Burritolingus Wrote:

harhol Wrote:FF13 is currently £60 everywhere on eBay. This is the hardest decision I've ever had to make.

I believe the game is selling for around 8000 yen presently, so maybe £60 is on the reasonable side after all.

I checked and £60 is actually cheaper than it costs in Japan (9240￥ according to this site, which is £63.74). Really, it would be stupid not to buy. At least, that's what I told myself as I clicked Buy It Now...

harhol Wrote:I checked and £60 is actually cheaper than it costs in Japan (9240￥ according to this site, which is £63.74). Really, it would be stupid not to buy. At least, that's what I told myself as I clicked Buy It Now...

Good decision, after all it's all about learning I can't wait until mine ships, hopefully it will be accessible enough for me to start playing and mine sentences. I can only imagine the struggle I'll have to face at first but it should be worth it.

Burritolingus Wrote:

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:Hmm, all my games I have for my Super Famicom HAVE kanji in them.

SNES games generally have plenty of kanji, yeah (unless they're made for a younger audience) - I was referring to NES/Famicom games Some use kanji, but generally, the NES's resolution was too limited to display any. I agree about the spaces thing, though. Most of the games I've played in kana have had the decency to include spaces, but others seem intent on making us suffer.

>.< I waaaaaay misread what you posted earlier! Yeah, NES/Famicom don't have kanji.
I can imagine it being hell to play the Famicom. I wish I had one but I will just stick with good ol' Super Famicom. Sorry if I came off as a jackass at all. >.>

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:

Burritolingus Wrote:

LegionOfDeicide Wrote:Hmm, all my games I have for my Super Famicom HAVE kanji in them.

SNES games generally have plenty of kanji, yeah (unless they're made for a younger audience) - I was referring to NES/Famicom games Some use kanji, but generally, the NES's resolution was too limited to display any. I agree about the spaces thing, though. Most of the games I've played in kana have had the decency to include spaces, but others seem intent on making us suffer.

>.< I waaaaaay misread what you posted earlier! Yeah, NES/Famicom don't have kanji.
I can imagine it being hell to play the Famicom. I wish I had one but I will just stick with good ol' Super Famicom. Sorry if I came off as a jackass at all. >.>

Not at all Actually, I seem to recall some silly, political style games that were able to cram a lot of kanji onscreen. Now that's a game genre I haven't seen in ages... the politics simulator! An art lost to the dark arts of moe and dating sims, perhaps...

But yeah, scratch what I said earlier, it looks like FF13 is selling like... well, like a Final Fantasy game in Japan.

Back to the subject of JRPGs, I've finally been getting into Dragon Quest 9. I've honestly never played a DQ game to completion... always found them boring and grindy (and I love boring grinders!). DQ9 is really beginning to grow on me, though, and the furigana is a godsend.

Wow it's nearly been a month since I started playing this! Just starting the 3rd disc now. Glad to say that it's definitely not the kanji or reading slowing me down but rather the fact I don't play it routinely every day!

I've learned quite a lot from it so far but i'm just itching to play FF3! That and i've been getting rather sidetracked by playing Strawberry Panic.

Anyone finished?

I'm a little less than 30 hours into FF7, near the end of Disc 1 at 古代種の神殿 (Temple of the Ancients...or Sanctuary of the Ancients...or something, I actually can't remember what it's called in English! It's been a long time since I played this game). So far the game isn't too hard to understand, although there is still a good deal of vocab I don't know. But I've picked up the essential words 神羅 and 魔晄!

Been playing this really on and off, sort of picking it up for a few hours every 3 or so days. Alas i've made it to disc 4! I've kinda been playing it for the last 2 days straight to try finish it quick as possible because I'm really keen to play FF3 soon.

As it stands I've learned over 300 new words from just enjoying playing it

Hmmm it would be interesting to play FF7,8,9 all in japanese. But at the moment dont' really have money to spare on those things, well not yet at least. But since having a ps3 i would have to sign up for a japanese psn account. And probably buy japanese psn cards online and buy it that way. B/c i hear that for visa, they only accept japanese visas. I don't really know if they accept canadians visas or not. But definitely would be interesting to play those games.

終わった！

OK Mezbup,
You've got two kings standing on a turtle between two walking sticks. What does your character mean and what is your story for drawing it?

