Puyo Puyo Tsu

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Neko Cat

So I see Muz is finally posting something that's not pointless for the community. Although there are a few other topics from this guy that are useful.

If you're refering to obscure games from small developers that never had official releases in the west there's a lot of them, mostly in the shooting, fighting, visual novel and action platformer genres (and not a small amount of them with erotic content); the Touhou series of shooters is probably the best known, but there are really too many to mention.

I assume that these kind of "Japanese" games (the commcercial ones) rarely appeard on the shelves at the stores,
rather they were sold via mail order through ads in game magazines or Japan-themed magazines (Manga, Pop culture, Japanese food etc).
Or maybe they were sold in special locations, VHS rent stores, Manga/Comic stores with a video game's corner, etc.
That being said, I'm from Europe and I *believe* we didn't really got that stuff directly (at least not in the 80s/90s).
Back then, all the good stuff (as in video games) always had to travel via america to the old continent.
In the 90s, this perhaps changed a bit..: France also got a bit stuff from JP directly and Nintendo had an HQ in Germany.
As far as DOS games are concerned, I believe the MegaTech games were sold by Pearl Agency in magazine form (CD+magazine) there.

Edit: Wait, here's a short demonstartion to give an idea.
Just please don't loose all of your respect for me, hah. 😊

Okay.. The first one shows a Japanese games magazine with a "shop" page.
It lists the titles and the contact data (phone/fax) of the game's publisher.

Second one shows the cover of a European release of a Megatech game in a magazine.
The CD-ROM was a cover disc, fixed with strip of Scotch tape to the cover.
Other classics like Sam&Max were also distributed that way.

Third one is a normal boxed game of the same family from america. The 13+ rated version. 😉
I've also seen them here, in translated form. Maybe these were once sold directly by the publisher via mail order
or by shipping houses. The 13+ rated versions perhaps also made it to the (less eye-catching) shelves at some point, not sure.

Edit: Edited.