Buy some Visual Novels.
Most even have voice acting.

Wow, these are great suggestions, guys. 

Tobberoth - I'm going to check out the emulator asap.  I see Final Fantasy II, III, V, and Mystic Quest on the list.

isoron - Thanks.  Looking into that.  I'd never even heard of visual novels.

wccrawford - I'm at about 250 in RTK right now.  I'm doing iKnow 6000 level 1 and am about 75% through it.  I agree, iKnow is great and really addictive.

I'd second visual novels and such. Also the DS as a system, because it's nice to be able to take it wherever, and there are a number of visual novels and other goodies on the system. Of course, being that it's the DS, the voice acting is more limited, if at all present. Also, the DS isn't region-locked.

DS can double as a functional, if not really all too robust, dictionary as well.  And there's a game out for learning Japanese (that I found to be pretty so-so, though I don't really like language learning software to begin with).

Obviously, you're probably looking for games for systems you already have.

If you're a beginner, just stick to simple games where what they're telling you in Japanese is probably pretty intuitive and you could just guess what's going on from context.  For example, playing something like Mario Kart or Wii Fit where the instructions are in Japanese, but really you could figure it out on your own.  heh..

Nintendo DS is ideal.
Here's another good reason to get one.

The Nintendo DS has a "resume" feature.
If you just close a nintendo DS while playing a game, it turns off the DS.
As soon as you open it again, you start from right where you left off.

So literally, you can close the ds if you're in the middle of somthing.
Open it again and continue at the place you left off. No need to worry
about saving your game before turning it off.

It's great for environments where you get interrupted a lot (like at work or wherever).

NOTE: PSP also has the same feature. Just push up on the power switch quickly. To fully shut down the psp, hold the power switch up for a few seconds

Last edited by chamcham (2008 December 20, 1:07 pm)

mentat_kgs wrote:

@Dragg
Yeah, I checked a lot of games and it seems the only one. But not that it is that helpful as it uses very little kanji and if you don't know the word you'll have to look it up anyway.

逆転裁判!

You can pick up a GBA emulator and the roms easily.

Chrono Trigger is one of the best for beginners, as it has the "re-translation" available

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Retranslation.html

Thanks again for all the suggestions, guys.  I'll have to take another look at the DS.

Tobberoth wrote:

2 ) Good training to read garbled kanji, especially considering how Japanese people write...

Speaking of ugly fonts to pratice your reading skills... You should consider Hearts of Iron 2. I recently installed a 日本語化 patch so I was able to play my version in Japanese. The font size is really small and garbled (if anybody knows how to change that...) and the amount of Kanji is just ridiculous. Also, it has - from my point of view - lots and lots of rare vocabulary. I have only one complaint: The province names were not translated, that would be really nice Katakana practice.
If someone can understand all of that, he's my personal hero.

Tobberoth wrote:

Personally I find iKnow extremely boring... and I thought their SRS system was way off, I used it for 5 days and never had to repeat a single word O.o

It's probably boring because of your high level. I consider it cake. It's shadowing, sentences and dictation all in one. There's also a bit of scriptorium if you choose to right out the sentences. Not only that, but the vocab and readings seem to build on top one another.

I think it's strange you used it for five days and never repeated a single word, though. How far back was that. They've made a lot of updates. I see some words the very next day, and sections I have 100% for are getting spaced further and further each time.

Even I skipped the first lesson. LOL. Perhaps, it has to do with how you answered the questions and the speed with you answered them. I know these are factors taken into account with dictation. Why not give it another go at the 6000 level and see if the problem still persists?

On the subject of games with furigana, I played a demo of Sonic Unleashed/World Adventure (PS3), which if you have your system language set to Japanese it will run in Japanese. The demo was an English one, but everything (except the logo) seems to change to Japanese. Don't know if the actual game would do that. The text might, but maybe not the voices (the demo's did). But what little text was in the demo all had furigana over the kanji. Sadly it's apparently not a very good game, though.