It's sad, but the reason why there is such a delay is there are too many games for too small a market. It costs a lot of money to market a game, if there is too much competition at the time of release than the game will easily flop in smaller markets. If more games flop in a region, than the region gets even less releases so the publisher can stop losing money.

It's business, I think Nintendo knows what they are doing on the business end. Nintendo has rarely ever seen losses in any region. The 3-10% of gamers that go online (us) and complain don't make up the whole market, and they(we) still buy the games anyway (because we do what we are told by our masters).

I played OOT on N64 at 50Hz and it ran just fine. Why does it run like crap on the Wii, which does support 60Hz, by the way (changing the Wii to 60Hz mode doesn't fix the matter).

I'm sorry, but it is NOT difficult to have OOT running full speed on the Virtual Console, Nintendo just hasn't done it. They can emulate the PAL version at 50Hz or the N64 version at 60Hz or even just drop 5/6ths of the frames for all I care, but instead the game runs at a slow pace. Why? It's clear, Nintendo doesn't give a shit about PAL gamers.

Heh, still waiting for Super Mario Rpg to be announced for Pal VC or GBA/DS. :p

It is pretty difficult to buy more games, because some of them never make it here (some of the rpg's or anime based games) or are delayed toooooooo much (Metroid Pinball, anybody ?)

Because of that most people have already modded their console and imported their games or simply bought imported console, when games finally make their way it here. :(

Easy for you to say, America receives the games most at first when it's a Western production, America gets the games first after the Japanese release, while the Pal territories may wait for months or sometimes even over a year before they get to chance to see the game. Star Ocean III, Shadow Hearts From the New World, two perfect examples. America even receives at times Japanese releases sooner than the Japanese do, like Paper Mario (WII) and New Super Mario Bros for instance.

Not only that, Europe itself has the disadvantage to have so many countries with different languages and there are countries who doesn't appreciate the game in English but rather have it translated in their "own" language.

@Punisher, DS / GBA / PSP are region free for games, so the ones who wanted to have a Metroid Prime Pinball, most likely have imported a long time ago, or bought as import in their own country ;) 

Maybe U.K, Oz and Kiwis need a separate region for themselves, E.U-English region. No use being bogged down waiting for French and German translations.

Man... what a whinge fest.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't...

First about the region lock. Wii is region locked, 360 has optional region lock and PS3 is region free, but NTSC PS3 doesn't play PAL games on PAL TV.

About that PAL 60 mode, even that it is 480i/60, it's not the same as NTSC, it still needs the PAL color input. Every Widescreen TV should support this, and according to the poll in everybody votes channel, more than 50% of Wii owners still play with 4:3 TV:s, so the standard PAL localisation is needed.

Now, when people blame Nintendo about fucking up with people about the releases, it's the same thing with every other company and besides, only EA matches the quality or quantity of Nintendos localisation. First game ever i had seen with really put effort to its localisation, was Shadowrun, its Scandinavian version had swedish as language, and it really pissed me because i don't understand swedish.
The languages they translate the games are german, french, italian and spanish. Some games like Harry Potter, have had even finnish translations. I find it funny, that at the same time people complain about region coding, others complain (sometimes even the same people) about games not being localised enough.
In one way around, region coding is caring for the customer, and it really helps the publisher, since the financial issues are the main reason for region locks.
They do can release localised games simultanously worldwide if they want to, but the reason why they usually don't, is financial.

Like Onna said, it depends highly on the publisher when they get games here early. This is the problem with every console. Console being region free, helps the people who import, who by the way have their consoles modded anyway, but importing also hurts people who buy their games from local retail.

Looking at Sony and Lik-Sang, really shows what they mean with region free. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if PSP would have sold better, when the market (for Sony) would have been enough to support retail and import. Sony, its importers and retailers lost a lot of money with Lik-Sang, and therefore Lik-Sang had to be terminated (i hope you all see how humorous i am. Ha-ha).

Btw. how long did Metroid pinball take time to arrive Europe?

Yeah , thsi issue affected me to , Im from mid-EU :(