The Japanese market is infamous for largely sticking to games and hardware developed in their own country. This thread is devoted to celebrating Western-developed games that have found a large audience there.

Note: Since VGChartz is currently focusing more on global shipments rather than individual countries, I'm using a combination of official statements and Famitsu information to calculate sales, including digital info when available. Sales may be higher than shown below. Thanks to the Game Data Library for the easy reference to Famitsu data.

Updated as of September 2024

1. Minecraft (7.56 million sales)

Developer: Mojang (Sweden)

Breakdown

• PS3: 380.000 digital
• PS4: 504,559 retail + 440,399 digital
• PS Vita: 1,105,696 retail + 357,935 digital
• Switch: 3,631,184 retail+ 546,295 digital
• Wii U: 369,757 retail + 182,812 digital
• X360: 24,394 retail
• X1: 11,510 retail + 855 digital

2. Donkey Kong Country (3.25 million sales)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• GBA: 251,878 retail sales
• SNES: 3,000,000 retail sales

3. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (2.31 million)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• GBA: 103,780 
• SNES: 2,210,000

4. Human Fall Flat (2.00 million)

Developer: No Brakes Games (Finland)

Breakdown (Incomplete)

• Various: 600,000 sold
• NS: 359,308 retail

Sources:

• https://www.gonintendo.com/archives/332688-human-fall-flat-hits-600k-sold-in-japan

5. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble (1.87 million)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• GBA: 100,175 retail
• SNES: 1,770,000 retail

6. Grand Theft Auto V (1.81 million sales)

Developer: Rockstar North (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• PS3: 880,877 retail + 2,519 digital
• PS4: 774,453 retail + 115,749 digital
• PS5: 1,551 retail
• X360: 33,894 retail

7. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon (1.51 million)

Developer: Next Level Games (Canada)

Breakdown

• 3DS: 1.31 million (includes at least 1,057,707 retail + 968 digital)
• NS: 195,327 retail

8. Donkey Kong Country Returns (1.31 million)

Developer: Retro Studios (USA)

Breakdown

• 3DS: 331,697 retail + 870 digital
• Wii: 979,539 retail

9. Luigi's Mansion 3 (1.29 million)

Developer: Next Level Games (Canada)

Breakdown

• NS: 1,290,000 total (includes no less than 1,030,594 retail and 98,771 digital)

Sources:

• https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9380054
• https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2023/230509_3e.pdf

10. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1.10 million)

Developer: Naughty Dog (USA)

Breakdown

• PS: 1,099,708 retail

11. Donkey Kong Land (1.07 million)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• GB: 1,070,000 retail

12. Ghost of Tsushima (1.00 million)

Developer: Sucker Punch Productions (USA)

Breakdown (Incomplete)

• PS4: 444,426 retail
• PS5: 46,051 retail

Source:

13. The Witcher 3 (1.00 million)

Developer: CD Projekt RED (Poland)

Breakdown (Incomplete)

• PS4: 171,944 retail + 41,290 digital
• PS5: 2,901 retail
• NS: 10,178 retail

Source: https://80.lv/articles/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-has-sold-over-1-million-copies-in-japan/

14. Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (0.92 million)

Developer: Naughty Dog (USA)

Breakdown

• PS: 917,105 retail

15. Donkey Kong 64 (0.85 million)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• N64: 848,375 retail

16. Crash Bandicoot (0.69 million)

Developer: Naughty Dog (USA)

Breakdown

• PS: 694,104 retail

17.  Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (0.67 million)

Developer: Treyarch (USA)

Breakdown

• PS4:  511,722 retail + 155,094 digital

18. Just Dance Wii (0.67 million)

Developer: Ubisoft Paris (France)

• Wii: 666,644 retail

19. Diddy Kong Racing (0.65 million)

Developer: Rare (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• N64: 653,426 retail

20. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (0.63 million)

Developer: Treyarch (USA)

Breakdown

• PS3: 575,373 retail
• Wii U: 21,471 retail
• X360: 36,517 

21. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (0.60 million)

Developer: Rockstar North

Breakdown

• PS2: 601,445 retail

22. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (0.59 million)

Developer: Infinity Ward

Breakdown

• PS3: 493,230 retail
• X360: 99,487 retail

23. The Last of Us (0.59million)

Developer: Naughty Dog (USA)

Breakdown

• PS3: 226,268 retail
• PS4: 167,616 retail + 180,049 digital
• PS5: 13,463 retail

24. Battlefield 4 (0.58 million)

Developer: DICE (Sweden)

Breakdown

• PS3: 232,348 retail + 4,895 digital
• PS4: 114,163 retail + 209,983 digital
• X360: 13,354 retail
• X1: 415 digital

25. Ratchet & Clank (0.56 million)

Developer: Insomiac (USA)

Breakdown

• PS2: 562,658 retail

26. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (0.56 million)

Developer: Rockstar North (United Kingdom)

Breakdown

• PS2: 557,132 retail

27. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (0.56 million)

