Publisher XSEED has long held a passionate fan-base for bringing obscure Japanese titles to American shores, but they seemed to really come into their own when they stepped forward to release The Last Story in the States earlier this year.

For a long time, it seemed that American gamers were out of luck. Whilst Nintendo of Europe played a blinder in bringing over fully dubbed versions of Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower, it looked like Nintendo of America would only stretch their budget to Monolith Soft's Wii epic. Yet it was XSEED who decided to approach NOA after seeing what hunger western gamers had for Nintendo's RPGs.

Soon after release, XSEED has proudly declared that The Last Story has been their most successful release to date, but now the company has revealed that they were very close to passing up the title.

In an interview with Kotaku, XSEED's vice president Ken Berry explained that convincing the powers behind the purse strings was the biggest challenge in securing The Last Story.

"It was a constant fight even within our own organization. To our external sales reps, we'd be saying, 'No, like you guys don't understand. There's tons of fans out there that are asking for this. There's a huge fan movement.' I mean, so yeah. In the end, I think we were right."

The Last Story was at the centre of a mass internet campaign to get it, Xenoblade Chronicles and Pandora's Tower released in the US. Berry added that gamers "really stepped up their game and put their actions and their wallets where their mouths were earlier. They backed up their talk."

You can read the full interview with members of XSEED here.