Why do Japanese video games often have most, if not all, of the text in English?

Question

I have quite a few Japanese imported shmups, fighters, platformers, etc, and have noticed that a lot of them have English text. Why is this?

Obviously no one knows what I'm really talking about. Nevermind.

Answer 1

Because the development environment is in English or roman codings.

And If they wanna use Japanese in the display, they consider 2 things.
1. Japanese font required, but beautiful Japanese font necessary (Japanese don't like dirty Chinese letters like the one from China)
2. Most Game words. like "attack" "critical hit" etc. came from English.
They can display in Japanese, but maybe in English is more cool. and easy to export or encode.

Answer 2

because you are getting the versions with English text. Changed I've the text is not that hard so they make a version of almost every game with English text. Why would they export the versions with Japanese text?

Answer 3

Because that is their primary language which is Japanese