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As far as gaming platforms go, the DS was wonderfully prolific in its selection of role-playing titles. Now that we're moving into the age of the 3DS, it's time to look back at some of the games that were most worth playing. Since I'm the Japan guy around here, I'll be showing some of the unfortunate ones that have (so far) failed to make it across the ocean. The following are all great games, but they're not always the most import-friendly. I can't recommend that everyone go out and order them from an import store, but I think we can all agree that it would make a lot of people happy if these games just happened to get an official translation one of these days.

I tried and tried to make a decision between these two, and in the end I could not. Out of the myriad ports and remakes which Square Enix has produced for the DS, these two stand out. SaGa 2 was everything that gamers enjoyed out of the original, while SaGa 3 was everything that its original wanted to be. The guys at RacJin went all out for these two games.

Here's a game that I really expected to make the jump. Atelier Lina had a lot of things going for it. Its predecessor, Atelier Annie, had arrived on US shores earlier that year. Two games from its parallel series, Rorona and Totori, have received localizations. By all rights, Lina should have come over as well. It's everything that an Atelier fan would have loved, and a general improvement over Atelier Annie.

The original Endless Frontier finished on an open and obvious lead-in to a sequel, and to this day I can't understand why Endless Frontier Exceed has stayed in Japan. It has flashy battles, crazy animations, ridiculous cup sizes, and none of the licensing issues that plague the main Super Robot Wars series.

I'm not at all surprised that this game never came over, however. Tales games have never been known for their consistency in localization, and when that Tales game is actually a spinoff of an unrelated anime series, it doesn't matter if it has any foreign fanbase. The odds of it coming over are really small. This is unfortunate, because the game itself is hilarious and perfect for anyone who likes the Sergeant Frog series.

There are some combinatins that are too good not to share. Ghibli and Level-5 should be one of those combinations. The amount of time and effort that went into this game is simply amazing, from the beautifully animated video sequences to The Book sold with the game. That last is one reason why we haven't heard anything about a translation, most likely. At three-hundred seventy-plus pages of game info, hints, and complicated puzzles, that would be tough going for any localization team.