In order to not hijack the already gargantuan "The 'I just finished RTK1, please congratulate me' thread" thread, I figured I'd start a new one for video games.

Quite a while ago, when I was probably halfway through RTK1, I tried playing the Legend of Zelda, a Link to the Past in Japanese. I was surprised at how many kanji I could make out, despite the heavy pixelation and low resolution.

Once my Japanese gets better, I'll probably start with Secret of Mana. I'll surely be using the WWWJDIC a lot, but at least I'll know what's going on since I've played through this game in English several times.

I never really cared much for manga or anime, but I've always been a big fan of video games. This should be a useful tool for me to roll up my sleeves and work with the language. Has anyone else tried this?

[ファブリス]

I love "Space Channel 5 Part Two" on the Dreamcast. Part two, which is much better than the first one (imho) wsa only released in Japan for the DC. In part two there are some sequences where Ulala and the crowd sings with the text shown at the bottom of the screen. But you have to read fast

Here's the Japanese Space Channel 5 Part 2 Promotional Video on YouTube. Shoot!

The sequences with Michael Jackson are awesome!

I'm finding that my Silent Hill obsession is finally paying off in my (very beginning) Japanese study. Silent Hill 4's NTSC-US version comes with language options for both English and Japanese, switchable at any time. Also, much of the text that you see can be re-viewed after the first time you've looked at it (the main character's thoughts upon seeing something or reading something, or the text of notes or books that appear in the game; both can be revisited multiple times). I'm familiar enough with the game to be able to play through it in Japanese, but not to the point of having memorized the text word-for-word, so I can try to puzzle out the Japanese text and then switch to English to check myself. The subtitles in cutscenes go by quickly, of course, but since the voice acting is in English, the general meaning of the dialogue is clear to me. Of course, the vocabulary you run across in a horror game is just a little off-center from common usage...

I'm hoping to do the same with the first, second, and third games in the series. None of them came with the dual-language option as far as I can tell, but I'm hoping that the combination of owning the Japanese versions, a Japanese PS2, and a good PS1 emulator will help. It's hard to read kanji on the TV, though...

(I'm doing the same type of thing with the Death Note manga, which are kind enough to include furigana.)

Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass for the DS comes out on the 23rd in Japan. Unfortunately I just finished RTK1 and don't know any vocab/grammar, so I don't think I'll be able to play. I've tried Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker in Japanese and have no clue what's going on. Time to learn more than just the kanji.

fluxcapacitor Wrote:Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass for the DS comes out on the 23rd in Japan.

Really? It's been online for quite some time now.

I play 応援団 fairly religiously, but since the text scrolls by at blistering speeds, it's not the best of an education.

With the intent of going through it after completing RTK, I recently picked up FFX: International Edition only to find out, much to my chagrin, that it lacks the Japanese vocals, but that it also has the option for English text. A strong temptation that.

The nice thing about SNES emulators is that you can pause emulation at any moment. When deciphering Japanese, I need all the time in the world.

Another useful thing I tried eons ago was to have two emulators running the same game, but one in English and the other in Japanese. Translating Japanese text was as easy as switching to the English game. But switching back and forth proved slow and annoying.

After mentioning FFV in another thread, I started re-playing the game last night. Clocked 3 hours. That game is sa-weet.

The awesome thing about the new zelda for DS is that you can touch any kanji with the stylus and the kana pops up!

akrodha Wrote:Another useful thing I tried eons ago was to have two emulators running the same game, but one in English and the other in Japanese.

You could, could, set one to global focus and use the same controller to control both until your scheme was ruined by random probability. Or just use a text dump: they are somewhat common for more popular games or you could make your own.

radical_tyro Wrote:The awesome thing about the new zelda for DS is that you can touch any kanji with the stylus and the kana pops up!

That brings up the question: why don't they just use kanji for everything, everywhere and plaster furigana all over the place? The kiddies can still read their comics and the foreigners using some esoteric mnemonics are all happy. But I digress.

Megaqwerty Wrote:That brings up the question: why don't they just use kanji for everything, everywhere and plaster furigana all over the place? The kiddies can still read their comics and the foreigners using some esoteric mnemonics are all happy. But I digress.

Probably because it ruins the aesthetic qualities of written text, looks childish, and is extra work. But yeah, it can be helpful.

