Hi, everyone:
I'm starting this topic because I know there is more people out there who got tired of playing only japanese video games.
There are tons of great japanese games, but most people has played most of them, RE series, MGS series, Professor Layton series, etc, mostly PSX games and RPGs, right?
I've been wanting to play american video games, but in japanese, of course. Now, that's imposible to do with console video games, so the only way is the PC.
So I'm hoping that with the help of people at intermediate level in japanese, we can compile a list of computer games that can be patched in order to leave them in 日本語.
And obviously a mini tuto to teach others how to do this.
I'll start:
Pro Evolution Soccer 2012
1.- You need the game. Install it and all of that.
2.- Go here. And download the files under "Japanese Commentary: new ( By Jenkey1002′s blog )".
3.- Move the files to C:\Program Files\KONAMI\Pro Evolution Soccer 2012\img. This will leave the audio commentary in japanese.
4.- Go here and download the file.
5.- Move the file to C:\Program Files\KONAMI\Pro Evolution Soccer 2012\img. This will leave all the interface, menus, etc in japanese.
And Voilà. That's it.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Ok, so I don't know how to do this. But I found this. So if anyone is so kind to translate it and show us how to do it, everyone here (I think) would appreciate it. It would be sweet to play Oblivion in japanese, now wouldn't it?

SimCity 4 (only confirmed for mac) will play in Japanese if your language preference on your computer is Japanese first. Guessing there's a number of EA games like this, probably not all of them though. I recall hearing microsoft was going to translate a bunch of mac games to Japanese, don't know if what stage that's at or if I've misremembered some significant detail.

Off topic since it doesn't concern patching games, but on topic in the sense that it is about PC games:

Anyone know an online vendor that a) sells Japanese PC games (preferably western games translated into Japanese), and b) ships internationally?

I've seen a ton of good stuff on amazon.jp, but they don't ship videogames to locations outside of Japan (for some reason). I mean, Shogun 2, in Japanese! Awesome!

so... Anyone?

I've been looking at http://www.play-asia.com/

I haven't bought anything, however, and am more than a little concerned about understanding any issues there might be with region codes and other obstacles before dropping any money on any games that might catch my eye there.

I'd love to hear people's experiences with successfully running any Japanese-language games on the PC.

Meanwhile I'm playing Final Fantasy I on my iphone. ああ、なつかしい ... not that I played the first one before, even in English. I played one of them in English... III maybe, but I'm not sure. It's nice that the American releases are multilingual and keyed to your phone settings. If I finish the first three though, I'm going to need another platform to keep going, heh.

Although, as Japanese practice, I'm not sure how valuable it is... although there's surely a few phrases that I see over and over again, I wasn't really feeling the need to reinforce my knowledge of たたかう・まほう・１００けいけんち　かくとく・１００ギル　てにいれた・どくけしを　てにいれた　etc... (The dialogues are better practice, of course, when I hit them.) That most of the monsters are named in pseudo-english is annoying, although コブラ is a genuine loan word and サソリis a real word (蠍... I'm not sure if I'm glad it's in kana or not... hmnn... )

Also, I think some of the Steam games are also played in Japan, but I have no idea if or how to get the Japanese language version. Actually, I'm not sure where I got that idea anyway... but a lot of first-rate games are available for (paid) download. That would certainly save shipping fees if they were possible to get!

(I did download some Japanese 無料 MMORPG or other, but while it installed, it refused to let me actually play from outside the country. I forget which one it was, though... hmmn. Hope I recognize it before wasting my time again.)

There is a chance Skyrim will be available in Japanese when it comes out and given its scope it looks like a great resource. They are trying to use a region lock so I'm not sure if it will be as simple as downloading another language from Steam but if they try to screw me over I'll just pirate the Japanese version...

Oh and if you haven't yet decided if you'll buy Skyrim I definitely recommend it. Its actually fun to play sans mods (unlike Oblivion) and has a huge world to explore and experience freely (unlike FFXIII) without being overwhelming.

thurd Wrote:...without being overwhelming.

Apart from the fact that someone so much as looking at you can turn into a whole new quest chain. :p Agreed though - it is pretty great. Bethesda has managed to impress me, despite my expectations to the contrary.

As for western games in Japanese, I highly recommend this: http://www.cyberfront.co.jp/title/civ4/
It's Civilization, so the scope and such should be fairly obvious. Plus, it's a great game. Not sure if you can buy from there outside of Japan, but if you don't mind acquiring it through other means, I guess you could try your favorite j-p2p software. Same site for the latest patch in JP; mods can be found here.

play-asia is fine to use. I've used them a few times from the US, when I'm in the US, and I've never had any problems, other than them not having the game I want in stock.

The only other choice you have is to use a mailbox/drop shipper, who will give you a mailing address in Japan, so you can have your stuff sent there, then they will send your stuff on to you for a fee... but it can get expensive pretty quickly. I hear people like Tenso. Honestly, play-asia is cheaper. It's frustrating, but that's just how it is here. It's not going to change anytime soon, because that's just Japan for you. (Then again, the US can be just as bad... ugh.)

thurd Wrote:There is a chance Skyrim will be available in Japanese when it comes out and given its scope it looks like a great resource. They are trying to use a region lock so I'm not sure if it will be as simple as downloading another language from Steam but if they try to screw me over I'll just pirate the Japanese version...

They did indeed do japanese version, and as of now it's rather easy to set it up for Skyrim (on PC that is, no idea if this is possible on consoles). Also there doesn't seem to be any kind of region lock on the language.

