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Does Videogame Length Vary By Territory?

Posted by simoniker on from the it's-how-you-use-it dept.

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?

1 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. Final Fantasy IV by questionlp · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.