Well yeah, it is super easy to find. However, for a lot of those torrents, the games have english patches applied. For example, I still can't find 10 without an english patch. However, I was just using 東方 as a point of reference, not really suggesting he buy those.

Abit off-topic, but the main reason the 東方 series is so popular is mostly due to the characters, and the world they live in. More specifically, it's because of 同人誌漫画 and fanart of the characters (from what I've observed on various forums). Personally, I never really bothered going any more in-depth on that though, and I just played the games.
I actually found a torrent pack with all the games that has been released for windows (well, anything exept 東方11). Search for "Touhou Project - Collection 2008". I think there's a somewhat English-ish patch (the main menu is in English), but none of the dialogue during the game is translated, and the info about the characters (in the character select screen) is in Japanese.

Ryuujin27 Wrote:

Surreal Wrote:Me, I want to find Japanese freeware/indie PC games, supposedly the scene is HUGE.

However, where do get these things? Well, Akihabara, of course! I've only recently found this scene (through my Japanese friend), but I will be sure to let you know where the good stores are! Just look for any store advertising 東方 and you should be in the right place.
(longquote would be long)

That. is. SUPER! But I am half the world away from Akihabara, sadly. I WILL remember it for when I actually go there, whenever that will be. Oh btw I have a friend who's into Touhou and I think I'll check it out; I do like some shmup action now and then. Though, whenever I try to find stuff online it's usually the aforementioned 'visual novels' (I do like good visual novels. I'm just not into most of the H ones because clichéclichécliché) or shmups that only have text that consists of "DANGER DANGER START GAME OPTIONS". Not very good study material. Finding some sort of online outlet for gaijins who want genuine, modern Japanese games with some originality would be ideal, but alas, it remains to be found (or founded).

Oh and hey if we're going old-school there's a fair amount of games that were never ported - some got fan translations like Seiken no Densetsu 3 but they were often not that good. Like the second (I think?) Ogre Battles, Tales of Phantasia and a bunch of Dragon Quest for example. I don't feel ready to tackle them yet but if YOU are, go play them and help avenge the victims of (especially) NoE.
t burritolingus: I liked Odin Sphere and the plot kept me going all the way but I was a bit bored by the combat system from halfway and on... Does oboro muramasa mix it up more?

P.S. I have to say this forum is AWESOME man community of the freaking year or what.

Surreal Wrote:Oh and hey if we're going old-school there's a fair amount of games that were never ported - some got fan translations like Seiken no Densetsu 3 but they were often not that good. Like the second (I think?) Ogre Battles, Tales of Phantasia and a bunch of Dragon Quest for example. I don't feel ready to tackle them yet but if YOU are, go play them and help avenge the victims of (especially) NoE.
t burritolingus: I liked Odin Sphere and the plot kept me going all the way but I was a bit bored by the combat system from halfway and on... Does oboro muramasa mix it up more?

There's a fan translation of Phantasia but I don't how good it is. All of the tales games are pretty easy to understand besides the usual setting vocabulary.

I also second the Persona games, a lot of regular day vocab and an interesting story.

The new Suikoden on the DS is pretty good too.

Ok, this is pretty awesome.

If you have a Wii, you can soft mod it to play Japan region games that have been burned on to a disc. The specifics of this are outside the scope of this thread, and probably outside the legality of this board, but just check around.

Right now I am playing Fatal Frame 4, and it is really nice since everything is voice acted with subtitles.

*Tags topic for future reference, since I love games but they're way over my head for now*

RPGs would probably be good, maybe old-skool ones in particular, like earlier FFs/Dragon Quest etc. Okami (PS2/Wii) has furigana, so if you can get it to work that one might be good (it's actually a Japanese-learning ambition of mine to play it in 日本語, love that game).
I've been wanting to play Oboro Muramasa (regardless of the fact I won't understand it), but all the homebrew you have to get to make the Wii region free confuses me horribly (I'm not very technical).

Anyone know where to get hold of scripts for Japanese games? It'd save some typing, and be useful for English games with a Japanese VA option (like Odin Sphere and Valkyria Chronicles, which I'm not allowing myself to play till I finish RTK. Can't wait). GameFAQs often has (English) script FAQs up, but is there a Japanese equivalent to the site?

Edit: Oh wow, Project Trico looks amazing. I'm so glad I bought a PS3 as a finish-RTK bribe. Better get on that right away!

Surreal Wrote:I liked Odin Sphere and the plot kept me going all the way but I was a bit bored by the combat system from halfway and on... Does oboro muramasa mix it up more?.

