I learned how to program in the Rom Hacking scene and was involved with a team that released 4 patches for games.

The amount of dedication and hours our team put in was incredible. I think I managed around 30-40 hours with high-school.

Also, a lot of the reasons some games never made it stateside or came way late was often financial or political. The US versions of these companies often ran slightly independent from the Japanese game studios and the RPG adoption was not huge in the early console days here yet.