I believe that primitive is called "broken gates" and then you have the old form of turtle and it's one of the 2 kanji that can be used to write くじ which is a lottery/lot.

edit: don't have a story but I guess one could be "I entered the "broken gates lottery" and all I won was this crappy old turtle".

http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/39726

ta12121 Wrote:Hmmm it would be interesting to play FF7,8,9 all in japanese. But at the moment dont' really have money to spare on those things, well not yet at least. But since having a ps3 i would have to sign up for a japanese psn account. And probably buy japanese psn cards online and buy it that way. B/c i hear that for visa, they only accept japanese visas. I don't really know if they accept canadians visas or not. But definitely would be interesting to play those games.

Not that I'm RECOMMENDING that you do this or anything, but you could download the PC versions of the games, or download the games themselves and use an emulator to play them.

mezbup Wrote:I believe that primitive is called "broken gates" and then you have the old form of turtle and it's one of the 2 kanji that can be used to write くじ which is a lottery/lot.

edit: don't have a story but I guess one could be "I entered the "broken gates lottery" and all I won was this crappy old turtle".

http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/39726

You know, that actually does look remarkably like a turtle. What that has anything remotely to do with a lottery, I don't know, but it really looks like a turtle.

mirina Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Hmmm it would be interesting to play FF7,8,9 all in japanese. But at the moment dont' really have money to spare on those things, well not yet at least. But since having a ps3 i would have to sign up for a japanese psn account. And probably buy japanese psn cards online and buy it that way. B/c i hear that for visa, they only accept japanese visas. I don't really know if they accept canadians visas or not. But definitely would be interesting to play those games.

Not that I'm RECOMMENDING that you do this or anything, but you could download the PC versions of the games, or download the games themselves and use an emulator to play them.

mezbup Wrote:I believe that primitive is called "broken gates" and then you have the old form of turtle and it's one of the 2 kanji that can be used to write くじ which is a lottery/lot.

edit: don't have a story but I guess one could be "I entered the "broken gates lottery" and all I won was this crappy old turtle".

http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/39726

You know, that actually does look remarkably like a turtle. What that has anything remotely to do with a lottery, I don't know, but it really looks like a turtle.

FF8 is from 1999 so i'm sure square won't loose too much revenue if you download it. That being said it's one of the only games I own an actual copy of!

Haha, if you think it looks like a turtle now wait til you turn it on it's side Seriously it looks astonishingly like a turtle when you turn it 90 degrees counter clockwise.

mezbup Wrote:FF8 is from 1999 so i'm sure square won't loose too much revenue if you download it. That being said it's one of the only games I own an actual copy of!

Surprisingly Japanese FF8 was the best selling game of December 2009 on PSN, so the revenue keeps on coming. SE already stated US/European version will be made, so it actually hurts sales a bit

thurd Wrote:

mezbup Wrote:FF8 is from 1999 so i'm sure square won't loose too much revenue if you download it. That being said it's one of the only games I own an actual copy of!

Surprisingly Japanese FF8 was the best selling game of December 2009 on PSN, so the revenue keeps on coming. SE already stated US/European version will be made, so it actually hurts sales a bit

Sure, if you're getting through the PSN store on a PS3. Not if you don't own a PS3 and you have an old school playstation like me

FF7,8,9 PC versions in japanese? I might look those up online.But the only thing i don't like about emulators is that i remember trying this one game and it took a while to configure to it's best. But it did work overall well.

ta12121 Wrote:FF7,8,9 PC versions in japanese? I might look those up online.But the only thing i don't like about emulators is that i remember trying this one game and it took a while to configure to it's best. But it did work overall well.

Don't count on it. I tried looking for 7 just now but to no avail tbh I don't think its out there for PC in Japanese to found. Can find all of the English versions no problem (though I don't think 9 was ever released on PC).

Easiest way to do it is get the PSX iso's or obtain it legit if you can do so.

