UPDATE: Pandora’s Tower has been announced for North America, published by XSEED Games, and scheduled to be released Spring 2013!

The information below is being kept as an archive. For up-to-date resolution status for those looking forward to receiving a collector’s case, please visit this page.

PANDORA’S TOWER STATUS UPDATE:

We are preparing to make one final pitch to publish the game, directly to Nintendo. On Friday, August 31, 2012, we will be holding a final one-day campaign to contact Nintendo. If you really want let Nintendo know that you’d like to see this game in America, then please be sure to share this with family, friends, and anyone that you know that might be interested in playing one of the most unique games on the Wii console.

This final campaign will take place on a single day, and will be made of several different parts:

1) Contact Nintendo of America. We will provide a template email and request that as many people as possible email Nintendo to request Pandora’s Tower. We will also provide instructions to contact Nintendo of America via phone and social media.

2) Write letters to Nintendo of America. We will ask that all letters be sent a few days in advance in an attempt to time the letters with our phone calls, emails, and social media messages. It will make a stronger impact if you send a handwritten letter in your own words, but we will provide a template that can be printed for yourself or adapted.

3) We will be assembling a specially prepared package directly from the staff team at Operation Rainfall. The pitch package will include various objects relating to the game, as well as handwritten letters and notes from our administrators. It will also include a copy of the game.

4) We will be attempting to contact Nintendo directly in Japan, as well as reaching out to the game’s developer, Ganbarion.

5) We will be reaching out to other video game sites to help us with this final campaign.

6) The final decision to release Pandora’s Tower in America rests on the shoulders of Nintendo.

COLLECTOR’S CASE UPDATE:

The case design is finished and submitted as of this morning, and we are now waiting for the first pre-production print (the final box art). We apologize that this has taken so long, but with our very limited staff and a few production snags we ran into, it took quite a bit longer than anticipated.

Also, we plan to issue the wallpapers on the same date that we will ship the cases.

We will alert everyone via email and will create a special notice on our website when we announce the ship date for the cases.

Here’s a preview of what the final case art will look like:

WEBSITE UPDATE:

We want everyone to know that our website staff is all voluntary. No one receives a penny from this, not the writers, nor the editors, nor any of the admins.

We actually brought in several new volunteer writers to help flesh out the website with new content, and we hope to expand our roster of writers even more as our site grows and starts covering more niche games. In the process, we haven’t forgotten about Pandora’s Tower or promoting The Last Story, we are simply figuring out a way to sustain Operation Rainfall without the need to ask for donations in the future. Operation Rainfall took many thousands of man-hours to manage, almost all of it behind the scenes by many dedicated volunteers. Most of us have been paying out of our own pockets since day one to keep this in motion. Even though it took the joint effort of everyone on Facebook, Twitter, and around the internet, without the guidance, direction, and hard work of a few individuals, none of this would have been possible or coordinated as it was. We want to thank everyone that sent a donation to help us defer the cost of purchasing the copies of Pandora’s Tower and the materials we are using to market the game. We pledge and promise to use all donated funds wisely, and again, part of the reason for us expanding our news coverage is so that we won’t need to resort to asking for donations for future efforts.

All of the volunteers at Operation Rainfall have families, jobs, homes, and their own personal responsibilities to take care of – this is a hobby for us, not a job, so we hope you all understand why it has taken so long for us to get everything taken care of.

Finally, we want to see Pandora’s Tower published in America as much as all of you, but you will need to understand that even if we work our asses off to pitch the game, the final decision still rests with Nintendo. Even the third-party publishers will still need Nintendo’s approval before the game can be published.

Thank you for understanding.

– Operation Rainfall Staff