Combat is far more varied and fast paced, with each katana having different properties and special attacks (and there are many, many katanas in the game). But honestly, Oboro Muramasa has just as much (if not more) backtracking and repetition, from what I've seen so far. I don't mind it most of the time, probably thanks in part to the incredibly gorgeous 2D presentation! Seems to be a lot more visual diversity, at least.

I'll second Type-Moon's VNs, specifically Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night, although Nasu's writing is usually way over my head and incredibly detailed (and filled with some creative quirks, such as unique readings of kanji compounds and plays on both Japanese and English words), resulting in a massive amount of pretty difficult reading. If you're advanced enough, I highly recommend them - just don't expect typical eroge, and indeed, you might be better off disabling those silly scenes altogether - I have a ways to go before I can enjoy them in Japanese, myself!

Ampharos64 Wrote:RPGs would probably be good, maybe old-skool ones in particular, like earlier FFs/Dragon Quest etc. Okami (PS2/Wii) has furigana, so if you can get it to work that one might be good (it's actually a Japanese-learning ambition of mine to play it in 日本語, love that game).

Edit: Oh wow, Project Trico looks amazing. I'm so glad I bought a PS3 as a finish-RTK bribe. Better get on that right away!

RPG's are good, but you have to be careful. In the old school category each of the generations has its own problems. On the NES it's that few games have kanji, and if they do they're just a mess of pixels you'll never be able to puzzle out. The SNES is better for kanji, but not super great. They still simplify them a lot at times, and that means it could be hard to look them up.

PSX and later is probably your best option. The GBA has the same problem as the SNES, but the DS does a pretty good job displaying kanji as long as the developer doesn't make the font too tiny. PSP has such a good screen that I'd say it's probably the best outside of a PS3 game on an HDTV.

This doesn't necessarily knock the old school RPG's out of the running. You can probably play the many modern remakes of a lot of them without having to deal with hiragana only or pixel-mess kanji. There's a remake of Dragon Quest 1-3 for the SNES that was Japan only. Dragon Quest 4, 5, and 6 are remade on the DS. Final Fantasy 3, and I think 4 have been remade for the DS. Final Fantasy Tactics is best on the PSP, but there's also the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance series on GBA and NDS.

Earthbound is pretty good, but it doesn't use any kanji. Same for Mother 3. This sounds like it might be a plus for beginners, but it actually makes it really really hard to know where the word boundaries are. Some kanji is a lot more understandable than none.

On the topic of more modern games, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is a great pick because it has furigana when you put the stylus over the kanji. In terms of edutainment titles for Japanese, the 200万人 Kanken game is really really awesome. It won't teach you the meaning of any kanji, but it will take you through learning how to read them, know stroke order, and their okurigana. With a lot of games like that the difficult is way too hard for a non-native speaker, but the game can start you off at grade school level which is perfect for someone that knows about 500-600 of the most basic kanji. It's fantastic.

This thread has convinced me to do video game immersion on my DS. I'm not going to buy English games any more for it. It's also a bonus that you can get games like 6 months before they come out in the US. I get to play the new Phoenix Wright in a few weeks whereas my monoglot brethren have to wait til winter. Capcom has a good demo of it here for those of you on the fence. I'm finding that the vocabulary level is a little lower on this one as compared to the regular Phoenix Wright games because there's less court vocabulary.

wow, i finally found the Japanese script for Mother 3 on the internet... check it out:
http://book.geocities.jp/onnelist/mother3.index

bombpersons Wrote:If anyones interested heres a list of some of the RPG's I have on my PSP at the moment:
Final Fantasy 1 & 2 Anniversary Edition
Star Ocean remakes
Disgaea 1 and 2 (If they count as RPG's
Final Fantasy Tacticts

I have FF1&2, FF Crisis Core, FF Tactics and FF Disidea

Disidea, by far, has held me occupied more than the others, but it isn't your typical FF game and I can't get lost if I don't understand the Japanese like I did in Crisis Core. Tactics bored me after about an hour.

Out of the PSP games you've listed, which would you recommend? Do any have good voice acting?

captal Wrote:Tactics bored me after about an hour.

The PSP port of FFT is truly awful. I love the game but I just couldn't sit through such sloooooow animations. So I downloaded the PSX eboot and now I play that instead.

Of the games bombpersons mentioned, Disgaea and Star Ocean: First Departure are the best imho. My favourite PSP game overall is Generation of Chaos but I wouldn't recommend playing it in Japanese since it's almost impossible to understand in English!

If you like action RPGs you could also try Ys and Mana Khemia. Are you pirating or playing with UMDs? I only ask because Mana Khemia is pretty much unplayable with a UMD, even on a slim. Most modern titles are unplayable on a fat unless you use ISOs.

