I'll buy a flashcard for the Nintendo DSi this week. Since I can't afford to buy japanese games from the internet (my parents only allow me to buy from Europe, and I kinda lack money), I'll buy it with the purpose of playing only games in japanese and chinese.

My japanese is really basic right now, but I intend to immerse a lot more in 1010, both in japanese and in chinese, I've already set my goals to 1010.

I would like some advices on what games I should play. Games with basic japanese (and chinese, if you happen to know), preferably.

Thanks in advance!

CarolinaCG Wrote:My japanese is really basic right now, but I intend to immerse a lot more in 1010, both in japanese and in chinese, I've already set my goals to 1010.

You're a thousand years to early to beat me!

...

LOL Sorry, I couldn't help it. I've heard that too often in anime.

If you want basic Japanese, get kids' games... Pokemon, etc.

Ah! A typo

I really love Pokémon, but it's all in Hiragana I think, but I'll play it anyway. Pokémon is not just for kids , what other kids games are there? I only know Nintendo's most famous games...Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, Mario, Phoenix Wright (Humm, Phoenix wright, should be interesting...).

What about RPG's?

Btw, should I use sentences from these games in Anki? As soon as I have a smarphone running Anki I'll fill it with sentences from videogames. Can't wait.

Any more advices?

Legend of Zelda is actually a little more confusing for a beginner than you might expect, because of all the various linguistic quirks characters tend to have. Pokemon is all in hiragana, which is murder. When I was just starting out, Ace Attorney (Gyakuten Saiban - sorry, can't type Japanese atm) was actually a really good way to start out. There's some of specialized vocabulary (law), but it's the same few words so incredibly frequently that it's easy to retain. And it forces you to really understand what you're reading to point out the contradictions etc.
Dragon Quest 9 has furigana? But I haven't played it yet and can't comment on the difficulty. However, anything set in a medieval fantasy world is going to have odd language (thus Zelda).

Really, though, you can get through just about anything if you want to. You don't necessarily have to understand the greatest portion of it. Mm, I remember Subarashiki Kono Sekai confused me when I first tried it a long time ago? Maybe? But I just started playing it for real recently, and it's perfectly easy, and the game is ridiculously good on it's on merits.

There are a lot of detective games and also visual novels for the DS (like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni), but playing games like that can be difficult to push through when much of the language is unfamiliar - it depends. While basically the same as reading a novel, the (occassional) voice acting and the pictures make it a lot more bearable. They also tend to use much simpler language. On the other hand, the more mature the type of story (ie: not a dating sim), the more novel-like the writing becomes, especially if you get into the more indy stuff.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days is out. It's really easy for me, and it's not like it's a very complicated sort of story.

Yeah, hiragana really is murder. I love phoenix Wright! I'll try it. I was always interested in laws and criminal stuff (due to watching TV series like CSI, Without a trace and so many others...).

I'm afraid though, I'm afraid not to be able to keep up with the games. I would like to say that I will look up in the dictionary for new vocabulary but that might be a really boring and hard (if the games don't have furigana, at least).

Let's see. Thanks!

Dragon Quest 9 is a good'un, if only for its glorious furigana. Language can be a bit on the tricky side because of all the different manners of speech and slang (lots of rough, rural speak early on) and fantasy vocabulary, but the furigana really is a godsend. I haven't played very far into it, myself, though.

What else... Final Fantasy 4 is great, though notoriously difficult (gameplay-wise).

I'd definitely recommend the Kanken DS games, also.

Quote:I'm afraid though, I'm afraid not to be able to keep up with the games. I would like to say that I will look up in the dictionary for new vocabulary but that might be a really boring and hard (if the games don't have furigana, at least).

You really don't need to look up every single word, though. What I do is either keep a paper notepad nearby and write down interesting looking words, or if I'm at my computer, look them up via WWWJDIC and jot them down into a notepad file, for later SRSing. The key is to keep your dictionary look-ups to a minimum, only looking up the commonly used words and otherwise words you're sure you'll want to learn. Constant dictionary lookups can take the fun out of things really, really fast for sure.

Thank you so much! As soon as I get my hands on R4i I'll follow all this threads advices.
That idea is so awesome.

Kanken, those are the kanji games, I guess? I know there's a thread about kanji games here, I'll look it up to, though at this point I only care about grammar, sentences and vocabulary, oh, and mandarin chinese too (which will make me have limited time)

CarolinaCG Wrote:though at this point I only care about grammar, sentences and vocabulary, oh, and mandarin chinese too (which will make me have limited time)

Then you'll want to track down these titles

Nihongo Bunshou Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Kyouryoku - Tadashii Nihongo DS (J)(WRG)
Mondai na Nihongo (J)(6RZ)
Nihongo Kentei DS (J)(iND)

Some of these things will be ok to use others will be a bit beyond your level for the time being but those are the ones you come back to when you're ready.

I'd also suggest obtaining by means of 著作権侵害 the following titles:

Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten (J)(SCZ)
DS Bimoji Training (J)(Caravan)
Kanken DS 3 Deluxe (J)(Caravan)

Also, a mandarin learning game for the DS (I think it's the only one):
Gakken Chuugokugo Zanmai DS (J)(Caravan)

You can hunt all these down at romulation, just make an account and go hard.

