I have been looking for some online text adventure games, MUDs, or choose your own adventure type text games in japanese but cant come up with anything.
I love playing sound novel games like Kamaitachi no yoru, and would like to try playing some other text based games, for japanese pratice, preferably free and online.
Anyone know of any sites?

There's this one...http://lumo21.net/soft/game/dq.htm The link's at the bottom to download. I kinda got stuck at one point though...

I hope someone else knows some too...

Thanks for the info. The game seems interesting, but unfortunately the options appear as mojibake.

　　Is it that you have necessarily to use a Japanese OS?

Transtic Wrote:The game seems interesting, but unfortunately the options appear as mojibake.

For XP, go to your Regional and Language options and set the non-Unicode language to Japanese; that should fix it. This might break some English things that depend on English being the non-Unicode language, but you should be fine just leaving it like that.

Thanks Megaqwerty, now I can play the games without problem!

By the way, I found another テキストゲーム here. It isn't online, and it is a beta version, but you can copy the text so it is easier to use dictionaries and make word lists with it.

Hey, I found this site too, I think you'll like it. There are lots of サウンドノベルto download. I tried "Charade" and it is interesting. These ones aren't only text but include images as well and a nice OST, some of them (maybe all of them) even include the voices of the characters, so sometimes you can listen to the character speaking while reading the text. Besides, although you can't copy the text (at least, not with "Charade"), you can sort of "rewind" and read again all the dialogues. I.e. you have plenty of time to "reread" and search words, or even read and transcribe whole sentences.

The only bad thing up to this moment is that... it seems most of the games (I hope not all of them) have a really "kawaii" graphic style, which may be a bit shameful if you aren't alone while playing. -_-"

Thanks so much guys!!
The sound novel sight is a great find! tons of stuff there to play with!
I am still looking for online, maybe flash text or sound novel games, since I own a linux computer. If anyone finds anything, please let us know.
it seems I will have to borrow my friends computer and try out those sound novel games in the mean time!

I found this site....
http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~gmt/gametown/flashgame.htm
It has some flash sound novel games.
It seems the key google word search is soundnovel and flash (in japanese)...duh!

[ファブリス]

Yeah thanks Transtic! If someone tries the games on a1-game please let us know which ones are good. I see it looks like the "abandonware" we have over here, maybe that's why some actually have decent audio and soundtracks.

The ones that let you replay the audio for the text in the text log are best, since you can have a guess at the reading and it makes searching for the compounds easier. It sounds like such a simple feature but I've only found one or two so far on my Dreamcast with which I could listen multiple times to the dialogues that are in the "log".

I found another site-this is kind of what I was ideally looking for: an online, simple text based choose your own adventure style story, with text you can copy and paste.
I havent tried playing it too much yet, but here is the link:

http://page.freett.com/yaztromo/online.html

Transtic Wrote:T

Hey, I found this site too, I think you'll like it. There are lots of サウンドノベルto download. I tried "Charade" and it is interesting. These ones aren't only text but include images as well and a nice OST, some of them (maybe all of them) even include the voices of the characters, so sometimes you can listen to the character speaking while reading the text. Besides, although you can't copy the text (at least, not with "Charade"), you can sort of "rewind" and read again all the dialogues. I.e. you have plenty of time to "reread" and search words, or even read and transcribe whole sentences.

I can't figure this one out. The ones I'd like to try, I don't know how to get ;.;

The names of the games are those written in red text. They are linked to the game's site, where you should be able to ダウンロード each game. Unfortunately, it seams that each page has a different format, and some of them are missing.

Now I'm playing "Charade" and as this is my first time with this kind of games -don't know why didn't try this stuff before >_< - I find it pretty interesting. And the images and BGM are just so nice and relaxing...

Megaqwerty Wrote:

Transtic Wrote:The game seems interesting, but unfortunately the options appear as mojibake.

For XP, go to your Regional and Language options and set the non-Unicode language to Japanese; that should fix it. This might break some English things that depend on English being the non-Unicode language, but you should be fine just leaving it like that.

Actually, there is a nice little application that allows you to use Japanese software without having to set the non-Unicode language to Japanese: the Microsoft AppLocale (http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/tools/apploc.mspx). This tool is not well known, but it's really useful.

I hope this helps.

Edit: This works only for Windows XP or Server 2003.

That sounds great. Thanks Munia!

By the way, if someone has a Japanese OCR, I would be great if you tried using the OCR software with the logs of these games. Unfortunately, most of them don't let you copy the text. But it would be possible to copy the logs as images and use an OCR on those images. That way you could paste the dialogues onto the Reading Tutor, make word list, pick up sentences, etc...

Transtic Wrote:By the way, I found another テキストゲーム here. It isn't online, and it is a beta version, but you can copy the text so it is easier to use dictionaries and make word lists with it.

Hm, I want to play this one, but when I try to load a save file, it gets screwy(says there's a fatal error, and starts the game from a dungeon instead of where I left off). Does it work for anyone else?

Hmm..I've never played a sound novel.
Is it like a "choose your own adventure game" with background music and character voices?

I don't know if this will help any, but I'm finding Dragon Warcry fun to play.
It's more like a flash RPG though. http://http//dragon.warcry.biz

Transtic Wrote:By the way, if someone has a Japanese OCR, I would be great if you tried using the OCR software with the logs of these games. Unfortunately, most of them don't let you copy the text.

See my post in this thread

Bokusenou Wrote:Hmm..I've never played a sound novel.
Is it like a "choose your own adventure game" with background music and character voices?
http://http//dragon.warcry.biz

That is right, basically a sound novel is as you described above.
Thanks for the Flash rpg link, wil check it out!

Now I know this isn't a text game, but aren't there like Japaneses UO shards going around? those might be interesting.

raseru Wrote:Now I know this isn't a text game, but aren't there like Japaneses UO shards going around? those might be interesting.

What are UO shards?

zazen666 Wrote:

raseru Wrote:Now I know this isn't a text game, but aren't there like Japaneses UO shards going around? those might be interesting.

What are UO shards?

I've never played the game so I'm just guessing: I think it might be a server set up to host the massive multiplayer RPG, Ultima Online. In this case, it must be for Japanese players.

Pretty old-skool by today's standards. Maybe its free nowadays.

Right, but UO has always been about player runned shards, that's where like 95% of the community was, so it has been pretty much always been free. It is indeed a unique MMO, it was one of the first and the game was totally hardcore with no carebear play styles that is present in today's MMO

raseru Wrote:Right, but UO has always been about player runned shards, that's where like 95% of the community was, so it has been pretty much always been free. It is indeed a unique MMO, it was one of the first and the game was totally hardcore with no carebear play styles that is present in today's MMO

I totally agree with the carebear comment. Almost every MMORPG ive ever played seems like a Diablo clone with fancier graphics and more people.

I think UO was the first one to offer something beyond just hack n slash.

This seems to be the closest thing to a thread about sound novel/visual novel suggestions so I thought I'd just add to it rather than start a new one.

I just started playing a free visual novel for PC called Narcissu. It has intermediate-level Japanese text with spoken narration from time to time. There is also a version which has been translated into English. The game appears to be fairly long and it was written by a visual novel author who has made commercial works in the past. The music and sound effects are of high quality by various artists.

Japanese version:
http://stage-nana.sakura.ne.jp/

English version:
http://narcissu.insani.org/

I've also been emulating the Super Famicom version of Tokimeki Memorial which has no spoken audio, but the text is easy enough for most advanced beginners or lower intermediates to understand.

Hmm, I actually played that a long time ago in English and enjoyed it, I think, though I actually don't remember much about it.. Might go back and do it Japanese sometime...