Crash's girlfriend appears in the original game, but was dropped from the sequel. In North America, Sony didn't have to explain her absence because gamers were playing mostly for the action, not just the story. But in Japan, they had to explain her fate in the manual. In the U.S., even if there is no plot, people don't necessarily care. Heavy on text, light on action, they remain a foreign concept to most American gamers.
Japanese players are also more interested in simulation games than their American counterparts.
And then there's Tale of the Sun from ArtDink, in which the player is a caveman trying to kill mastodons so he can use their tusks to build a tower to the sun. By U.S. standards it's a weird game, and it didn't do well here at all. But in Japan it did exceptionally well. Perhaps the closest Americans have come to the Japanese game with its emphasis on plot and de-emphasis on action is the surreal adventure game Myst. But Charla believes that Myst was a one-time phenomenon.