Time for another gift guide! This time, we’re looking at the slightly more expensive console games and special consoles that can only be found in Japan and Europe. You know, the delicacies most gamers can never see or experience because they require importing and cost so much money. That second part is especially poignant now that the dollar’s value has dropped against the yen. Still, if you want to pamper a gamer, one of these items could be the way to do it.

Now remember, only the PS3 is region-free. Any PS3 can play any PS3 game. However, Wiis and Xbox 360s are region-locked consoles. So before buying any import games for a Wii or Xbox 360 owner, make sure they have a way to actually play them! Both AmiAmi and Play-Asia are reliable sites to shop and order from, with AmiAmi usually being the cheaper of the two.

Before we launch into the six game recommendations, there are a few awesome, Japanese PS3s that make any gamer’s year if he or she received one as a present…

There’s some good news coming out of Gamescom 2011 today. Well, it’s good news for Europeans. For North Americans, especially those involved in that Operation Rainfall thing, this announcement is like a dagger in the back. Nintendo’s European branch has just announced that The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower, the other two Wii games Operation Rainfall has been campaigning for, will be released in Europe sometime in 2012.

So, optimistically speaking, by mid-2012 Europeans could be playing the three Wii RPGs a large number of North American Wii owners have been begging, pleading and praying for. Ouch…

While Nintendo is still being tight-lipped, as always, about the possibility of Xenoblade Chronicles, Pandora’s Tower or The Last Story North American releases, a light has shined down from above. It turns out Nintendo of America trademarked The Last Story on January 13, 2010 and the trademark was just issued July 12, 2011. Nintendo’s got dibs!

This doesn’t really guarantee anything, or mean that we should all get excited about maybe playing The Last Story in English…

It’s 2011, which means a whole new year of import video game options is approaching. The best part is, the first few months of this year are filled with great DS, PS3, PSP, Wii and Xbox 360 releases. Even if, for some inexplicable reason, all Japanese game companies decided not to release any more new games until Fall 2011, you’d still be set with what’s coming out in the next two months. To help you get your import wishlists together, I’ve collected a list of 10 pretty darn awesome games coming out in Japan very soon. I hope you saved up!

Now, I know the 3DS is coming out next month in Japan. But I’m not recommending it or its games. Word is, they’re region-locked. So it’d be silly to recommend an import 3DS game to people when they’d have to buy a Japanese 3DS just to play it, and then not be able to use that Japanese 3DS to play games from other regions…

For quite a while now, Mistwalker has been teasing and tempting fans with news about a new RPG it’s working on, and at Nintendo’s Q3 2009 investor meeting some solid details were finally revealed. Mistwalker has been hard at work on The Last Story a Wii RPG.

So far, we know that The Last Story is a Wii RPG that Mistwalker has been working on since Spring, 2009. Mistwalker’s head is Hironobu Sakaguchi, who created Final Fantasy, and the company has worked on the RPGs Blue Dragon (Xbox 360), Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360), Blue Dragon Plus (DS) and A.S.H.: Archaic Sealed Heat (DS). Nintendo also announced that there will be major announcements concerning The Last Story in March, 2010.

As Siliconera points out, Nintendo has already trademarked the title, The Last Story in both North America and Europe…