Sometimes the changes are based on difficulty levels. Among gamers, such changes cause controversy. When a Japanese horror game called Biohazard 2 was released in the United States as Resident Evil 2, players protested online, saying that although Sony promised the original game, it delivered one that was less violent and missing key scenes. One of the first and most obvious changes is language. Role-playing games, which are especially dialogue heavy, often require as much translation as a foreign film, if not more.
Some players say the games are translated in a slapdash manner.
Greg Cook, an import fan in New Zealand, sat down to play Final Fantasy VII in English, only to find himself scratching his head. I felt that the translation just didn't do the game justice. As a result, some import fans collect Japanese releases the way a Nabokov fan hunts down original works in Russian. Fan Web sites offer translations and walk-throughs of the games. Mr. O'Connor said he had even picked up some rudimentary Japanese from years of playing import games.