I'm reminded that I have FFIV but am currently stuck and haven't play it in a while D:

すばらしきこのせかい/Subarashiki Kono Sekai was kind of difficult to read for the quality of the font, from what I remember. The text might be a bit on the overly casual side as well.

I found all of the Kingdom Hearts games to be pretty easy to understand (but that's going from my personal level, so it's probably not a good guideline for anyone in general). The font was sometimes a bit scrambled in the DS one (it might be a problem with a lot of DS games), but not unreadable or anything.

And 逆転裁判 is just good.

Edit; looking up DS sound novels, this site came up. Not all are available for the DS, mind, but there are links to some free, PC ones as well (going a bit off topic from DS games now).

http://soudan1.biglobe.ne.jp/qa3151451.html

Thank you so much。 Oh I can't wait to get my hands on the R4.

My face right now >

sword world 2.0 is a gamebook which means all story. I played it thru couple times and its very nice

I strongly recommend Mario and Luigi RPG 2 and 3. They are made to allow both kids and adults to play them, so there there aren't many kanji and explanations are iterated too much, which is good if you are don't have much experience with Japanese.

I agree that Zelda is pretty hard. The furigana popup feature is great though.

Oh and if you haven't bought the r4i yet, might be worth getting a dsonei. They have a firmware flasher for the device, so even if Nintendo releases an update to the DS that breaks it, they release a new firmware that you can patch.

thermal Wrote:Oh and if you haven't bought the r4i yet, might be worth getting a dsonei. They have a firmware flasher for the device, so even if Nintendo releases an update to the DS that breaks it, they release a new firmware that you can patch.

Yeah. Thank you so much. I still haven't bought it. But now I don't know which to buy, apparently there are 2 flashcards with that feature. DSonei and M3i Zero.

The good thing about have a flashcard is that you can try everything.

Professor Layton Series are really good, the game have furigana and sometimes audio.
Check here

Here some blogs with japanese games reviews:

http://learn-japanese-ds.blogspot.com/
http://naruhodojapan.blogspot.com/
http://www.mrbass.org/nintendoDS/japanesegames/

Professor layton huh? I will try it for sure, I've been wanting to play it for ages!
I only want the flashcard for japanese games, and probably for other applications (I don't which, do you know any useful one?)

Btw, I ordered DS one i, it has already arrived (but I'm not at home at least till the weekend)

Any more suggestions will be greatly appreciated

Thank you everyone.

As someone suggested, Kanji Sonomama Rakubiki Jiten is a MUST if you have DS and is learning japanese =)
Really, my life got sooo much better with this dictionary...it's easier to use if you don't know the reading of a kanji ,as you have to write it there. Also it's good if you've got no internet around and need a dictionary. Also it's j-j ,and it has japanese - english as well. I feel I'm learning a lot through it.

I'm also playing Zelda Mugen no Sunadokei ,it's difficult, but it's the game I'm most interested in at the moment. I also intend to play the new Zelda Daichi no Kiseki after I finish this one, both games look great . I also own Chrono Trigger, this time original since it's my favorite game ever...but it's still too difficult, so I'll finish Zelda first.
I have Pokemon soul silver too, which is also a lot of fun, too bad it's only kana, it's annoying sometimes ,

Fire emblem is a nice game for the DS imo, its a turn based rpg which contains a lot of story between all the battles. However the Japanese required to actually PLAY the game is quite minimal (you basically have to learn the word for axe/sword/lance, iron/steel/silver xD). So you can train your Japanese during the story part of the game, but it doesnt really matter that much if you cant follow everything yet.

I'm also playing through マリオ＆ルイギRPG３right now (bowsers inside story in english), this game is also not too heavy / not too light on text, and is actually quite easy to follow. As before it also doesnt really hurt if you miss a line or two.

I posted this in the R4 topic, but I figured I'd try in here too.

I'm new to the subject of flash carts for DS, so can someone tell me if something like this has everything out of the box(aside from the sd card) that I'll need to use it?

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30518

Rael89 Wrote:I'm new to the subject of flash carts for DS, so can someone tell me if something like this has everything out of the box(aside from the sd card) that I'll need to use it?

You need 3 things.

1) flash cart
2) microsd memory, (or micro SDHC depending on your cart)
3) usb microsd reader/thumbdrive dodad

It looks like the link you provided has 1 and 3. And I'm not certain that that particular cart supports SDHC, so just make sure to get plain old microsd.

Rael89 Wrote:I posted this in the R4 topic, but I figured I'd try in here too.

I'm new to the subject of flash carts for DS, so can someone tell me if something like this has everything out of the box(aside from the sd card) that I'll need to use it?

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.30518

This is what I have. Strangely enough it didn't come with the files you need to load onto the card to get it to work. I found them online in a matter of minutes so it wasn't a huge issue but still... kind of impolite of them. Works well so far.

It appears to be a ripoff clone of the DSTTi in ripoff clone R4 packaging. I'd go for a real DSTTi instead.

The DSTTi company says they're going to start trying to actively break clones (as in brick them).

[ファブリス]

Edit: sorry, wrong thread.

Nintendo is developing High-Def DS with motion sensor.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/186004/re...nsor.html/

Get ready for the new games!

CarolinaCG Wrote:I only want the flashcard for japanese games, and probably for other applications (I don't which, do you know any useful one?)

I just remember this -->Comic Book DS

I love this app because I can read row manga, but also books in PDF, you only need convert the PDF into Image