I read something useful related to this somewhere on the forum a while ago, but I can't for the life of me find it. I'm thinking of playing a few games (or one big one) in Japanese. How should I proceed?

By that I mean should I take the "Look up every word you don't understand and add it to your flashcards" approach, or "Look up enough words that you understand the storyline", or maybe even "Forget looking up. Just play."

Also, same question, but regarding a game I've already played once (so have a good grasp of the storyline already)

frony0 Wrote:I read something useful related to this somewhere on the forum a while ago, but I can't for the life of me find it. I'm thinking of playing a few games (or one big one) in Japanese. How should I proceed?

By that I mean should I take the "Look up every word you don't understand and add it to your flashcards" approach, or "Look up enough words that you understand the storyline", or maybe even "Forget looking up. Just play."

Also, same question, but regarding a game I've already played once (so have a good grasp of the storyline already)

If you have a PS3, "Ni No Kuni" might be your best option. It is one of the few games with furigana over every kanji. Also, the game itself is very enjoyable.

Have you finished RTK? If not, how many kanji do you know?
Basically, the more kanji you know, the easier it'll be for you to understand the dialogue.

We've got a recent PS3 thread in the koohii lounge. What games are you thinking?

I find looking up words while playing games to be like five times more tedious than while reading books. I'd do it when there's something really crucial to understand, otherwise I like to just play because to keep stopping usually kills the experience.

Although it depends on the game, I guess. I've been playing Ookami a bit, and it's got the standard text dialogue in a click-to-advance style, with furigana on everything. Not that annoying to use the phone to look up the difficult words as with a game that has cutscenes.

No PS3 I'm afraid... But I have finished RTK, although I dropped it quickly afterwards and as a result lost some writing ability. I'm nearly done with Core2k though, and recently started actively using Lang-8.

I was thinking of finally playing the JP copy of FF9 I have, which I'd put off because last time I tried I couldn't get much. I see what you mean about the stopping though, that's why I asked. Would I really gain anything from playing it without looking up anything though? (I also have a phone app with dictionary+flashcards that I use for quick notes)

You can "just play" as long as you have furigana. If it has kanji and you don't know most of their readings you'll be more annoyed than you could possible believe. There's two ways around it: Play with a dictionary/smartphonepadthing by your side or

Play games with furigana. Some of my favorites:

Ni No Kuni PS3 - Beautiful game

Danball Senki Boost PSP - Amazing game, probably my most played Japanese game and it's got a long and fleshed out story. It also has an amazing anime to go with it, that, conveniently, hasn't been subbed yet as far as I can tell - it's faithful enough to the game that you'll understand most of the dialogue of the anime after having played the respective parts in the game helped by your completed RtK knowledge. Oh, and a lot of it is voiced.

Zelda DS games - On these games having done RTK feels almost like cheating - I think there's almost no compound words you can't puzzle out using RTK knowledge

Pokémon games - The newer ones let you play with kanji instead of furigana, but there's very few kanji even with that option, so even with the lookup method it's eezy breezy. 信長の野望 has furigana and is an intriguing game, though I couldn't bear suffering through the *extensive* tutorials

Anpanman to Asobu DS - no kanji in this. It's for little kids and it'll teach you kana if you don't know them yet, plus some vocabulary of basic things that might have passed you by. Plus Anpanman is delicious.

Time Travellers PSP/Vita/Ithink3DS - Haven't started this yet, but it's by Level 5, so it's furigana approved and is bound to be a quality game

Inazuma Eleven DS games - same as above

Digimon (the newest one) for the PSP - I started this up and it bored me, but it's got people who swear by it and is furigana approved

Dragon Quest IX DS - Same as above

Persona 4 Golden Vita - I'd play this a lot more if I didn't have to do lookups, since it's the second game I'm listing that doesn't have furigana. Still, it has so much voiced dialogue you can afford to skip your lookups quite a bit. Still, the questions at school require understanding. I think it was more luck than anything that I knew the Christian calendar starts at year 1 instead of year 0... can't believe I never learned that.

I'm playing Twilight Princess (zelda) on a gamecube emulator. Pretty easy vocab most of the time, and furigana, of course. (You can find it at the Port of Plunderers, just search in plain English :p)

Do anyone know of any good Zelda-esque games with furigana? I would love to play other games too, but I know awfully little about computer games, at least any with worthwhile dialogue...

The best Zelda-esque games are, well, Zelda games. Try Skyward Sword and Wind Waker.

I play games for fun, constantly looking up words is not fun and slow ie. compare it to a browser with Rikaichan. Treat it as a reinforcement of what you've studied before and believe me there are tons of stuff that you'll need to see 1mln times to finally "get it" (looking at you という).

I'm currently playing Persona 3 on my PSP (one of the best games for this platform) and Yakuza 4 on my PS3. First one is much easier but they both have quite a lot of dialogs and a lot of them are voice which helps immensely.

On PC I'd go with select games from Steam (like Skyrim) or full blown visual novels (both erotic and regular), generally furigana and/or voice is what you should be looking for.

But considering your level I don't think you'll be able to enjoy any games in Japanese, you can try but if it doesn't work or seems daunting, change your strategy and get back later.

Hyperborea Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:If you have a PS3, "Ni No Kuni" might be your best option. It is one of the few games with furigana over every kanji. Also, the game itself is very enjoyable.

The English version is being released in North America on the 22nd of this month and is supposed to have the Japanese audio and text available as options. It might be easier to get a copy of it rather than the Japanese version.

