So why have Japanese games been so extremely successful in the west? They suffer from all of the same supposed drawbacks, which were even more marked during the

So why have Japanese games been so extremely successful in the west? They suffer from all of the same supposed drawbacks, which were even more marked during their period of peak success in the 1980s and 1990s -- think Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter II. These games, all huge successes in Japan and in the west, have all the issues described -- radically different art styles, very different pacing, and complex and unfamiliar user interfaces compared to what westerners were used to. Even worse, during that period, Japanese games got little if any localization for the US and European markets, beyond hastily done and poorly proofread translations of the text. So what's different about Japanese games?