/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.447562]

>TL;DR Know basic moonrunes, which games use only Hiraganas and Katakanas, wanna do some learning while I play
Hey /vr/ I need some help.
I'm learning Japanese, and so far I have a basic understanding of the language and the grammar, I can read Hiragana and Katakana, and I know a few Kanjis. Are there any games that mostly use those two? I know that back then pretty much every game used those two, because of memory limitations. I've been thinking about some old NES RPGs like, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or even Mother, or one of those adventure/investigation games. Any tips?

[Anonymous No.447569]

I'm pretty sure Pokemon uses hiragana/katakana entirely, they only recently added a kanji option. That's the first thing that comes to mind. I don't know about NES-era but SNES RPGs do use many kanji

[Anonymous No.447576]

>>447569
I just played through pokemon red and gold a while ago, not really intrested in that. I would prefer some turn based games so I would have time to translate shit

[Anonymous No.447592]

かまいたちの夜 and the rest of Chunsoft's sound novel series is good reading practice, anon-kun.

[Anonymous No.447607]

>>447592
I'd prefer some type of gameplay. Hell I would be even fine with one of those detective games, like the Hokkaido Murders , the one Arino played.
Thanks though, if anything, I'll check it out

[Anonymous No.448153]

Bumping for some more

[Anonymous No.448189]

According to my roommate Mother 2 on the Super Famicom uses pretty much nothing but Hiragana.

[Anonymous No.448242]

I taught myself Japanese via the internet and a summer course.

The kanas are ridiculously easy and irrelevant, don't even bother playing games using them. Start real games with kanji straight away, that's how you'll learn the fastest. Ideally a game with furigana, but I wouldn't be able to tell you which games have it.

The real true hardcore fastest way to learn is playing visual novels while using a stream capturing program to catch the Japanese text and then you can just copy/paste the Kanjis into an online dictionary. Learning doesn't get faster than that because unless you have the kanji on the computer in a text format, you'll have a hard time looking it up on regular dictionaries.

I'm translating for a scanlation group now, so I know my shit. Good luck, the path is hard but it's definitely worth it.

[Anonymous No.448251]

>>448242
There are games with furigana? Really? That might be even better, are you sure you can't list a few?

[Anonymous No.448259]

>>448251
I remember seeing it a few times, but can't recall an exact name, sorry.

I'm sure you'll find some if you search online.

[Anonymous No.448275]

>>448251

Don't know of any that would be considered retro.
Many more modern Nintendo games have it though.
Like Zelda.

[Anonymous No.448287]

>>448275
To be honest, I really don't care if it's retro, as long as it's a game, but I figured mostly older games would have these due to memory limitations. If a modern game mostly uses Hiragana/Katakana with furigana, then I'm good.

[Anonymous No.448307]

>>448275

Yeah, it makes sense that not many retro games uses them, as it would be require more memory for as small benefit. I only remember seeing screenshots of Okami and Wild Arms 3 (maybe Wild Arms XF too) for the PS2 with them

[Anonymous No.448314]

>>448307
How much space does the whole Kanji conversion take up? I mean if they use it once it's obviously not worth it, but why didn't games use kanjis for recurring words, say, fire, or dog

[Anonymous No.448316]

>>448307

Memory isn't the problem.
Resolution is.

[Anonymous No.448319]

>>448316
Oh that makes sense, good luck trying to read stuff like 金増日 in shitty resolution

[Anonymous No.448328]

>>448319

There are games with 8x8 tile kanji fonts.
Look at the intro of 悪魔城伝説 for the Famicom for example.
It's not really that hard to read when you are used to Japanese.

[Anonymous No.448345]

I played the Sakura Taisen series while I was learning Japanese in college. Helped me stay ahead of the curve a little.

[Anonymous No.448354]

>>448345
>Saturn
Can you even emulate that? I never tried
Also, is that game an RPG or something?

[Anonymous No.448470]

>>448354
Yes, you can emulate it. SSF is best, with Yabause, if that doesn't work.

It's a cross between a Visual Novel and a strategy game. I haven't played it myself, but apparently it's really good.

[Anonymous No.448575]

>>447562
this is my predicament as well, but I can tell you, furiganas are the answer

Little hiragana above kanji in games, Inazuma eleven for DS, danball senki and Digimon games for psp have it, it helps a lot.

Just learn with furigana OP,grammar does his job alone

[Anonymous No.448597]

Wagyan Paradise looks like it'd be perfect for learning moonrunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usj01NqEpPs

[Anonymous No.448645]

>>448345
How are the sakura taisen games?I was thinking of playing them

[Anonymous No.448672]

Can you read this?

But don't play Policenauts, it's full of scientific jargon that even in English people have a hard time understanding.

[Anonymous No.448676]

>>448672
Not op but I love scientific jargon and I understand, it is for snes?

[Anonymous No.448689]

>>448676
PC98, 3DO, Playstation or Saturn, take your pick.

English version is Playstation only if that's what you mean.

[Anonymous No.448698]

>>448689
I'll play it on japanese, thx anon

[Anonymous No.448716]

>>448698
Cool. Recommend playing the Playstation version anyway, easiest to find and emulate, plus it has subtitles for the voiced dialogue, which apparently really helps because there are lots of loan words used.

[Anonymous No.448720]

>>448672
>>448698
So did Kojima ever say if he intentionally made John and Ed look like Mel Gibson and Danny Glover?

[Anonymous No.448732]

>>448720
I think it's pretty obvious. I don't know if he ever said it officially.

[Anonymous No.448737]

>>448716
Noted

[Anonymous No.448806]

>Policenauts

Wow, I can't imagine what sort of language they are using in the original one, it had some pretty lewd stuff in it, pic releated.

[Anonymous No.448815]

>>448716
How about Snatcher? Always wanted to play that game, would be cool to play it in moonrunes

[Anonymous No.448838]

Bumping because OP is in a similar position to me. I know typical first grade kanji, any educational games I can play that can help me with this and learn some more?

[Anonymous No.448874]

>>448815
there are playstation and saturn version, probably best to play since the MSX and PC88 versions are missing the ending and difficult to emulate, and the PCEngine version is difficult to emulate.

[Anonymous No.449076]

The problem you will have in RPGs is with the grammar to be honest, even if you sit and look up every word with a dictionary. Plus, learning kanji is a very effective way of learning new words, it's more or less essential anyway so buy an N5/N4 book and get cracking, come back with newly found knowledge and splerge over being able to moonrune games without hours of dictionary flicking.

As for kana-only games, Mother 1+2 is good to go, probably Wonder Project J. As far as I know most Square RPGs on the SNES use kanji, the only one I can think of that doesn't is Final Fantasy IV, but it's kind of really hard to read.

[Anonymous No.450668]

>>448354
>>448645
They're dating sims with turn-based strategy battles. If you don't mind pretty cliche 90's anime stories, it can be a fun series. I really got into it, but I used to be a much bigger weeaboo than I am now.

[Anonymous No.451447]

Video games aren't the best for practice but if you insist on playing some video games then aside from Pokemon you could also try どうぶつの森 (Animal Crossing) which lets you pick an option to not use Kanji at all. Other than that you could just try out various kid games to see which you can read. Try looking for games based on kid's anime.

Honestly, I don't understand how people manage like this, for me reading with Kanji is easier than reading without them.

[Anonymous No.451476]

Japanese is worthless anyway. Learn a real language like mexican.