Oh and Valkyrie Profile of course... one of my favourite games ever. Forgot it was on PSP.

[Mana Khemia would be especially useful since it includes a Persona-esque social interaction feature where you have to build relationships with your classmates... speaking of which, the original Persona has just been ported to PSP!]

I have the 2000, so not a fat one, but not that newest which has a nicer screen, etc. I think it runs games the same speed as the newest though.

I have never looked into pirating on the PSP, so I have all UMDs right now, perhaps I should, but I don't have internet at home right now

Thanks for the advice! I'm always looking for good PSP titles to help my study.

captal Wrote:

bombpersons Wrote:If anyones interested heres a list of some of the RPG's I have on my PSP at the moment:
Final Fantasy 1 & 2 Anniversary Edition
Star Ocean remakes
Disgaea 1 and 2 (If they count as RPG's
Final Fantasy Tacticts

I have FF1&2, FF Crisis Core, FF Tactics and FF Disidea

Disidea, by far, has held me occupied more than the others, but it isn't your typical FF game and I can't get lost if I don't understand the Japanese like I did in Crisis Core. Tactics bored me after about an hour.

Out of the PSP games you've listed, which would you recommend? Do any have good voice acting?

The Star Ocean remakes (First departure and Second evolution, I think) have pretty much full voice acting. My only gripe with the games would be that they are too easy...

To be honest I haven't played much of tactics, I started it up and.. さっぱり分からない！

I've got Dissidea too, really addictive game... I got Zidane (ジタン) to lvl 99 =D

Another good game that I forgot to mention is 英雄伝説空の軌跡. I think it was released on PC first, and then only recently ported to PSP. It's an RPG with an SRPG like battle system. There are three games in the series, and each one is really long... one of them has 2 UMDs !

bombpersons Wrote:I've got Dissidea too, really addictive game... I got Zidane (ジタン) to lvl 99 =D

Is there a way to take the bad guys through story modes? I noticed that one of the campaigns has the ability to use bad guys but they start at lvl 1

My highest is Cloud at lvl 75

They don't have a regular story mode, the best you get is the Inward Chaos/whatsitsname thing (which really isn't much good if you're level 1), or the colosseum which is probably best for leaving them up.

I played up until the start of chapter 4 (when everything suddenly got really hard, I think I have too big a gap in levels between my characters or something that makes even random battles disasterous) of FFTactics, but I went through the first part of the script recently, looking up words I didn't know or wasn't sure on. I was surprised how many I had to look up, since I had thought I'd gotten through it well enough before. (Not all were meanings I didn't know, some were just readings I wasn't sure on. But it was still at least one from almost every line, and that was only from the openings.)

diablo 2 japanese version is pretty good for just reading kanji.

Lol, Diablo 2 is only good for katakana.

I think I'm gonna dig out one of my old... uhh... "Kinetic Novels". Those things have truckload of text!

Is there any 日本語化 for Diablo 2? (text, voices etc.) Would be interesting to play that one again.

There is the original Diablo 2 for Japanese. But most weapons and items have at least half of their name in katakana English and there is no Japanese dub.

I guess it's pretty hard to come by nowadays, right? Amazon and the like are sold out.

Maybe on share on PD..

Or Diablo 3 Japanese will be awesome enough to be worth the wait...

I'm playing Shuffle right now and it's really good. Your main character isn't voiced and a lot of the text is his own internal monologue but everyone else are fully voiced. It has a feature which lets you go back through the whole story up to this point so you can review all the text as well as the spoken dialogue - combine this with something like Audacity (setting it up to record whenever there is audio played on the comp) you can easily extract all the audio material and if you go one more step with AGTH (ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGTH) you get the text as well so you only need to do a bit of copypasting to get flashcards. The only slow part is extracting the audio from Audacity, wish I had something better for that. Moreover, I find http://www.hongfire.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75958 really useful because of the obvious reason that it helps you read kanji you don't know but especially because I can try on my own first and then check - unlike manga where the furigana is "unavoidable" when you have a go at non-fluent kanji.
Oh, and the game's pretty fun in it's own, the VA is a bit off at times but usually it's well acted - and it's quite a bit different from usual harem stories. I don't think you can skip the H-scenes straight away but the fast forwarding is so quick it really isn't a problem - unless you're a minor, I suppose.

Anyway, this is kind of a request - hope that's okay. I'd like to have some Brain Age-like game for the PC in Japanese - browserbased (preferrably free) or programbased, whichever works. Supposedly Japan is where the whole brain training trend started so I figure there should be a lot. Anyone have/know of something like this?

I really wish they'd translate WoW into Japanese.