Despite an impressive run of games in Japan, the Inzauma Eleven franchise (a popular RPG soccer game) has yet to be seen in North America. And while North Americans missed out, it has seen localizations for the original trilogy and the Wii’s Inazuma Eleven Strikers over in Europe. However, it was discovered that Level-5 has recently filed for an Inazuma Eleven trademark in North America.
A simple search of US trademarks will reveal 2 trademarks, one live and one dead. The dead one was filed January 6th, 2010. Since that time, all three original Inazuma Eleven games were released in Europe (courtesy of Nintendo of Europe), so this is no real indication that anything related to the franchise will be released.
However, Nintendo has the capability to put DS retail games on the eShop, so perhaps we will see the original trilogy show up on eShop to gauge American interest, whether it’s each game individually or the compilation that released in Japan last year on the 3DS. We can only hope.