According to PlayAsia.com:

Language Voice: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

So if you want Japanese kanji, you'll probably have to get the Japanese version

(I generally only play Japanese PC games)

First, I play games with ITH, using a guide.
Then, I take all the text and run it through cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool, adding repeating words I don't know to Anki.
Then, I after a while, I play the game again. It makes tons more sense, and I don't have to spend time looking things up.

For non-PC games... I only look up words if I see them come up a lot. >_>

anritsi Wrote:(I generally only play Japanese PC games)

First, I play games with ITH, using a guide.
Then, I take all the text and run it through cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool, adding repeating words I don't know to Anki.
Then, I after a while, I play the game again. It makes tons more sense, and I don't have to spend time looking things up.

For non-PC games... I only look up words if I see them come up a lot. >_>

what is ITH?

chamcham Wrote:

Hyperborea Wrote:

chamcham Wrote:If you have a PS3, "Ni No Kuni" might be your best option. It is one of the few games with furigana over every kanji. Also, the game itself is very enjoyable.

The English version is being released in North America on the 22nd of this month and is supposed to have the Japanese audio and text available as options. It might be easier to get a copy of it rather than the Japanese version.

According to PlayAsia.com:

Language Voice: English, Japanese
Subtitles: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

So if you want Japanese kanji, you'll probably have to get the Japanese version

Which isn't a problem because as an American the All in one edition of Ni no kuni is only $52 (free shipping), so it'll be cheaper and you'll get more content.

anritsi Wrote:(I generally only play Japanese PC games)

First, I play games with ITH, using a guide.
Then, I take all the text and run it through cb's Japanese Text Analysis Tool, adding repeating words I don't know to Anki.
Then, I after a while, I play the game again. It makes tons more sense, and I don't have to spend time looking things up.

For non-PC games... I only look up words if I see them come up a lot. >_>

^This.

Also, there are many scripts available for download.

chamcham Wrote:what is ITH?

It's a program that basically grabs the text from games. There's a tutorial here.

Oniichan Wrote:Also, there are many scripts available for download.

heh, I've never thought of looking for the scripts beforehand. But I think I'll just continue playing games twice anyway. When I play games for the second time, it seems like effortless magic compared to the first. :'D *is motivated by strange things*

I suggest you the metal gear series, but not for actually playing it (if you mind only learning japanese through a videogame).
It is far more convenient to watch some videos on youtube (because you can pause and listen to it several times).
Metal gear has A LOT of speech with subtitles.

If your Japanese is still at a low level where you will have to be looking up words in almost every sentence, you might consider a game that has scripts available online. Crono Trigger and Mother 3 are two that I played through while following scripts.

I've also tried the "just play without looking stuff up" thing with some games, and honestly I don't get anything out of it.

I think you should play a game that you know very well.
The best genre for learning a language is jrpg which usually have a lots of text in it.
In this way also if you do not get the grammar structure of the sentence you know more or less the meaning of it and you can understand the pattern.
You can look words up, but I would not bother to add them into anki because you lose part of the fun of playing a videogame.
This principle applies also to books, movies etc...

What I do when I add Anki sentences from video games:

While playing:
- Write down n+1 sentences until you've got enough of them. This only takes 10 seconds to me, a bit longer if there's no furigana and the kanji are unknown/blurry.

After that I just start adding definitions into Anki.

Whatever time I lose by typing Anki sentences, I win back when reviewing, and reviewing is so much more fun when the sentences remind you of the source. Even though I read slowly because of my vision, I still get about 100 reviews done in 20 minutes (sometimes even less; record is 6 cards/minute).

I only add about 10 a day though, to keep the number of reviews low. (~100), so this is trivial to me.

Copying it from somewhere is more preferable though. And I've noticed that apart from a few rare words (that are present in almost all zelda games), most of the vocabulary is relatively common; thus you won't really be looking up too many words on your second Zelda game..

Hyperborea Wrote:...Does anybody know any way to control the cut scenes?

PS3 game right? How about a lo-tech way: digital camera

My advice is let them wash over you. If you don't understand anything, just get used to the speed, because that's the speed you want to end up understanding and talking at, and there's no other way to get used to it but listen to it.

You won't miss out on what you have to do, the game is nice about giving you written instructions after the cutscenes, and the pictures will let you get the gist of what was said.

Hyperborea Wrote:Well, I started the Japanese version of ニノ国. So far so good.

On the plus side, it's a classic JRPG style game, the graphics of the game and not just the cut scenes feel like you are watching a Studio Ghibli movie, and there is furigana for everything.

On the minus side, you're companion is a talking doll with a lantern in his nose who has a heavy Kansai-ben accent, the cut scenes move rather quickly (and with that accent) with no way to pause/rewind/replay them, and the first "fight" is somewhat sad/comical. The first fight has you as the player controlling 13 year old Oliver as he beats a small dog with a (magic) stick. Your Kansai-ben doll tells you that it's ok because it's a magic dog.

Does anybody know any way to control the cut scenes?

You can pause cut scenes.

Edit: Actually, what type of cutscenes are you referring to? You can for sure pause the in-game ones, and the fully animated ones don't occur often enough to be of any complaint.

Zlarp Wrote:Time Travellers PSP/Vita/Ithink3DS - Haven't started this yet, but it's by Level 5, so it's furigana approved and is bound to be a quality game

I played that last year, the story is really good. Lot's of odd science words etc, but you can figure out by context what's going on anyway.

My approach is to enjoy what I'm playing regardless, and only look up works that seem key to understanding something. The main thing is to just play, you'll find you understand enough to enjoy it anyway.