Ya know, I'm shocked! Seeing the charts and noticing that Twilight Princess doesn't have as much resonance in Japan as it does over here. I mean we always like to think of the Zelda universe as the left to Mario's right. The power packed #1 & #2 combo but maybe this is only an American viewpoint.

I was wondering was it just a slow decline of the series in thar region or did Twilight Princess not appeal to Japan as much as Wind Waker did?

Well blow me down and call me stickhouse!

Zelda has NEVER been as big in Japan as it has in America!

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=zelda&console=&publisher=&sort=Total

The charts tell the tale. It sells nicely but it's not such a big deal over there as it is over here. I wonder if Japanese Nintendo fans even consider the Zeldaworld to be the left hand of Marioworld's righthand. Do they see them as Nintendo's most prolific icons or is that just reserved for Mario?

As far as Japan goes the very first in the series was the best selling Zelda ever. Maybe it's because Zelda debuted on the Famicom Disk System over there that it didn't feel as integral to Nintendo as Mario did. I KNOW Metroid never appealed to the Japanese like it did to us:

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=metroid&console=&publisher=&sort=Total

Compare both of these with Mario & all his configurations:

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=mario&console=&publisher=&sort=Total

http://vgchartz.com/worldtotals.php?name=mario&console=&publisher=&sort=Japan

I tell ya. It's good to step out of your perception zone and look at it from the outside. It flavors how you see the gaming world and its direction.

Good games are good games and sales good or bad don't deter from that; the same goes for bad games like bad music that sells a lot.

Basically Twilight Princess is doing what the Zelda series more or less always does in Japan. I find it sort of sad and then again not so much. At first I wondered if the grittier artstyle scared them off and it's nothing of the sort. 500,000 is gold so I guess I should be satisfied.

The videogame industry is STILL small can't deny that.

Nice post, I'll respect that, and respond with reasonable reply.

Zelda was more or less an american theory/ideal. I think it was meant for an american/japanese great deal, but the americans took to it better, mainly because the americans were not being graced by great 3rd party RPGs. We were stuck with zelda. And I think that Japan has just grown away from zelda over the years.

 I was shocked when I first noticed that too tho.

Maybe Japanese don't fancy young boys in tights as much as North-Americans? :) No, seriously, it's propably as kwaad said, Japanese have much more similar games to choose from, than others. Zelda is pretty old series and, unlike Mario, it doesn't renew itself in every new game of the series. In Twilight Princess case, Nintendo let fans wait too long, it should have been out 2 years earlier, so the hype had calmed down at the time of its launch. Also the pretty small (i believe most want it for Wii) userbase doesn't help sales to go too up.

Yeah I noticed that a few months ago. The last Zelda to crack the million mark in Japan was Ocarina of Time. Outside of it, Zelda games seem to be trending downward sales wise. They still sell well but just not nearly as well as Mario or Pokemon etc.

Yup, Zelda has been in decline in Japan for a while. John, have another look at Metroid though: It was a great brand before Metroid Prime went FPS. I want Super Paper Metroid!

Well.. that said, if you add up the sales of the GC & Wii versions of Twilight, you get 4.4m - making it the 4th best Zelda ever (and close to taking the 3rd spot). And who knows how it will sell over the coming 2 years - it may yet make the top 2?

(consider that 1 in every 2 Wii owners - worldwide - have purchased the game! Sell another 10m Wii's, and we'll see how it sells).