Instructions for changing the language are on the videos description. Basically you just change the language to japanese from steams Skyrim settings, and if you only want some part in japanese (ie voices in japanese but texts in english) you need to overwrite english files with japanese ones (this was done in the video).

So there IS a Japanese setting now? I could've sworn it wasn't there before. I figured they either locked us out or were just taking their sweet time, but I guess it was the latter. Haha, now I have to go try it out

Clasu Wrote:They did indeed do japanese version, and as of now it's rather easy to set it up for Skyrim (on PC that is, no idea if this is possible on consoles). Also there doesn't seem to be any kind of region lock on the language.

Instructions for changing the language are on the videos description. Basically you just change the language to japanese from steams Skyrim settings, and if you only want some part in japanese (ie voices in japanese but texts in english) you need to overwrite english files with japanese ones (this was done in the video).

Awesome!!! I finished the main quest a few days ago (for the first time in ES game) and didn't play since I had already logged 70 hours and felt bad I spent too much time on Skyrim. Now I have another reason to go even further

astendra Wrote:So there IS a Japanese setting now? I could've sworn it wasn't there before. I figured they either locked us out or were just taking their sweet time, but I guess it was the latter. Haha, now I have to go try it out

I think it came out later than the western release. Saw date 8th of December in some trailer.

So, I installed Steam in Japanese, downloaded Skyrim, and it came up in Japanese, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Although, I have found it necessary to save a lot so I can replay key conversations - between the fantasy-specific terms and the speaking speed it some times takes a few tries to get it, more than a few for some of the more complicated explanations.

Anyway, I have two unrelated questions for people...

In Skyrim, how do you deal with the -books-? There are, I think, two fonts - maybe more. The clear 'scribes' font isn't too bad, used in histories and such, but there's another font used for journals and such that aside is so faint and scratchy that strokes blur together. It can take me twenty minutes or more to look up a character as I try to guess what the radicals actually are. I can't find any way to zoom in or to view it in standard fonts. (I did screenshot and zoom in that way, but you can only zoom in about 20% larger before it starts to simply get too grainy and -less- legible than it was originally... obviously, no extra pixels or details are added when you zoom in on a screenshot.)

The other question is ... what other Japanese games are there in Steam?
So far, I've found

Chantelise, A Tale of Two Sisters - hyper cute, has a demo version, not much voice acting after the intro movie I think but I didn't play long.
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - from the makers of Chantelise so presumably hyper-cute.
Team Fortress 2: Free to Play game - presumably you need to buy stuff to get far, but I haven't played yet.

I've seen a number of games that have their descriptions localized into Japanese, but then don't have Japanese listed as one of their languages... but those games don't have demos and I'm not going to buy a game to check if they listed their languages correctly!

anyone knows if total war shogun 2 changes to japanese if you change the language @ steam ?

Gaijinme Wrote:anyone knows if total war shogun 2 changes to japanese if you change the language @ steam ?

Well, I don't have it, but the Steam store doesn't list Japanese as an available language, so I don't think you can. Seems to have been officially localized by these guys, so you might have to buy it through them.

There is, however, an unofficial translation mod (presumably released before the official version), which can be found here. It may not be up to the same standard though; the site states translation speed was a priority.

If your Steam is in Japanese, you can play Sonic Generations in it. Despite the fact that it does not state it's an official language on the store page.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:In Skyrim, how do you deal with the -books-?

(quoted from another language forum)
Books are stored in a nearly-plain-text file in skyrim / Data / Strings called "Skyrim_Japanese.dlStrings". To access them, you might need an advanced text editor; specifically, one that will let you change the encoding of the file to UTF-8. Notepad++ is a free program I usually use for programming, and it lets you change the encoding really easily (it's possible that something like Word does too, but I was a little too lazy to check).

Once you're in the file and you've changed the encoding, the first thing you'll notice is that it's 23000 lines long. You're going to have to search for the title to get to whatever book you want. Also, at least with Notepad++, there is still some junk scattered here and there. It appears to be either an addendum to each book (maybe something the game uses), or just neighboring entries that are divided by some weird character. I can't really tell, but the content of the books is intact and just fine—though occasionally it has some formatting text that you'll have to clear away.(/quote)

I'm downloading this game in japanese at the moment. haven't played a video game since I started my japanese project but I'll make an exception for this one considering all the content. hope this isn't the start of a bad habit ;}

dtcamero Wrote:Notepad++ is a free program I usually use for programming, and it lets you change the encoding really easily (it's possible that something like Word does too, but I was a little too lazy to check).

Ah-hah! I don't know about Word exactly, but neither WordPad nor OpenOffice could correctly read that file, although I thought OO supported UTF-8. I did see that file and try a little, and now I know that -was- on the right track! Thanks!

.

merlin.codex Wrote:My recommendation is Baldur's Gate 2. Quite an old one but still interesting and fully translated into Japanese.

Is there any way to get this without ordering it from japanese ebay (since they don't ship games internationally)? Is there maybe a Japanese language pack you can download for your Baldur's Gate II英語版?

In other news: Alan Wake is on sale on Steam, and has full Japanese audio support.
Also, The Darkness II.

I found a game called "Cities in Motion" that comes in japanese, it's about managing the transportation aspects of a city. I got it from a p2p website, so I don't know if the steam version actually comes in japanese as well, it should, but the steam page says: 言語: English, ドイツ語, スペイン語, フランス語.
Also, you can just add "日本語化" to the name of the game you want in japanese and follow the instructions (if you can read them).