Considering a Japanese Wii U

Or someone who has a WiiU could send you the posts.

I think you can view japanese posts on miivesre. There’s an option to change the region communities. I’d say not to get the Japannese Wii U though since you’ll just use it for miiverse(since you have Mother 2), if you are going to get a U get the American one then. You might want to get it anyway with the games that are coming out in about a year( HD wind waker, Smash Bros 4, Mario Kart, and the 3D mario). You should just get the American one and maybe we will see EarthBound on VC in the future. Don’t waste your money on something you’ll use for like a week and will never use again. So either buy an American U or don’t buy one at all.

You could always sell the WiiU after playing Mother 2, if you don’t think you’ll use it. I imagine people would be interested in buying it.

With getting a WiiU system from Japan. Maybe you could order it from a site like Wal Mart or Amazon Japan. Ebay would also be a good place, and sellers on there probably wouldn’t ask $100 for shipping.

I just checked my Wii U and you can change communities to Japannese. The posts also stay in Japanese and they have communities of their region exclusive games too( Mother 2 in the future too). I have the American version by the way. If you were wondering you can check Europe and Oceania too. Hope this helps!

Yes, you can view ANY Japanese Miiverse board they have (and even FOLLOW, like Twitter) any user on there (I can’t wait to follow Itoi!). I’m sure when EarthBound comes out in Japan, there’s going to be a LOT of American posts on there.

I completely agree with NXT!

To answer some of your questions:
– Yes you can view Itoi’s posts.
– Also Japanese fan posts.
– You can view Japanese communities, and comment.

But I am not sure if you can Follow Itoi.
And you certainly cannot buy the game, on a North American Wii U.

Unless you actually want to play Mother 2 for yourself, you can just get a North American console and check the Mother 2 board when the time comes. There’s gotta be a Mother fan on the forums who lives in Japan right now. Maybe they have a Wii U and plan on getting the game!

You can view posts from different regions. However, you cannot look at any outside US communites directly…. per se.
What I can do is turn my Miiverse settings from English Only to All Languages. Then, I would have to go to a community that japan and us both have (such as the NintendoLand community or Legend of Zelda community). I would then have to find a post from a japanese native, click their profile, then see if they have posted to the Earthbound community at all. If they have, I can click that post, link to the EB community, and possibly mark it as favorites.
Communities also have tabs now that show messages just from the developers/producers/ect Miis. I’m not sure if a VC game community merits such a tab… but if it does, you can easily see Itoi’s messages there.

I hope that wasn’t confusing. Any questions you have, I can help you out ot test anything on Miiverse.

(PS Thanks for the note! You DO look like a Nu though…)

Ok, I looked at it more closely and when you click the Communities tab, you can choose Americas and Japan… So it’d be pretty easy to view the Mother 2 community (and Itoi’s posts) from an english Wii U console.
You can also post in the community if you want to ask japanese gamers questions. You’d have to freehand it though as there’s only English, French, Spanish, Portuguese keyboard variations. But, with Miiverse you can draw/handwrite your posts.

Unless you want to play MOTHER 2 in Japanese with save states and post your experiences in Japanese, buy the American Wii U. Also, to see Miiverse posts about MOTHER 2, on the region thing that says “Americas” or “Europe and Oceania”, Japan will be one of the regions shown. NOW YOU CAN SEE JAPANESE MOTHER 2 POSTS AND ITOI’S POSTS IN ABOUT 19 DAYS! And if you get bored from the Wii U, either sell it or get a game you like on Wii U.

Sounds bad but you could always buy the jap Wii U then autograph it and sell it for even/more then it cost you. There’s enough mother freaks out here who would buy the Wii U the legendary Tomato played/reviewed Mother 2 on. A little gimmicky but an option non-the-less.

Cool, it sounds like even an American Wii U could access most of this Mother festival. Hopefully they don’t decide to make it Japanese Wii U owners-only when other fans go berserk 😛

I guess the main reason for getting a Japanese one then would be to see what changes were made to MOTHER 2 and then be able to freely and quickly document them for EB Central readers.

To be honest, whether I get an American Wii U or a Japanese one, it’ll probably end up collecting dust no matter what. I just don’t have time for games anymore 😐

Don’t import a Japanese Wii U for Mother 2, seems a bit extreme if you ask me.

I know you can view Japanese communities for games released in both of the Japan and USA regions, but the question is, can you view Japanese miiverse communities for games that aren’t released in the states and only in Japan? That seems like something that would be unique to Japanese reaidents’ internet ISPs.

I have absolutely no experience in importing goods, but I’d say try importing it. Better safe than sorry.

