Retro games for practicing Japanese

[Anonymous No.9233897]

Has anyone else played old RPGs and stuff to practice Japanese? I started Makai Toushi SaGa recently. My Japanese is super weak, but I’m very familiar with the English game since Final Fantasy Legend was one of the first games I ever owned. The language is mostly very simple, and I’ve been able to work through it with a dictionary some.

On the other hand, it’s all kana so it can be kind of hard to understand. At least that makes it easier to look things up.

This game usually takes me less than 20 hours to beat in English, and I suspect it’ll take a lot longer this way, but I’ll still need something to pick up afterwards. Anyone have any suggestions for games with plenty of text but relatively simple language?

[Anonymous No.9233950]

>>9233897
Only-kana tends to be a Final Fantasy thing, Romancing SaGa, Crusader of Centy, and Shining Force use kanji.

[Anonymous No.9233952]

>>9233897
8-bit and 16-bit games that use kanji generally only have a couple dozen of them in the font, so they're pretty cool for practicing.

[Anonymous No.9233961]

>>9233950
I will check those out to be sure

>>9233952
Awesome. Any specific recs?

[Anonymous No.9233967]

>>9233961
Ninja Ryukenden (Ninja Gaiden) was one of the first games I played in nip, it has like 10 kanji in its font. Very beginner-friendly.

[Anonymous No.9233972]

>>9233967
Fuck yeah. Thanks m8
Also what the fuck, Gaiden in the title was a localization addition?

[Anonymous No.9233975]

>>9233972
Yeah. Was called Shadow Warriors here though since the brits decided "ninja" was a no-no word.

[Anonymous No.9233984]

>>9233972
Yeah, gaiden means side story and makes no sense. They probably used it because it sounds cool and easier to pronounce for american kids

[Anonymous No.9233987]

>>9233984
90% of American kids mispronounced it "geiden" though.

[Anonymous No.9233991]

>>9233975
What the fuck did they call the TMNT games? Just ninja mutant turtles?

[Anonymous No.9233994]

>>9233991
"Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles". TMHT.

You seriously didn't know?

[Anonymous No.9234001]

>>9233994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3x0a8xU1jc

Soul

[Anonymous No.9234013]

>>9233994
I legitimately did not lmao. I remember Germany taking blades out of Naruto, and you guys having “Probotector” instead of Contra though lol

[Anonymous No.9234026]

>>9234013
Yeah. Everyone knew the actual truth about this stuff though, video game magazines would constantly bring up the original names and explain censorship. Americans felt a lot more sheltered and in the dark about how the stuff they got had been edited.

[Anonymous No.9234034]

>>9234026
Growing up in the US and loving RPGs, I definitely always assumed nearly everything was changed. I’m actually almost surprised to find that much of what’s in Makai Toushi SaGa is pretty much verbatim what we got in the translation, at least so far.

[Anonymous No.9234062]

>>9234034
Ninja Ryukenden is like that too. There's a weird mistranslation towards the end that was almost certainly not on purpose, Joe being renamed "Ken" for some inexplicable reason, and the bizarre choice to romanize 邪鬼王 as the meaningless "Jaquio", but other than that the translation is very very close to the original Japanese.

[Anonymous No.9234075]

>>9233972
>>9233984
>>9233987
The truth is that the game was actually called Ninja Gaiden before they decided on Ninja Ryukenden in Japan. My guess is that the title was decided for the sillier arcade game, which was meant to poke fun at the Americanized depictions of ninjas that were popular at the time, not the more dramatic NES game.

[Anonymous No.9234079]

>>9233994
Why on earth couldn't you say the word ninja? I don't know of any historical atrocity that would make anyone sensitive to it.

[Anonymous No.9234085]

i'm playing Fire Emblem 4 atm to practice reading moon

[Anonymous No.9234094]

>>9234079
The British Board of Film Classification had a colossal stick up their ass about anything related to Asian martial arts due to the "dangers of inspiring violent youth gangs", starting with their classification of Enter the Dragon as an 18+ movie. It was more anti-kung fu than anti-ninja, but ninjas kinda got caught up in it.

