10 Best Games Released in Japan

There are thousands of games released in Japan that became popular far from home, and some of them you may know and may have even played. We will show you ten of those releases, with the studio and the Japanese date that belong to each name, starting with Nioh.

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1st Nioh

Nioh is an action role-playing game from Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo. Work on it started in 2004 for a PlayStation 3 project that took years to reach players. The PlayStation 4 version came out in February 2017: February 7 in North America, February 8 in Europe, and February 9 in Japan. Windows received the complete edition on November 7, 2017, and the PlayStation 5 remaster followed on February 5, 2021.

William Adams, drawn from the English sailor of the early 1600s, fights through the Sengoku period among yokai. In folklore, yokai are spirits, monsters, and other uncanny beings, and Nioh builds its fights around them.

2nd Street Fighter II

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is Capcom's fighting game from the arcade years. The arcade release came in March 1991, and the Super Nintendo version reached Japan on June 10, 1992. Guinness World Records lists that Super Nintendo release at 6.3 million copies, the best-selling SNES game from a third-party publisher. The special moves still use Japanese names, and a guide on this site explains what those names mean.

The screenshot is from a later Street Fighter. The fighter in the red jacket is Karin.

3rd Super Mario World

Nintendo released Super Mario World on the Super Famicom in Japan on November 21, 1990. It sold more than 20 million copies, the highest total for a game on that console. Mario and Luigi cross Dinosaur Land to reach Princess Peach, captured by Bowser. The journey runs through seven worlds, Mario gains a cape, and Yoshi carries him past hazards.

4th Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is also from Nintendo. The arcade game launched in 1981 with an eye on the U.S. market. Billy Mitchell's 1,050,200 points from June 2007 used to be cited as the top mark. Twin Galaxies removed his scores from the competitive board in April 2018, after deciding the disputed tapes had not come from an original cabinet. In January 2024 those performances were placed in a historical database. They remain off the live leaderboard, and Mitchell remains banned from Twin Galaxies competition.

5th Space Invaders

Taito released Space Invaders in 1978. Tomohiro Nishikado designed it. You slide a cannon along the bottom of the screen and shoot the descending aliens for points. The marching rows take cues from The War of the Worlds and Star Wars.

6th Resident Evil

In Japan the series is called Biohazard. Capcom released the first game on the PlayStation in Japan on March 22, 1996. It is survival horror, directed by Shinji Mikami, and later entries kept selling long after that disc. Capcom's platinum list, as of June 30, 2026, counts the 2019 Resident Evil 2 at 19.70 million units. In the company's results for the quarter ended that same day, the Resident Evil series stands at 213 million units.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a film based on the early games, opened in the United States on November 24, 2021.

7th Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy V is the role-playing game in the screenshot: Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris are the party on screen. Square developed and published it for the Super Famicom, and Japan received it on December 6, 1992. The four of them are drawn into a quest to protect the crystals, and the job system lets each character change class as the story moves. The Super Famicom cartridge stayed in Japan. A PlayStation version reached North America on October 5, 1999.

8th Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

FromSoftware developed Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Activision published it. The game launched on March 22, 2019, for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The setting is a fictional Sengoku Japan. The protagonist is a one-armed shinobi. His master, the Divine Heir, has been taken, and he sets out to bring that master back.

9th Tales of Phantasia

Tales of Phantasia is the first game in Namco's Tales series. Wolf Team developed it, Namco published it, and the Super Famicom version came out in Japan on December 15, 1995. During production, a large part of the team left Wolf Team and formed tri-Ace. That studio went on to make Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile, published by Enix.

10th Judgment

Judgment follows Takayuki Yagami, a lawyer who now works as a private detective, through the same Kamurocho as the Yakuza series. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio developed the game and Sega published it. Japan received the PlayStation 4 release on December 13, 2018, and other regions received it on June 25, 2019.

Judgment Remastered followed on April 23, 2021, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Stadia, with a higher frame rate and the earlier downloadable content included. Google shut Stadia down on January 18, 2023. A Windows version reached Steam on September 14, 2022.

When the series kept going

Mario, Street Fighter, and Resident Evil are the names most people already have. Final Fantasy V is the 1992 party of Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris. Tales of Phantasia opened its series in 1995. Judgment is Yagami's case in Kamurocho. A later game that wears the same brand is a separate release.