>>59010286as said in the thread already, they do exist, but they're mostly personal projects from otakus, and rom hacking is mostly seen as "messing around" whereas Western rom hackers are far more public about it and treat themselves like they're game developers looking for 5 seconds of fame.
Vega is notable because it's a Japanese rom hack that was not only released to play but also was publicized enough in online forums that the english nuzlocking community made a translation for it. And it got that attention because making a polished new region and a full roster of GOOD fakemon in 2011 was pretty ahead of it's time.
Many of those Vega devs are still around, or have inspired others, but there isn't half as big of a "scene" for Japanese rom hacking beyond people posting their work to twitter. Which is also why news about Procyon & Deneb is so hard to hear about.