So a lot of foreign kiddy stuff that was getting European-wide releases had to scrub out anything the brits found "too kung fu-y" because it was too much of a hassle to make a censored version just for Britain.

[Anonymous No.9234371]

>>9233897
Just read visual novels. They'll get you to fluency quickly and then you can enjoy all of the old games that you want without looking up a million words and struggling because of the pixelated font.

[Anonymous No.9234386]

>>9234013
>and you guys having “Probotector” instead of Contra though lol
This must have been annoying as hell if you were a German kid in the 90s but it's kinda cool now since we can play both of them. It's like an alternate version where everyone is robots. Kinda like Panel de Pon getting localized into Tetris Attack

[Anonymous No.9234389]

>>9234371
I would except they bore me

[Anonymous No.9234465]

>>9234386
Europe here, Probotector was cool. Robots in general were. Don't really get what you mean, did you think it was annoying as hell that Mega Man was a robot instead of a Rambo-lookalike too?

[Anonymous No.9234505]

>>9233967
based

[Anonymous No.9234523]

>>9234389
Have you tried dating sims instead? They also have a lot of text, but there's also an actual game attached.

[Anonymous No.9234536]

>>9234371
weird corn girl go away leave me alone

[Anonymous No.9234554]

>>9234523
I don't like them because the writing is always bad not because they aren't video games

[Anonymous No.9234579]

>>9233897
considering how much localizations back then changed the words used, retro games aren't really a good source for comparing the US and JPN versions

[Anonymous No.9234608]

OP I would not personally recommend playing kana only games. Retro games in general you might sometimes have issues with anything pre-ps1 because they're either kana only which is confusing in my opinion or they might be harder to read the kanji.

If you want some practice I recommend first and foremost Tales of games. They're generally not that hard aside from some occasional magic mumbo jumbo dump and they reuse a LOT of fantasy vocabulary so after you mine and beat one you'll have an easier time with the rest of them and JRPGs in general. Also, try newer Pokemon games that let you play with Kanji, not sure which ones did that.

>>9234389
same, though originally it was one of the reasons I started learning Japanese.

[Anonymous No.9234690]

Kana only Japanese is honestly a lot harder to understand than Japanese with Kanji. Then, low res kanji are indecipherable pixel blobs. /vr/ in Japanese is pretty rough.

[Anonymous No.9234738]

>>9234523
That makes sense to me, I might actually try that

>>9234579
Sure but >>9234034

>>9234690
I agree on both fronts

[Anonymous No.9234839]

>>9233950
Most Famicom games use kana because the text font would be too small to display kanji.

[Anonymous No.9234840]

>>9234079
British censorship board viewed the public as dumb as dirt and had genuine contempt for them, to the point in which they arrested people for selling horror films.

[Anonymous No.9234841]

>>9234554
Hell yeah.

[Anonymous No.9234856]

I don't know but if you can/want to read Japanese you should play Metal Max 2 on SFC

[Anonymous No.9234884]

>>9234371
Got any recs on good ones?

[Anonymous No.9234895]

>>9234738
I was saying generally.

[Anonymous No.9234938]

>>9234389
ngmi
>>9234579
Why would you compare it to a localization (or any translation at all)? legitimately ngmi.

>>9234884
I guess Clannad is retro now. Give that a try. Follow a setup guide to hook and mine it and you'll be on the verge of fluency by the time you clear the game (true ending, not just the first character route).
Follow a guide so that getting the true end isn't a pain in the ass.

[Anonymous No.9234953]

>>9234856
I see it has a much smaller rom than Metal Max returns. Is it a smaller game?

[Anonymous No.9236380]

boku no natsuyasumi, ...iru!, suikoden

[Anonymous No.9236383]

>>9234608
>newer Pokemon games that let you play with Kanji, not sure which ones did that.
Any of them starting with Black and White

[Anonymous No.9236687]

>>9233897
This whole series has kanji. There's still a lot of kana since it's a GBA game, but there's enough kanji that playing the game isn't annoying. Also the kanji have a good font so they're easy to read.