Hmmm PSX iso's eh. I'll search those up on the net. I was thinking of buying psn card online, japanese ones. And just signing up for japanese psn account via on my ps3. Then just buy it via psn cards(japanese ones) and just both all 3 of those games. I would buy the original ones off amazon.jp or something. But i don't think ps1 japanese format games work on a U.S. ps3. I know blu-ray format basically works on all formats, no region restrictions but i'm not too sure about ps1 discs

I've heard lots of bad things about the PC version of 7, and I doubt that there have been any updates for it, so you'll probably have all sorts of compatibility issues. If you use the emulator pSX you can start playing straight away like somebody mentioned earlier in the thread. If you have a large monitor, however, and can't stand how bad the graphics look stretched to full screen, or just want to enjoy the games with better visuals, then try epsxe. It's a pain to set up, but since you'll be spending about 30 hours playing, you might as well spend 30mins or so to get it looking awesome.

ta12121 Wrote:Hmmm PSX iso's eh. I'll search those up on the net. I was thinking of buying psn card online, japanese ones. And just signing up for japanese psn account via on my ps3. Then just buy it via psn cards(japanese ones) and just both all 3 of those games. I would buy the original ones off amazon.jp or something. But i don't think ps1 japanese format games work on a U.S. ps3. I know blu-ray format basically works on all formats, no region restrictions but i'm not too sure about ps1 discs

For once i'd actually recommend buying it off the PSN store owing to the fact the Japanese FF games have this really annoying copy protection built into them that even a modchipped playstation can't play (or an emulator, I think?) until you patch them! I know where to get the iso's and how to patch them and stuff like that but tbh buying them from the PSN store and not having to mess round with all that stuff would be so much easier.

@javizy: yeah i'd imagine some compatibitly issues might arise, though a friend of mine dl'ed the English version of FF8 and didn't have any problems (graphics also looked way better than PSX). Aside from that I play it on a big tv and it don't bother me none Then again I like the oldschool ones like 4 and 6 too.

Hmmm. I'd rather get it off iso's then the psn store at the moment. It would be fun to be able to play the emulator and all at the same time look up words,etc when needed. But i do hear yea. It would be easier just to buy it of psn store and just play it right there and now. But at the moment iso's will be just fine for me.

http://www.ffdq.com/ff8/

a full walkthrough to FF8 (and ALL the other FF's!) in JAPANESE! The site also has pretty much the entire dragon quest series too.

I used an English walkthrough (when needed) for FF8 (despite having finished it numerous times) but recently learned the word for walkthrough 攻略 and managed to get a hold of a good Japanese walkthrough for FF3.

I notice that it's really helpful to comprehension because you have to read it and then carry out the actions in the game so it really solidifies your understanding of it

@mezbup
That's a good find!!!! Definitely going to SRS some of that!

Sorry about the bump, but this is a topic that's really interesting to me, as I basically learned all the Japanese I know through playing Japanese RPGs. I bought and read a few grammar textbooks, picked up a handful of words and kanji, and then just attacked games with a dictionary until things clicked. I started with things that were familiar, like Final Fantasy VI and VII, and then gradually moved onto things I hadn't even tried in English. It's only been this year that I've started reading Japanese novels and studying the language in a formal environment, so more or less all of my progress to this point has been down to Japanese RPGs. I'm nowhere near fluent, of course. My speaking in particular is pretty abysmal, and I've never learned to write all the kanji I can read, hence my registering at this wonderful site. Still, I've managed to reach the level where I'm studying for the JLPT 1 in 2010, and I played through Final Fantasy XIII this Christmas without really needing to reach for my dictionaries.

I think provided you're interested in RPGs to begin with, they're an amazing way to make the jump from textbook Japanese to Japanese written for natives. Modern RPGs throw a whole range of reasonably high level concepts, speech styles, and vocabulary at you, and many of them give you listening and reading practice all rolled into one. Also, as someone else mentioned, their interactivity means it's basically a case of adapt or die. More than that, though, they deliver a large quantity of text in a form that's much easier to digest than your average novel. I love reading in Japanese now, but when I tried to read a few novels off the back of my grammar textbooks back in the day, it was pure pain. Visual novels weren't much better - you get a bunch of pretty pictures and music, but it's basically the same thing. Japanese RPGs, though, mixed all that text with something fun and relatively mindless, and I could happily play them for hours, gradually learning to understand more and more. Was it the most efficient way? Doubtful. But it was so painless that I didn't even notice how far I'd come 'til I plucked a novel off my shelf one day and found that it made sense.

Anyway, yeah, sorry to steal your thread, but I just thought it was sort of neat to see that other people are using games as a learning aid. Congratulations on your completion of FFVIII!

I'm playing through FFIII now Sadly I've been so busy with other study that I haven't touched it in a few days but Im going to play it solidly to try finish it soon.

They are so much more relaxing than novels and fun and it definitely is an easier to digest format as you said. I find that if you're at an OK level, you can actually do a lot of reading as opposed to decoding and read them with alright speed.