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Kanji Games for the Nintendo DS
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Yeah... actually I have a real pen-sized stylus that I use for those kinds of programs. (I got it with my Sharp Papyrus Denshi Jiten.) The larger size makes it feel slightly more realistic. These programs are good for learning stroke order, but not necessarily for penmanship. The larger stylus makes characters look better, but they still look kind of ugly.
For learning to write "good looking" characters, I'm starting to experiment with a "ボールペン字" book I ordered from Kinokunia NY. (ISBN 978-4-405-05562-9) You can preview it on amazon.co.jp. (But I bought it elsewhere because amazonjp's shipping prices are insane.) Now I just need to head to the website that prints up free graph paper to practice with. 
I'll write a quick review of a new game that just came out, English of the Dead (people, you can't make this stuff up!)
One of the most notable things about this game is the awesome box art, which features a zombie wearing glasses and a graduate hat 
As you can tell from the title, this is a game for learning ENGLISH, but it happens to be slightly useful for learning some Japanese too. The game itself is basically like the old House of the Dead arcade game, or the Typing of the Dead spin-off that came from it.
The game basically works like so: Zombies appear onscreen with a Japanese word (with kanji), and then you have to write the ENGLISH meaning of that word. The handwriting recognition is quite good. There are three difficulty levels to choose from. On the easiest difficulty, it will basically show you the english word and you just have to copy it. On medium, it will leave some letters out of the english word. Hard is probably what most people will be interested in, as it simply shows you the Japanese word, and the number of letters that the english word is. There is also a seperate difficulty for the level of words that it will use. There are five levels of vocabulary there, and on the easiest it will have some simple stuff like "she", and it adds more difficult vocabulary in the harder levels. If you hesitate for a second or two after it shows the Japanese word, it will speak the English word that you are supposed to write. There are also some segments of the game where it will show a Japanese sentence, and then an english translation with a word missing, and you choose the correct word from 4 choices. These aren't really helpful for the person learning Japanese, I think, as the answers are quite obvious.
So getting down to business, how useful is this for learning Japanese? For someone who just completed RTK, it can help you learn to recognize some new vocabulary, and help you try to guess compounds based on their kanji, but that's about all. It's a fun diversion though, unlike a lot of the other kanji "games" out there. You won't pick up any readings for the kanji here though, and as far as I can tell, there's no mode to study the vocabulary outside the game, though I may have just overlooked it. Also since it's just throwing individual words at you, you don't learn any context.
I`ve been using sentences from そのまま for quite a while now, and have found the translations to be pretty accurate. The synonyms in Japanese under the English definitions also help with the words meaning, and thus help you judge weather the sentence is natural enough or not.
Oh, and they also seem better than most J-E online dictionaries I`ve come accross, so mabye it is a good place to copy from...
Just wanted to say that Dragon Quest IV remake for the NDS is the first rpg I've played completely in Japanese. I would highly recommend it because it's easy and the story is very easy to follow, a perfect jrpg for beginners.
The game is pretty short in terms of jrpg's and the characters are all pretty straight-forward without the typical social angst associated with the FF franchise. I just played straight-through without a dictionary or even mining anything. It was a fun experience and reminded me why I started learning Japanese in the first place. Walk-throughs are available online though if you get stuck. Which I did use a couple of times.
I think I will play one or two other games at this difficulty level before moving on to something more kanji-intensive. Probably DQ V and then Crono Trigger DS whenever it comes out.
