Because I am busily wasting my time here avoiding my real work, I’ll fill you in a bit on the market before you showed up.
G-collections used to be a Japanese b-game import site. They had a fairly large selection of Japanese b-games. Then one day they announced they were turning into an English market site, and the Japanese games vanished. This would probably be about a year before your time.
Several months later a similar Japanese game site opened (mystix anime), this time selling games below Japanese retail cost. This means they had a deal with the Japanese companies. Unfortunately the site died a few months ago. I don’t think they had many customers. All the regulars here suspect they were trying to get translation projects going, but couldn’t keep it up.
Peach Princess itself is sort of the undead version of Jast USA. They’re both run by Peter, and Pea Pri started up after Jast USA basically ran out of titles. Unfortunately JAST (of Japan) went under, and so Jast USA’s prospects of doing new localization work are not great. (Their last title, Transfer Student, took something like 4 years for them to finish because they had to recreate the game from scratch.) Peach Princess is still going strong. (As a side note, Peter also runs J-list.)
For a few years, Peach Princess was the only one actively doing translations. (There was Hobibox Europe, but they released a series I wasn’t particularly interested in and I never followed them.) If G-collections hadn’t come along, the market may well have dwindled off and died eventually (Peach Princess’ rate of releasing titles is 4 to 5 times less than GC’s, it’s just a fact).
Before Peach Princess, we get before my time. I had been a fan for about a year and a half before Pea Pri, but of the “shiver me timbers” kind, if you know what I mean. Himeya Soft made an abortive run at getting into the market. They released a number of titles, including one I really like (but find frustrating) called Gloria. They actually abandoned the market immediately after releasing their last title (which was pretty clearly rushed out, so they could get out). Himeya soft is still around, selling Japanese games. There were a few other places.
I think (but I’m not sure) that Jast USA was the first, with 3 Sister’s Story, and several others tried to follow. All these early efforts failed, and were the source of all the games you cough may have played without the media. Milky House, Otaku publishing, Megatech, and I think one or two others; they all went under. I think Milky House only ever released 2 titles (one of which is STILL an all time favorite - Nocturnal Illusion). Don’t know about the others - Otaku Publishing I think had to stop because the British government made them?
Anyhow, I am getting beyond where I know, and I should stop procrastinating a bit and get some work done. If anyone has been around the American market longer than the start of Peach Princess, I’m actually curious myself.