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Does Videogame Length Vary By Territory?
asphyxiation_query writes "I've been looking at the relative length of videogames (in terms of overall gameplay, how long the game stretches out from start to completion) based on region. Can Slashdot Games readers discern any obvious regional patterns or variations in this information? For example, are games from
Korea typically longer than Japanese? How do European and North American titles stack up in this respect?" Or is content similarly long if part of the same genre, regardless of country of origin?
For the most part ive noticed that Japanese games are quite a bit harder than the American counterpart. For example soul calibur 2 (GC). Many of the weapon mode challanges are quite a bit tougher with shorter times to beat stages, and harder battles than the equivalent american game. Not to mention an extra subchapter. Also Zelda TWW (kaze no takuto) is also quite a bit harder when trying to find the triforce shards. Im sure with enough though more could be thought of.
I think the prime example would be the difference between the original Final Fantasy IV release and the American (and possibly the European as well) release of Final Fantasy II for the Super Nintendo. The original FF4 was a PITA of a game (as it was finally released in Final Fantasy Chronicles) and Squaresoft had to release an easy version of the game. The easy version was the one that was released outside of Japan.
In a way, the harder version of FF4 was "longer" mostly due to the fact that you had to spend more time building up levels and earning Gil/GP in order to buy the expensive items. That doesn't include the fact that a lot of the enemies and bosses were even more difficult to defeat.
How long is Everquest, Ultima Online, etc? What do these "endless" games do to the graph?