shop I found (not counting Play-Asia, which was more expensive) that would ship to Finland. It was a bundle of SMG and Wii (Wii couldn't be bought separately, and I would have bougth SMG anyway) and it cost $349.99CDN = $345 US. Shipping costs to Finland were $83.99CDN = $83 US. So total was $433.98CDN = $428 US. It was DHL express shipping, no other options were available. It took 5 days to get to my doorstep, which I think is pretty fast. I also avoided customs and taxes luckily, maybe because it couldn't be seen from the box that there was a Wii inside, or maybe because of express shipping?

Note that the exchange rates have changed somewhat since November 15th (the date I ordered it). I just checked the rates (XE.com) from that time and it actually cost me 303€ but it seems Visa charged the remaining 7€ for currency conversion so that makes it 310€. BUT as of now, the rates are a bit different, so now $433.98CDN is only 291€.

Alright, that's pretty good after all.  It is so stupid how Nintendo, and the rest of the gaming industry, shafts Europeans.