Developer: Infinity Ward (USA)

Breakdown

• PS3: 500,640 retail
• X360: 56,129 retail

28. Call of Duty: Black Ops (0.55 million)

Developer: Treyarch (USA)

Breakdown

• PS3: 482,537 retail
• X360: 66,966 retail

Honorable Mentions and Near Misses

• Tetris was originally developed in Russia, but I feel that the versions of Tetris are too different to be considered a single game. Saying that Tetris on the Game Boy and Tetris DS are the same game is like calling Super Mario Bros. 3 and New Super Mario Bros. the same game. Furthermore, the best-selling versions of Tetris in Japan are all developed by Japanese companies. Still, if you feel that an IP's country of origin is what really matters, Tetris on the Game Boy is #2 on the list above with 4.23 million sales.
• Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS was ported by the American-based Nintendo Software Technology Corporation. I didn't count the porting of a game as developing it, but if this game is treated as a separate entity, then it makes it on the list with 1.19 million retail and digital sales.
• Likewise, Lode Runner was originally developed by American Doug Smith in 1983, but the version that sold 1.1 million on the Famicom was developed by Hudson Soft without his involvement. Furthermore, it had a number of differences, including less levels, new music, an overhauled presentation, fruits and veggies that grant points, etc. I consider it a different entry in the same series as the original rather than a true port.
• SimCity on the Super Famicom sold a whopping 900,000 copies in Japan alone. However, it is hard to consider it a western game when the port was developed and published by Nintendo under a license from Maxis. Similarly, if we combine the Saturn and Super Famicom versions of SimCity 2000, we end up with about 470,000 sales, an impressive number.
• A number of entries in series represented in the list above narrowly missed the cut. These include Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto IV and Liberty City Stories, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Call of Duty: WWII, and Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Battlefield 1.
• Although FIFA pales in comparison to the Winning Eleven (PES) series in Japan, the 1998 entry for PlayStation, FIFA World Championship, sold about 400,000 copies.
• Certain Western Indie games would likely be included if we had more data on regional sales. For example, Among Us was one of the best selling digital games of 2021 in Japan, being the #2 game on the Switch eShop for the year and getting a manga spinoff.

Trivia

• Of the 28 games with at least 500,000 sales, 12 are from the United States, 9 are from the United Kingdom, 2 are from Canada, 2 are from Sweden, 1 is from Finland, 1 is from Poland, and 1 is from France.
• The games on this list mostly come from two time periods: the first wave, which includes 9 of these games, lasted from 1994 to 1999 (largely from the Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot franchises). From 2000 to 2008, only 3 games on this list were released. Then, the second big wave of 11 games came from 2009 to 2013 (largely with adult ratings). We seem to be in a relative quiet period, but the sales of games since 2013 are largely digital, and thus largely unknown.

Well, DK and Luigi aren't purely Western games. They are japanese licences that were developed by western studios which differs completely from being 100% western. Deleting them from this list and putting others would be more relevant in my opinion.

Good thread idea.

Minecraft is a beast.

Crash Bandicoot used to be so strong in Japan.

This was something I had to think about when making this thread: what exactly was a Western game?

I ultimately decided to stick with where the developer was based because when I thought about it, you'd end up with some really odd data points if you based it more on Intellectual properties or publishers. For example, Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku was based on a Japanese license, but the developers were American and the publisher was European. Further complicating matters is the fact that even many Western games that do well are published through Japanese publishers, but only in Japan. This was why the best-selling games published by Capcom on the PS2 were technically the Grand Theft Auto trio.

Ultimately, I chose to just focus on where the developers were based. It seemed like the simplest answer I'd find. If it's any comfort, I'm planning all including all games above a certain point, whether they are based on a Japanese property or not, so it's not as if any more Western games are being kept off the list by Donkey Kong Country.

Western = not japanese? And where are the mobile games?

I'm including the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and every European country as "Western." If anyone wants to argue for including or excluding a country (one could make an argument for Latin America being Western for example), I'm open to suggestions. Note that this does exclude other Asian countries like China and South Korea.

I'm not including mobile games for a few reasons. Part of it is that most of the big mobile games are free with microtransactions, making it hard to compare them to traditional retail games. Another problem is that it's hard to find the actual sales of many mobile games sold in a single country, including Japan. Most of the information I find refers to how much a game grosses or their player counts including those who downloaded a game for free, which is again hard to compare.

Anyhow, I plan on eventually adding every Western game with sales information indicating at least 500,000 sales within Japan. Expect to see more games from Rare, Naughty Dog, Treyarch, Ubisoft Paris, Infinity Ward, Insomniac, Rockstar North, and DICE.

For me the Japan case is more on the type of game than where it was made. So keeping DKC and similar cases doesn't really help you have a clear idea.

I though CoD, Fifa, TLOU and UC had decent sales over there.

Understood. I believed that even though PES (Winning Eleven) sold better over there it would still have decent sales (does MLB have decent sales over there or lack of J-League also makes it a no go for Japan?)