Since all of us here are constantly looking for enjoyable learning resources outside of our sentence mining (reading manga, watching Japanese movies, playing import games), etc I thought I would share what I believe could be an incredible resource that combines a little from all three. 

    That thing is Policenauts.  What is Policenauts?  Policenauts is considered Hideo Kojima's "masterpiece" game that was due for release here in America but got axed with declining Sega Saturn sales (the console it was going to be released on here in America).  However, after nearly 5 years of painstaking work a masterful translation of the game has been achieved by independent translators and programmers and is set to be released as a patch in the near future. 

    So of course your saying "ok it's a game, big deal ActiveAero" but this isn't some normal game.  This "game" plays out like a graphic novel/movie in the point and click PC adventure game style of old.  What makes it notable however are a few things:

1.  It is considered to have one of the best story lines ever put into a video game.

2.  Insane amount of detail.  You can analyze and reanalyze nearly everything in the game.

3.  Tons and tons of dialogue with high quality voice acting, all of which is subbed in Japanese.

4.  Full english translation. 

Instead of me blabbing on for days just scroll down this thread a ways and take a look:

http://forums.junkerhq.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1889

For the lazy here's a quick example of the gameplay (obviously the English translation version):

http://www.viddler.com/explore/slowbeef/videos/45/

http://www.viddler.com/explore/slowbeef/videos/55/


IMO this would be an awesome thing to work through as it doesn't require any real game "skill" in the traditional sense, has constant dialogue and voice acting all subtitled (in both Japanese and soon to be English) and tons of context word relations due to the investigation aspect of the game.

Last edited by activeaero (2009 February 12, 11:05 pm)