Throughout this past July, the Tales series was making waves in regards to localization. The first was the announcement of Tales of Xillia coming to the West next year. The second came less than a week later when Tales producer Hideo Baba openly talked about remaking older Tales games for modern consoles. The third came about a week after in regards to a possible localization of Tales of Xillia, which is coming out in Japan November 1st.
Fast forward to now. In an interview with Siliconera, Hideo Baba made a case for localization of older Tales games. “To expand the fanbase, I would like players to have a chance to play previous titles that weren’t released overseas,” the producer said. When asked what game he would like to see in the west, Hideo Baba chose a recent though not obvious entry:
Personally, I would want players to play Tales of Hearts for the Nintendo DS because the team pushed the DS hardware to the maximum and the game’s story is about the heart. Unfortunately, we don’t have any plans to localized Tales of Hearts, but this one is my favorite one.
Tales of Hearts is the eleventh mothership title in the Tales franchise. It deals with Shing Meteoryte, Kohak Hearts and their friends as they work to banish Zerom – monsters that feed on spiria or hearts. Unfortunately for this title, it came out near the end of the DS cycle with Tales of Grace coming soon and the development of Tales of the Abyss 3D coming soon, as well as during the massive undertaking of releasing Tales of Vesperia nearly simultaneously for Japan and North America.
Tales of Hearts is available in Japanese through Amazon and PlayAsia in two forms: CG movie edition and anime movie edition. You will need to pay quite a bit due to it being an import. However, unless I’m mistaken, the game should be able to run on any Nintendo DS.
