These days, it's often probably a marketing ploy because if the game's good, it's coming over anyway. But back then there were a LOT of titles stranded in Japan. The exception would be super-niche-y titles (like Class of Heroes, for example!) that have a small market to begin with.
But that whole Vay thing was surreal as it unfolded. Shigeta-san took a liking to me for reasons I still don't understand completely. I remember having tea on delicate fine china in his office in Japan at SEGA CC ConsumerSoft while he brought in staff one by one that demoed the in-progress builds of some games, including Iron Storm and Dragon Force, both of which he which he offered me on the spot when the demos were done.
And then another time, I think before that, when he asked me to come upstairs from SIMS (SIMS is the letters of the names of the founders - Shigeta being the first S) offices to the top of the office building where there was a HUGE empty SEGA conference room like you see in movies with an enormous oval conference table surrounded by dozens of chairs, and him sitting way on the far side opposite the door, beckoning me over because he wanted to ask what I thought of the 32X SoA was pushing. That night was pretty surreal, and it only became more so. We were there at the end of March, and the cherry blossoms were in bloom, so leaving that night was also very cinematic with the gentle breeze unleashing wave after wave of cherry blossoms as we walked out of the office building onto the small, dark street in back, past a small temple, and to the JR station a couple blocks away.
Or the time in Orlando at Disneyworld where, out of hundreds of top publishers and developers at the event, he chose to sit by me in a conference SEGA held, which was a strong, silent vote of confidence. I heard (awesome, kind of scary) stories about his darker side, but he was always extremely, completely, totally cool with me. In later days he got involved in some kind of financial scandal and disappeared from SoJ, then I lost touch with him and eventually heard that he got very sick and died. No one at SoJ really wanted to talk about it, so it was hard to know what really happened. But I have nothing but great memories of those times interacting with him.
