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:
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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
Well it looks like this is it. Come August 31st we find out even more about Pandora’s Tower. Best of luck guys.
I really hope this works. Listen up, NOA!
Letter written and ready to go.
Thank you for the updates Operation Rainfall, and thank you for all that you have done in trying to get Pandora’s Tower to the Americas. Pandora’s Tower was the game I wanted the most, so I really appreciate how you guys have stuck with it for so long, especially since it was the least well-known of the three games and hardest to sell people on. I completely respect your decision to let this be the final push for Pandora’s Tower, for you guys have already done more than enough to help get it to the Americas, and you have had to focus on it alone for over five months now. I know that campaigning for these games has been a lot of work for you guys, and that it has gotten old. I hope that you all are able to take some time off to relax and have fun after this, because you deserve it! Thanks again Operation Rainfall for all the hard work that you have done for Pandora’s Tower. I am truly grateful for your efforts, and I will do all that I can to help in this final push.
Thank you so much for posting this, we at OpZero are going to be doing our own write-in at the same time, and will be using the guide. This is the closest us and OpRa will get to a tag team at this present time. However, we are determined to figure out a way to get both games to North America.
I still need to donate to get one of these… I will be calling my dad xD
Hi, I loved Xenoblade Chronicles, I have beaten it twice and I am still doing quests! Amazon should be delivering The Last Story tommorow with a pre-order bonus no less! But the main point of this comment is I donated $10.00 dollars a week ago and have still not received a confirmation email. My email is [email protected] thanks for all your great work and let’s kick butt August 31st!!!!!!
Sorry about that, Just sent another batch of e-mails to the newer donators. You should be receiving yours now. Thanks again! (Also I’m editting your comment so your e-mail isn’t out there for everyone to see)
Thanks a ton 😉 and it really is no problem.
ill have to see bout donating $10 so i can get that case and to get the game over here
if OR’s plan succeeds with pandoras tower can we still get the collectors case thingy after the 31’st please i want it but i dont get paid until the 1st… and even then i might not be able to donate until a couple of days later (bills are important)
I don’t see why not, there still is enough to go around.
You’re… using the mosaic I made for the case? That’s… rather touching.
We even include your name in credits on the bottom of the box.
Wow, that’s very nice of you.
He he just got the last story. Its really fun. (I also got the preorder package!)
Is there any way I can still get the case?
We still have some left, so yes,you can if you donate!
I just donated $10.00, Can I still get the case?
Yes sir!
Yay! I got the email confirmation already too! 😀
Made a $10 donation on April 23. Have not received any emails requesting address verification yet?…
Curtis, did you still not receive the email?
No, I have not received an e-mail. If you can find my donation in your account, the address I provided at that time is correct.
Alright, I need you to send an e-mail with your full name to [email protected], I’ll check my records to see if you’re there, There were a few (like 5) e-mail addresses that didn’t go through for reasons I don’t know. The service said they couldn’t be contacted. If you were one of those people that would explain why you didn’t get the e-mail.
OK,
I just sent the e-mail.
Alright, I sent you an e-mail with any information you need. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Thanks for the help. The mailing address you have for me is correct.
The time has come!
So did the cases ever end up shipping?
Same question — did the cases ship? I got my e-mail about the wallpapers (which are lovely, thanks!) but I haven’t received a case and I don’t recall any sort of address verification e-mail… If my paypal address was used that’s fine, but I still haven’t received a case…
Incase you need to get me, my e-mail is this [email protected].
I emailed them and they did not return an email… This seems a little fishy, as they have seemed to avoid contact about this box when people are just simply wondering if they will even get these boxes that they claim will ship. The wallpapers are nice and everything, but all they had to do was download wallpapers off of the official sites and find volunteers to spend their time to make other ones, so that didn’t require any money whatsoever and isn’t a long process at all to do… heck, they didn’t even really have to do the wallpapers because the ones that weren’t just official artwork with a logo moved or added were the fan-made ones. I honestly hope I am wrong on this, but I’ve been screwed over by groups like this before and I don’t want to be lied to again. It’s alright that I might be out 10 dollars, but the principle behind it if this is a scam by any means is what would anger me.
I think you are wrong. I e-mailed them a week or two ago about the cases and two different people from the staff replied. Here’s one of the replies from September 18th:
“That was the plan, and just like everything about these cases seems to go, it didn’t work out as planned. I assure you we’re still going to send out the cases, we’re just going to need more time. We’re going to be very happy to finally be rid of them when we finally receive them I’ll tell you that much! I hate delaying things further, we promised everyone the cases by the end of July and we didn’t provide, not by a long shot. ”
So while a post about the status would be nice, I’m reasonably confident that they’ll still ship out. Even if they don’t, I’m happy to chip in the $10 to get the original cases shipped to the various publishers.
We are going to ship the cases, this I can promise you. They are already 100% paid for, and it was no small amount. Right now, the cases are scheduled at the printer to be printed next. Problem is, their current project is a rather large one. Once they complete it, the printer assures us we are next.
So after they print all 1,000 cases we ordered, they will ship them to us. At that point, we will go through our records and ship a case to every single person that donated $10.
As for us avoiding emails about the cases, this is not the case. We have responded to emails about the cases almost daily. Sometimes we’ll miss an email here or there because we get so many of them.
When we receive the boxes from the printer, we will notify everybody but as of right now we really cannot tell you more than that because we just don’t know.
We are sorry about the very long delay, we badly miscalculated this project. It was way harder, it was way more expensive, and it is taking way longer than we ever anticipated. BUT, we are still going to see this through.