Well, I found some roms for the SNES mentioned on this thread. I was glad I found "Mother 2" (Earthbound in the US), but sadly it was all kana. It's unfortunate, since the story is placed in a "modern" setting.

I also found Star Ocean, but I can't find the other files necessary to emulate.

Other than that, I got Dragon Quest 3 and 5, Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3(Secret of Mana), and Estopolis 1 and 2 (Lufia in US) which seem to have kanji. Granted, the writing does appear a bit odd with the anti-aliasing.

Now I'm going to probably find cheat codes so I'm not wasting time in battles trying to gain experience or gold. It's about the few hours of story line, not the 50 hours of grinding that gets tacked on to make it seem like a longer game.

Super Mario RPG isn't that incredibly hard to understand... i also recommend Star Ocean on PSP because it has plenty of voice overs to go along with the text... The ultimate voiced over game would be Tales of Vesperia for PS3 though as they have gone back and added a lot more voice in the game on the PS3 version.

Hashiriya Wrote:i also recommend Star Ocean on PSP because it has plenty of voice overs to go along with the text...

Does anyone know any other voice-over games for Nintendo DS apart from Suikoden: Tierkreis?

Tales of Hearts on NDS has some voice overs in it... just not everything

Professor Layton series also have a few voiced cut scenes and some spoken text, however the majority of it is just plain text.

I fear this will be the case for most if not all (text heavy) games, because the DS has limited system resources and such. Simply put, I don't think it will be possible to put hours of voice on a DS card.

Nukemarine Wrote:I also found Star Ocean, but I can't find the other files necessary to emulate.

I can't find the graphics packs anymore either, but the newer versions of snes9x are capable of emulating Star Ocean without them. (I just tested it to be sure)

But by the by, if you don't want to actually *play* the games (?), a lot of them have entire scripts floating around online.

yukamina Wrote:I don't think buying a DS and games would be cheaper than buying books. If you can put it to good use, though, and DS is really great.

Neither did I until I went on Amazon.jp and took some books through to chekout, I had 3 and it would cost me ~£50 inc postage. So if I got a pre-owned DS with a few games maybe I would benefit from having an interactive and maybe more enjoyable experience. At least until I was more comfortable and could afford to buy books without worrying too much about being completely lost with them.

But one more question I had was how good the text looks like on these games? Do the Kanji render well on the screen for a non-native beginner in the language to recognise. I can imagine pixilated Kanji being a nightmare. Is say the PSP clearer than the DS for instance or are they both similar?

Being an RTKer, it usually isn't an issue. It's pretty rare that I can't tell what a kanji is in an particular game.

It's been a long time since I've been a beginner, though, so I can't really say with authority.

Examples:
http://stat001.ameba.jp/user_images/2009...305818.jpg
http://ca.c.yimg.jp/gameinfo/1237260681/...107_01.jpg
http://www.famitsu.com/game/news/2007/06..._2.jpg.jpg

Shingo Wrote:

yukamina Wrote:I don't think buying a DS and games would be cheaper than buying books. If you can put it to good use, though, and DS is really great.

Neither did I until I went on Amazon.jp and took some books through to chekout, I had 3 and it would cost me ~£50 inc postage. So if I got a pre-owned DS with a few games maybe I would benefit from having an interactive and maybe more enjoyable experience. At least until I was more comfortable and could afford to buy books without worrying too much about being completely lost with them.

But one more question I had was how good the text looks like on these games? Do the Kanji render well on the screen for a non-native beginner in the language to recognise. I can imagine pixilated Kanji being a nightmare. Is say the PSP clearer than the DS for instance or are they both similar?

I don't have a DS but I would imagine that the PSP's screen would me much clearer since it is much more high res.

Also, whilst on the topic of hand-held consoles...

...

...

...

...

http://openpandora.org

I'm playing through Pokemon Soul Silver at the moment. So far I have a 17-page document containing the script, and I'm not even at the first Gym yet. >_< I've been surprised to find that once I've looked up most of the words, I do get the gist, though not always enough to add the sentence to my SRS. Was expecting there'd be sentences I 100% understood, and those I didn't at all, but it's actually more in-between. I'm not really sure whether or not it'll help, or what to do with it (what do you guys think? I just typed it up and tried to figure out what was going on via extensive dictionary usage as I played), though I was going to play the game anyway, so...

I'm not too worried that there's no Kanji, as I get that elsewhere, and I'm realising vocabulary is my main problem at the moment.

Also have Sigma Harmonics (which is really too hard for me), which has VA and some furigana. I've found some Kanji hard to read, though think it's mainly just that I'm not used to seeing them written small, and in a different font.

Can't wait for Okamiden, it appears to have furigana, too, so is a definite import (since usually I wouldn't know the word whether it had furigana or not, I don't consider it makes it too easy).

Anyone know a good site with scripts from some of these games? Would probably be easier than walking through the games - and cheaper

There's a thread that posts a few Final Fantasy ones, but I don't remember which one, and the only site I know off the top of my head is this chrono trigger one: http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Scripts.html

I'd love to see the Final Fantasy ones, if somebody has a link!

http://members2.jcom.home.ne.jp/ffstory/ff/index.html
That the one you're talking about?

QuackingShoe Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:I also found Star Ocean, but I can't find the other files necessary to emulate.

