What video games would you recommend for learning Japanese? I live in Japan, have a Wii and a computer with Windows Vista (Japanese version).

Download the SNES emulator ZSNES and then go to http://www.pantsemulation.com .

There are many good Japanese games on SNES which use fairly easy Japanese... Final Fantasy 4 and 5 for example.

Buy some Visual Novels.
Most even have voice acting.

It would depend on what point you're at. I had a lot of luck with Slime Forest Adventure, but it's basically a replacement for RTK. It also has a vocab mode, but it's kana-only so ...

JRPG http://taw.chaosforge.org/jrpg/ Attempts to teach you vocabulary through trial and error. Now sure how successful it is, though.

Honestly, I think iKnow is better than any game for JP vocab. It's not a game, but it's about as much fun as any educational game anyhow.

Wow, these are great suggestions, guys.

Tobberoth - I'm going to check out the emulator asap. I see Final Fantasy II, III, V, and Mystic Quest on the list.

isoron - Thanks. Looking into that. I'd never even heard of visual novels.

wccrawford - I'm at about 250 in RTK right now. I'm doing iKnow 6000 level 1 and am about 75% through it. I agree, iKnow is great and really addictive.

wccrawford Wrote:Honestly, I think iKnow is better than any game for JP vocab. It's not a game, but it's about as much fun as any educational game anyhow.

Which is why you should never play educational games

Personally I find iKnow extremely boring... and I thought their SRS system was way off, I used it for 5 days and never had to repeat a single word O.o

I'd second visual novels and such. Also the DS as a system, because it's nice to be able to take it wherever, and there are a number of visual novels and other goodies on the system. Of course, being that it's the DS, the voice acting is more limited, if at all present. Also, the DS isn't region-locked.

I advise against old RPGs, for 2 reasons:

1) They use too few kanji. After RTK you need to read a lot of kanji to solidify them.
2) Fonts are ugly. I dislike reading from ugly fonts.

I like the nintendo DS too. Japanese fonts look very nice.

DS can double as a functional, if not really all too robust, dictionary as well. And there's a game out for learning Japanese (that I found to be pretty so-so, though I don't really like language learning software to begin with).

Obviously, you're probably looking for games for systems you already have.

If you're a beginner, just stick to simple games where what they're telling you in Japanese is probably pretty intuitive and you could just guess what's going on from context. For example, playing something like Mario Kart or Wii Fit where the instructions are in Japanese, but really you could figure it out on your own. heh..

BTW, does anybody know if Zelda for DS is still the only game to use the tap-kanji-to-see-furigana scheme?

Nintendo DS is ideal.
Here's another good reason to get one.

The Nintendo DS has a "resume" feature.
If you just close a nintendo DS while playing a game, it turns off the DS.
As soon as you open it again, you start from right where you left off.

So literally, you can close the ds if you're in the middle of somthing.
Open it again and continue at the place you left off. No need to worry
about saving your game before turning it off.

It's great for environments where you get interrupted a lot (like at work or wherever).

NOTE: PSP also has the same feature. Just push up on the power switch quickly. To fully shut down the psp, hold the power switch up for a few seconds

@Dragg
Yeah, I checked a lot of games and it seems the only one. But not that it is that helpful as it uses very little kanji and if you don't know the word you'll have to look it up anyway.

mentat_kgs Wrote:@Dragg
Yeah, I checked a lot of games and it seems the only one. But not that it is that helpful as it uses very little kanji and if you don't know the word you'll have to look it up anyway.

逆転裁判!

You can pick up a GBA emulator and the roms easily.

You can also purchase a Nintendo DS and an R4. The R4 is a flash cartridge which can play ROMs which are downloaded onto it. i use it to download Japanese games which are simply far too expensive to purchase.

Chrono Trigger is one of the best for beginners, as it has the "re-translation" available

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Retranslation.html

mentat_kgs Wrote:I advise against old RPGs, for 2 reasons:

1) They use too few kanji. After RTK you need to read a lot of kanji to solidify them.
2) Fonts are ugly. I dislike reading from ugly fonts.

I like the nintendo DS too. Japanese fonts look very nice.

1 ) That depends greatly on the game, there are tons of SNES RPGS with full kanji sets. Lufia 2, FF V etc.
2 ) Good training to read garbled kanji, especially considering how Japanese people write...

Thanks again for all the suggestions, guys. I'll have to take another look at the DS.

I recently obtained Tales of Destiny Director's Cut for the PS2. I only played for a few minutes to make sure it worked, but not only is a lot of the dialogue voice-acted, but the kanji is large and very legible. I would recommend it for beginners who can't yet decipher the tiny kanji found in most handheld games.

Tobberoth Wrote:2 ) Good training to read garbled kanji, especially considering how Japanese people write...

Speaking of ugly fonts to pratice your reading skills... You should consider Hearts of Iron 2. I recently installed a 日本語化 patch so I was able to play my version in Japanese. The font size is really small and garbled (if anybody knows how to change that...) and the amount of Kanji is just ridiculous. Also, it has - from my point of view - lots and lots of rare vocabulary. I have only one complaint: The province names were not translated, that would be really nice Katakana practice.
If someone can understand all of that, he's my personal hero.

[ファブリス]

kmoeini Wrote:Thanks again for all the suggestions, guys. I'll have to take another look at the DS.

See topic Kanji Games for the Nintendo DS.

Tobberoth Wrote:Personally I find iKnow extremely boring... and I thought their SRS system was way off, I used it for 5 days and never had to repeat a single word O.o

It's probably boring because of your high level. I consider it cake. It's shadowing, sentences and dictation all in one. There's also a bit of scriptorium if you choose to right out the sentences. Not only that, but the vocab and readings seem to build on top one another.

I think it's strange you used it for five days and never repeated a single word, though. How far back was that. They've made a lot of updates. I see some words the very next day, and sections I have 100% for are getting spaced further and further each time.

It was just a few weeks ago, 2 or so. Of course, it was the first lesson of the first course so I knew all the words since... well since over a year earlier so I just blazed through it without a single mistake... but somehow I doubt just because you never do anything wrong you can wait more than 5 days for a review...

Even I skipped the first lesson. LOL. Perhaps, it has to do with how you answered the questions and the speed with you answered them. I know these are factors taken into account with dictation. Why not give it another go at the 6000 level and see if the problem still persists?

Yeah, maybe I should do just that. I know one of the people working on iKnow somewhat (Swedish guy who invented jisho.org) and he recommended me to try it so I guess I should give it an honest shot.

On the subject of games with furigana, I played a demo of Sonic Unleashed/World Adventure (PS3), which if you have your system language set to Japanese it will run in Japanese. The demo was an English one, but everything (except the logo) seems to change to Japanese. Don't know if the actual game would do that. The text might, but maybe not the voices (the demo's did). But what little text was in the demo all had furigana over the kanji. Sadly it's apparently not a very good game, though.