We PAL territory gamers have missed out on a lot over the years, from the 16bit days of Earthbound and Policenauts to the relatively modern Katamari Damacy. Poor old Europe has continually suffered for it's diversity of languages, and at the hands of those who deemed these games "too out there" for our tastes.

But surely, with the dawn of digital distribution networks such as the PSN and XBLA, games companies finally have the chance to make things right, to bring us up to date with the fabulous content we've missed out on? Right? Unfortunately, Wrong.

The PSN should, by all rights be awash with such games...and yet they have still failed to appear. Games like the cult gems Xenogears and Chrono Cross seem noticeably absent, especially with the success of Final Fantasy VII proving that the market for these games is still hungry for a slice of retro RPG action. So where are these games we're clamouring for?

Policenauts - Made by Hideo Kojima, no less

Xenogears was a cult ****c RPG - but only in the US and Japan

The short answer is that games companies are holding out on us. The fact that the games were never translated into French, German etc should not stop the release of them on the PSN as "English Only Titles". The sad truth is that these games are cash cows simply too good to waste all at once. Instead, they'll be carved up for re-makes, then released as supporting material for those looking for the "Old School" experience, or worse, only bundled with their modern counterparts.

This is not to say that a remake of Chrono Cross, Xenogears, or Seiken Densetu 3 would be bad, just that they will inevitably be hyped to the nines, take ages to produce, and cost a premium. It May seem from my choice of games that I'm picking a teeny bit on Square Enix - But in truth they are not one of the worst offenders.

Never Mind the Boxart - Chrono Cross was the stellar sequal to Chrono Trigger

Squeenix have released 2 separate attempts to sell us the underwhelming Final Fantasy I and II, and have made a great deal of remakes in the past 2 years....however, most of these have been great (Final Fantasy Tactics, for one). The extensive back catalogue they have just makes it easy to pick out the ****cs that never made it over here. The remake strategy seems to be working out for them, and to some extent for us. So what may be the best compromise is for Squeenix to hurry up and get these remakes made!

To be fair, Nintendo have actually bucked the remake trend - by offering games like Super Mario RPG to us poor Europeans - and provided a surprisingly complete library of 16bit games, including Chrono Trigger for DS. Kudos to Nintendo for not withholding on us!

Super Mario RPG hits Europe at last!

But don't expect to see big budget, "Never Before Seen In Europe" PSone games appearing on the European PSN - the legendary mythos around them, and the fact we've never played them, make them too good to blow on a single £7.99 download.