I can't find the graphics packs anymore either, but the newer versions of snes9x are capable of emulating Star Ocean without them. (I just tested it to be sure)

But by the by, if you don't want to actually *play* the games (?), a lot of them have entire scripts floating around online.

Hmm, may need to acquire that then.

On the other part, it's not that I don't want to play the game. The interaction with other characters and investigation and following instructions is cool. I just don't want to waste tons of time dealing with leveling up to advance the story. Especially true if the ground rule for trying this is talk to everyone in every town. If it was only a matter of reading scripts, I have manga, dramanote and books for that. Interactive story lines without the interactivity is boring.

For now, I'll stick to Chrono Trigger. Last night was enjoyable, and I was impressed that I understood the tutorials.

Shingo Wrote:Do the Kanji render well on the screen for a non-native beginner in the language to recognise. I can imagine pixilated Kanji being a nightmare.

Well, the DS certainly is better than the SNES! So if you have the choice between the original Chrono Trigger and the Remake, I recommend the remake for that reason alone.

Sooner or later you have to get to the point where you can read a kanji by its rough structure, no matter if it is pixelated. Internet pages have way more pixelated kanji than SNES games. Open http://www.asahi.com and try to read the title bar of your browser. That's the size we need to be able to read. But I can understand if you want to priorize on reading/grammar/sentences before getting used to small print. That's a good idea!

I also recommend adventure-like RPGs (like Dragon Quest, Layton, Machi, ...) over Action RPGs like Zelda. In the latter, you may walk around for an hour slaying monsters without having to read a single Japanese word.

timewastin Wrote:

albion Wrote:you might trying looking for (certain) adventure games or sound novels.

Make sure you check out Machi (for Playstation, you can play it on an emulator like ePSXe). Very text-intensive, and the Japanese have voted it 5th best video game of all time. You can get the ISO on the internet, I think the page is called snesarama or something similar, but I'm not allowed to link to it.

Looking it up, there was a PSP version released 3 years, the official site of which has a 'demo' of it online:
http://chun.sega.jp/machi.html (the second option, 体験版, on the top menu).

On the subject of what text looks like on the DS:

Not that you can read much, the guy just keeps skipping through it. But it's not really too bad. Some (like すばらしきこのせかい shown before) can be a little hard to make it, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem if you already know the kanji.

Most DS games won't have voice acting, or much of it. But there are some that do claim to have full voice acting, apparently. Whether or not you'd be interested in playing them in another matter, though.

「ときめきメモリアル Girl's Side 1st Love Plus」
http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/Girls_Side/1st_Love/
「桜蘭高校ホスト部DS」
http://www.otomate.jp/host_ds/
「緋色の欠片ＤＳ」
http://www.otomate.jp/hiiro_ds/
「ヴァンパイア騎士（ナイト）DS」
http://www.d3p.co.jp/vampire-knight-ds/
「ストライクウィッチーズ－蒼空の電撃戦　新隊長 奮闘する！－」
http://www.w-russell.jp/s-witch/ds.html
「天外魔境II MANJIMARU」
http://tengai.jp/pc/ten2ds/

albion Wrote:「ときめきメモリアル Girl's Side 1st Love Plus」
http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/Girls_Side/1st_Love/
「桜蘭高校ホスト部DS」
http://www.otomate.jp/host_ds/
「緋色の欠片DS」
http://www.otomate.jp/hiiro_ds/
「ヴァンパイア騎士(ナイト)DS」
http://www.d3p.co.jp/vampire-knight-ds/
「ストライクウィッチーズ-蒼空の電撃戦　新隊長 奮闘する!-」
http://www.w-russell.jp/s-witch/ds.html
「天外魔境II MANJIMARU」
http://tengai.jp/pc/ten2ds/

great list, thank you! i'll check them out!

i've finally gotten my Tales of Vesperia game in the mail... it's fairly easy to understand if you got KO2001 1&2 completed... there are still words that i don't know but i can follow everything ok... one of the best things i got though was the instruction booklet to the game, everything is in furigana and by reading it from front to back it's pretty easy to understand all the item screens and status effects and what not now

Speaking of RPG's, Final Fantasy 13 will be out soon! =D

TGS09 Trailer

bombpersons Wrote:Speaking of RPG's, Final Fantasy 13 will be out soon! =D

TGS09 Trailer

Seems to have its fair share of everything I dislike about the other FF games. Too bad I'll end up buying it anyway. ò_ó

Has anyone played the 龍が如く series? The 見参 one is only $35 for import now on PS3

hknamida Wrote:

bombpersons Wrote:Speaking of RPG's, Final Fantasy 13 will be out soon! =D

TGS09 Trailer

Seems to have its fair share of everything I dislike about the other FF games. Too bad I'll end up buying it anyway. ò_ó

I think I finally get why they call it Final Fantasy "13." 0_o

bombpersons Wrote:Speaking of RPG's, Final Fantasy 13 will be out soon! =D

TGS09 Trailer

*drool* I really wish I had a PS3. Not happy about Maaya Sakamoto voicing, though. Seems I can't watch or play anything without her being in it.

bombpersons Wrote:Speaking of RPG's, Final Fantasy 13 will be out soon! =D

TGS09 Trailer

wtf? It seems to be more and more Final Softcore... Perhaps I am old-fashioned but I think Gau on the Veldt was a lot cooler than all this emotional overdose.