Post by Rune Lai on Oct 3, 2023 22:18:08 GMT -5
While I've imported games from time to time in the past, I probably haven't bought as many for a single system since the Saturn days. But with the Switch being region free, digital only releases becoming more common in the Americas, and multi-lingual releases being more common in Japan, importing is sometimes a viable alternative (as long as you accept shipping will take longer and possibly cost more). I pre-ordered Baten Kaitos and Ghost Trick for the Switch early this summer and they arrived yesterday. Today I cracked them open and discovered codes for my pre-order/first print run bonuses, which were not on my mind at all before ordering.
But I bought Asia/Japanese region copies, so even though English is a supported language for the games, my account doesn't connect to the Japanese eShop since it's obviously set to the Americas. I originally was going to try changing my region to Japan, which is totally allowed (makes sense, someone could be moving to another part of the world and taking their Switch with them), but doing it was disconnect my account from my older Nintendo ID account which has my 3DS account history, so I while I would have preferred having everything on one account, I didn't want to lose a connection I might not be able to get back.
So I made a new account and set the region to Japan. It was ridiculous how easy it was.
It was literally go to Nintendo.com, create account, set it to Japan (and provide a nickname and e-mail address) and that was it. I connected my new Japanese account to my Switch, loaded up the Japanese eshop, and downloaded my pre-order bonuses. The only thing mildly annoying is that I now have two accounts staring me in the face every time the system asks me who's playing.
But I suppose this could be handy if I ever want to buy more games out of Japan.
By the way, the Baten Kaitos digital artbook is a niiiiiiice pre-order bonus. It's a separate downloadable from the game itself, which I've never seen before, and contains a few hundred images. I already had the artbook for the first BK, so that one didn't have anything new for me, but the second was nice to browse through.
But I bought Asia/Japanese region copies, so even though English is a supported language for the games, my account doesn't connect to the Japanese eShop since it's obviously set to the Americas. I originally was going to try changing my region to Japan, which is totally allowed (makes sense, someone could be moving to another part of the world and taking their Switch with them), but doing it was disconnect my account from my older Nintendo ID account which has my 3DS account history, so I while I would have preferred having everything on one account, I didn't want to lose a connection I might not be able to get back.
So I made a new account and set the region to Japan. It was ridiculous how easy it was.
It was literally go to Nintendo.com, create account, set it to Japan (and provide a nickname and e-mail address) and that was it. I connected my new Japanese account to my Switch, loaded up the Japanese eshop, and downloaded my pre-order bonuses. The only thing mildly annoying is that I now have two accounts staring me in the face every time the system asks me who's playing.But I suppose this could be handy if I ever want to buy more games out of Japan.
By the way, the Baten Kaitos digital artbook is a niiiiiiice pre-order bonus. It's a separate downloadable from the game itself, which I've never seen before, and contains a few hundred images. I already had the artbook for the first BK, so that one didn't have anything new for me, but the second was nice to browse through.
