good Japanese text-heavy retro games easy enouth to understand.

[Dred]

hey everyone, it's been a while...

right now i'm learning Japanese at my uni and... i was wondering how can I boost my learning by playing Japanese games.

i'm looking for games easy enough to understand for a beginner gaijin. maybe something dedicated to kids?

kanjis do not scare me at all and i know how to find a reading/meaning of particular kanji (or a whole word) in online dictionary by radicals. also, i am able to search for a meaning of particular grammar aspect (conjunction?).

by the end of semester, i've finished first Minna no Nihongo book and accordingly it is an equivalent of JLPT's N5 test level.

yeah, I know that Minna no Nihongo books are not perfect for learning Japanese, but... my teachers are using them.

according to this article ( http://japaneselevelup.com/retro-games-nostalgia-boost-japanese/ ), Japanese ALttP is a good choice. but i'm thinking which game to pick up next. somebody at Neogaf said that Paper Mario games are easy enough. or Final Fantasy I-VI....

consoles i own: SNES (region-modded), N64 (NTSC JAP), Genesis (but i can buy import adapter, no problem), Super Game Boy and Game Boy Player, GameCube (+Free Loader), Sega Saturn (+Action Replay) and Famicom.

also, i know that Famicom games are not the best choice, because they contain only kana with only extremely basic kanji used.

sorry for my English, i'm not a native user of it.

cheers and thanks for any suggestions!

[P]

Yeah Famicom isn't very good for kanji practice, but Famicom RPGs are quite good for beginners since they don't have that much text compared to RPGs of later eras. Dragon Quest games have a little more kid-friendly texts than Final Fantasy I think.

The problem with RPGs is that there is a lot of time spent grinding when you don't learn too much Japanese. But you do learn names of items and such so I think it's a pretty good experience anyway.

I don't think Zelda have easier language than other RPGs, but there is certainly less of it compared to say Final Fantasy VI. Super Famicom RPGs might have kanji, but it also might be hard to look them up if you are not familiar with a certain number of kanji, due to the low resolution.

Zelda II for Famicom is pretty good for beginners of Japanese I think (Zelda I has almost no text), since it's a good mixture of action (not so much grinding) and Japanese reading.

Zelda I, II, Dragon Quest games and Final Fantasy games all have translations guides at gamefaqs.com and such, so they are all pretty good choices.

Since you are at grade N5 playing games might still be quite hard, but I think it's good to try it as a next step. I started playing games after N5 (or if it was N4, they are not that much different) and it certainly boosted my Japanese. Sometimes you might just have to accept the fact that you don't understand certain sentences and go on anyway. Also be prepared that playing games for studying and playing games for fun isn't exactly the same thing (although it's still fun). You have to strain yourself much more then when just playing causally to relax.

[zmaster18]

A game that I want to try to help learn Japanese is Doubutsu no Mori + or e+ on Gamecube, the Japanese Animal Crossing.

First of all, this game has no forced goals to achieve, so you can do everything at your own pace. You play as someone who just moved in to a Japanese-speaking village, so you actually feel like a gaijin!

In the game's settings, it will ask you how familiar you are with kanji or if you would like furigana written on top of kanji.

Speaking to the animals is a great way to practice conversational vocab. Collecting furniture is also like having hundreds of  flashcards. You can try and guess what the furniture is and then put it in your house to see what shows up!

In Doubutsu no Mori +, you can collect Famicoms and FDS games. Doubutsu no Mori e+ actually has NES games instead, but there is more traditional Japanese furniture, minigames if you connect a GBA, you can use the eReader, and there are even town projects like in Animal Crossing New Leaf.



I think this might be the best game to get. You can get 100 hours out of it and there's plenty of things to do. You will learn lots of vocab in a visual learning method and the game's characters have lots of scripts to read.

[dreamingnoctis]

If I ever do take Japanese at my uni, I might try this. But given that I'm heading in to my grad program, I may not have the time...

[Dred]

hey, thanks for replies!

Dragon Quest games have a little more kid-friendly texts than Final Fantasy I think.

yeah! i have almost all Dragon Quests for Famicom and finally i can play them!

what about DQ VI for SuperFami? more complicated, i guess...

Sometimes you might just have to accept the fact that you don't understand certain sentences and go on anyway. Also be prepared that playing games for studying and playing games for fun isn't exactly the same thing (although it's still fun). You have to strain yourself much more then when just playing causally to relax.

i've learned it the hard way when i was trying to play some random visual novel.

A game that I want to try to help learn Japanese is Doubutsu no Mori + or e+ on Gamecube, the Japanese Animal Crossing.

動物の森ですね... xD

Speaking to the animals is a great way to practice conversational vocab.  

excellent! at the end of first Minna no Nihongo book there was a "complete the brackets" test based on conversations and i had no idea how to solve it.

are there any differences between N64 and GameCube versions of Animal Crossing? as i recall correctly there were none.

If I ever do take Japanese at my uni, I might try this. But given that I'm heading in to my grad program, I may not have the time... Red FC Cart

well... i had no idea what to do with my life and thought "why not start learning Japanese?"

anyway, learning languages is great. any language.





thanks!

[P]

what about DQ VI for SuperFami? more complicated, i guess...

That's the one old DQ game I've still haven't played. I'd guess it would be like other Sufami RPGs though. I played FFV after one year of Japanese studies, it was quite hard but not impossible to play.

are there any differences between N64 and GameCube versions of Animal Crossing? as i recall correctly there were none.

Doubutsu no Mori+ have been upgraded from the N64 version with more features. And e+ is pretty much the English version, (Animal Crossing) with all its new contents, localized back into Japanese.

[zmaster18]

A major difference between the N64 and GCN Doubutsu no Mori games I can think of is that the N64 version didn't have the museum, island, or ability to make custom designs. The N64 version did have the Famicom games.

By the way, in all versions of Doubutsu no Mori/Animal Crossing on Gamecube had Clu Clu Land D for the Disk System. Doubutsu no Mori + has the Disk System version of Zelda as well.

In Doubutsu no Mori e+, you can even get recordings of KK's live performances that you can play in your house. No other game in the Animal Crossing series has this.

Another feature I forgot to mention is that Doubutsu no Mori e+ makes use of the Gamecube SD card adapter. You can use it to save in-game screenshots, and you can even upload your town data onto the SD card and email it to a friend so they can download your town and visit it. This is the only game that uses the SD card adapter, as far as I know. It's uber rare and uber expensive. I had one at one point....then Yamatoku cancelled my purchase  soooo close to owning it.

[P]

In Doubutsu no Mori e+, you can even get recordings of KK's live performances that you can play in your house. No other game in the Animal Crossing series has this.

In Wild World you also always get a recording after Totakeke's performances, if you don't have it already. I'd be surprised if they removed that in the newer games.

[zmaster18]

In Doubutsu no Mori e+, you can even get recordings of KK's live performances that you can play in your house. No other game in the Animal Crossing series has this.

In Wild World you also always get a recording after Totakeke's performances, if you don't have it already. I'd be surprised if they removed that in the newer games.

I mean that you can get the 'aircheck' versions as well as live versions. The live versions have KK singing, the regular aircheck versions are instrumental.

[P]

Oh I see.