Hopefully the don’t block Mother 2 for WiiU users like they did for Smash Bros. Brawl. I know it’s only community posts but I wouldn’t put it past them. Not to promote someone’s product but did anyone else check out that big box special edition Mother 3 on eBay? I know it’s a club release but definitely interesting. But almost $900? that’s ridiculous plus, it isn’t truly rare in official production sense, like beyond our consumer control. It is artificially limited so that club higher ups can have it and make a bunch of money. I know it’s senseless to make a mass amount of limited editions, but if you’re doing it for fans, they want it and it’s not like original releases where it would make a difference. All of these club releases should have been like this really. Sorry for the rant, just as a gamer I think it’s ridiculous. http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300869635934

Why don’t you try to get in touch with the Nintendo employee that told you guys about the virtual console issues for Earthbound on the original wii and see what he/she has to say?

@Meta202:

That’s a great idea. I really would like to know what NOA is thinking about all of this EarthBound publicity in Japan right now. What else I would like to know is whether or not there are going to be any people from NOA listening to Mr.Itoi and his Japanese fan’s posts on Miiverse. If they are, I would love to hear their reactions as to what people over there are saying.

From what I understand from being on Miiverse, you can go to Japanese and European communities, and you can set your settings to view comments from all languages. Hopefully they will let the Mother 2 community available to America(The Fire Emblem community was available on it’s Japanese Wii U release in America as well)

Question “From an American Wii U, would I be able to follow this stuff that Itoi posts on Miiverse?”
Answer from an American Wii U owner, Yes you can.
Question “Would it be possible to see what Japanese fans are saying from an American Wii U?”
Answer from an American Wii U owner, yes you can see their posts but it will be in Japanese.
Btw you can’t switch your region to Japan like you can do on a Playstation 3. =(

You could probably find a good deal on a Wii U at the Japanese version of Amazon’s website. Failing that you might be able to eventually get one on sale at Play Asia.

Amazon Japan requires a bit more nudging for most things if I recall as you’d need to have the items you want shipped to a “forwarder” that ships it to you.

List of available Wii U stuff on Amazon Japan. Try and make your purchase when the Yen isn’t too strong or you’ll get screwed by the conversion rate to USD.:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?__mk_ja_JP=%83J%83%5E%83J%83i&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=wii+u

Tenso.com for “obtaining” a Japanese mailing address. You give this address to Amazon Japan whenever something is restricted to being shipped outside of Japan, they’ll ship it to the Tenso address and then Tenso will ship it to you for some fees, which are described on their website for how you go about calculating what you’ll owe Tenso, in addition to Amazon Japan.

http://www.tenso.com/en

Wii U consoles available from Play Asia. Do be careful to select the one with the correct region as they carry European and American consoles as well. Also you don’t have to do any fiddling with shipping as they include that service for you.:
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-14-71-1ak-49-en.html

@mustangbrian

Thanks for posting the link. It has been officially reported by me.

Well, if you look on Playasia, the basic Japanese WiiU bundle is $350, which is the cheapest I’ve seen so far. $400 for the premium. They seem to be discounted for the time being. There were very few I found on eBay.

The other question to ask is whether Nintendo has added any sort of lockout such as IP checking to limit sales to those physically located in Japan.

If you can still download without being in Japan, you’d probably still need to import a Japanese eShop card.

Go to MiiVerse and switch to Japan. [top left corner i think] You can only reply in japanese via handwritten text. I think I will hit up Japanese MiiVerse on the 20th just to say hi [unfortunately in English].

I know a few other people have said this, but I want to confirm that yes, you can see Japanese communities, and that yes, you can see communities of games only available in Japan, and yes, you can see Japanese posts, and yes, you can follow Miiverse members from anywhere around the world, including Nintendo’s confirmed users. They generally post messages in multiple languages, but everyone in the world would only follow one user.

Ugh…the Virtual Console Line-Up which starts in Late April hasn’t been revealed yet.. and it could include Earthbound..srsly don’t waste that money when it could be literally a one month wait! -_-

I always see Japanese posts on the Miiverse so I guess you might be able to see him.

@Justin Awesome! Once the festival starts we’ll know where to spread the spamwow.

They have the homebrew channel on the Wii U now. In do not own one but you could probably just change the region to japan. I have homebrew channel on my wii It’s all perfectly legal, easy to do and as for the Wii classic it is practically unbrickable. Plus word on the grapevine is that the homebrew community wants VC games playable on the gamepad pretty bad so they will probably have that supported before Nintendo.

1.yes
2.yes

They get Earthbound, We get Super Metroid in May

Japan gets Super Metroid in May too.