Megaqwerty Wrote:That brings up the question:

Thank you for not saying, "begs the question."

[ファブリス]

On the older systems, like SNES or GameBoy, I wonder if there was enough space on the carts to hold the frequently used kanji and kana.

JimmySeal Wrote:After mentioning FFV in another thread, I started re-playing the game last night. Clocked 3 hours. That game is sa-weet.

Haha, so much for it being a waste of time! I started it a few times in the past, but only a few months ago did I actually care enough to finish it entirely. It is indeed a pretty good game, but I definitely couldn't play through it again in Japanese---at least not now.

ファブリス Wrote:On the older systems, like SNES or GameBoy, I wonder if there was enough space on the carts to hold the frequently used kanji and kana.

I don't know. That may have been a problem, but I don't know how much memory would be required to store a good 1000-2000 kanji/kana, especially compared to all the other sprites and bitmaps those carts needed to hold.

radical_tyro Wrote:The awesome thing about the new zelda for DS is that you can touch any kanji with the stylus and the kana pops up!

Really!? Wow, that's a pretty neat feature! I may have to import it someday, somehow.

Megaqwerty Wrote:You could, could, set one to global focus and use the same controller to control both until your scheme was ruined by random probability

You know, I just tried that with Secret of Mana, and it works surprisingly well. Of course my laptop is a bit slow, and there are a few tiny differences between the jap and us versions, but the randomization isn't much of a big deal at all. Besides, it's quite challenging trying to control two characters with one gamepad. Fun!

JimmySeal Wrote:Thank you for not saying, "begs the question."

Seeing as how none of us are logicians or philosophers (at least, to the best of my knowledge), I don't what would be wrong with "begs the question", but sure: you're welcome.

I've been playing Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2. Aside from being incredibly entertaining games, I find they are great for studying Japanese.

They are both heavily story based (KH2 even more so) with frequent cut scenes where you are treated to lots of Japanese dialogue accompanied by subtitles which you can pause as many times as you like to decipher or take notes. Both games are easy too (if you play in beginner mode at least), which is nice because I want to be reading Japanese - not spending hours of my life leveling characters.

I admit I can't follow everything but I have a English game script pulled off GameFAQs that I leave up on my laptop to follow along with when I get lost. You couldn't use it as a direct translation for study purposes though; the general meaning is there but the translators took a fair bit of liberty - which is actually pretty reassuring to me about the quality of the text.

radical_tyro Wrote:The awesome thing about the new zelda for DS is that you can touch any kanji with the stylus and the kana pops up!

that is awesome. definitely want to play that game!
I got Zelda on the Wii, and that displays kana over all kanji. pretty good game all in all. I am new to the Zelda series to be honest (meaning: i played a Link to the Past on the SNES but missed all the N64 and GC versions)

I have been playing 悪魔城ドラキュラ (Circle of the Moon, if anyone cares), as I mentioned in another thread. Aside from showing that RTK III is actually useful, it has effectively demonstrated that I can't read kana: my pitiful vocab and nonexistent grammar skills unite in a terrible onslaught that ensures that kana is just alphabet soup.

So, I decided that I'll go play some Pokemon. I find it ludicrously ironic that I'm doing this now, after RTK, despite the fact that the game doesn't have any kanji in it, period. But it does, thank God, have spaces so I'll go catch 'em all, for now.

I know you've heard this a million times, but you get faster and faster with kana each time.

akrodha Wrote:I know you've heard this a million times, but you get faster and faster with kana each time.

True!
There are still times when I'm reading something and it resemble ssomething like - "a-ri-ga.... tou!".

Haha!

My hiragana speed is fine, but damn katakana slows me down...big time.

I apologize: I can read kana just fine. However, just like I can read Latin out loud, but not understand it, I can't really understand kana: I can't see the different words; it's just alphabet soup.

If there's kanji, it's usually pretty easy to see where the word ends, even at my primitive skill level, but kana is a totally different story.

OH! Now I definitely know what you mean! Some video games are like that, which make it even more difficult for me to look up words. GRRRR.......

Kamaitachi no yoru is a pretty good game. All text pretty much, with a "choose your own adventure" style. Good reading pratice since there are many characters (young, old, high school, business men, people from Osaka, etc) and a lot of descriptive language. I recommend it.