It's a great RPG, and all of the games in the series are among the best of the GBA library.

[Anonymous No.9236915]

>>9234386
I kinda like the robot version more, konami should have spun it off as their own take on like a grittier Mega Man X franchise.

[Anonymous No.9237053]

Using HQ2x filters on my Mister makes the font much more readable on Snes games. Metal Max for example is much easier to read with this filter. I don't like the way it makes games look but it isn't that big of a problem.

[Anonymous No.9237072]

>>9234062
>romanizing jakiou as Jaquio
all right, that's kind of based.
>>9234371
This is the best post in the thread. More reading=you get better at reading faster=you have more mental overhead to read the "easy" stuff like vidya/RPGs/etc.
Tough to rec most VN since even "easy" ones have shit that'll filter you. Might be better to start by reading LN, but they mostly suffer from the same issue. In the end, you just need to read a lot and see everything there is to see until you stop running into new stuff all the time. The meme word of today is the easy word you don't even have to think about tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.9237109]

>>9234465
I just meant in the sense that those regions were getting a "censored" version of the game. obviously no one cared at the time

[Anonymous No.9237146]

>>9237072
Is that mommy LN any good?

[Anonymous No.9237172]

>>9237146
While anyone can predict the overall outcome of the story from a mile away, the events which happen along the way are the best part. You will either love or hate the characters, but if you're down for a cute, sappy, cheesy ラブコメ that very occasionally dips into ecchi territory (and even more occasionally makes well-written points) then it's a good read. It's easy, and each individual volume is shorter than average, so it's not a huge time commitment if you just want to check it out and see if it's for you. I highly recommend it. 綾子ママ is such a fucking babe...

[Anonymous No.9237190]

>>9237072
read novels on itazuraneko.neocitites.org using a browser extension like Rikaichan for word look ups. it’s rough going at first but it’s probably the most efficient path to fluency currently available. the problem with using retro games for learning is there’s no simple way of doing word lookups so it quickly leads to frustration especially in the early stages of learning. one option you can try is finding if the game’s script has been dumped online somewhere so you can read it alongside the game using a browser extension for vocab lookups. you can find many of the Final Fantasy scripts online for example.

[Anonymous No.9237240]

>>9234371
seconding this, just the existence of backlog and voice repeat is a godsend for learners

[Anonymous No.9237263]

>>9233897
Basically games you already beat once in English. Now play them in Japanese.
I did that for when I was learning German. I got the European versions of games for the N64. I was reading all the signs and dialogs in Mario 64 and Ocarina. It was a very comfy and pleasant experience.
"Lebt wohl, Deku Baum ..."

[Anonymous No.9237535]

>>9234371
Most visual novels should be avoided since they are proprietary. Read www.gnu.org/proprietary/ and gnu.org/proprietary/malware-games.html

Experienced learners say they're trash because of unnatural speech and useless vocabulary.

[Anonymous No.9237552]

>>9237535
For fucks sake tatsumoto, get the hell out of /vr/

[Anonymous No.9237562]

>>9237552
Experienced learner here. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.9237572]

>>9234953
In terms of length and content not really, MMR might have a bit more but not by a longshot. It's just that it's an early SNES game, graphically it looks like NES++ (wouldn't surprise me if the game was originally designed for NES in fact)

[Anonymous No.9237624]

>>9233897
There is very little to be gained from playing kana-only games in terms of improving one's Japanese. Mainly it will improve your... *drumroll* kana reading abilities. Who would've thought? It might also improve your listening comprehension slightly since people basically talk in kana, right? That is to say, in pure phonetics. But there's the whole dimension of developing your ear and comprehension speed too when it comes to actually listening to spoken speech because they don't actually speek in written kana. So no visual aid anymore.

In short, kana-only in video games is not real Japanese. It ony exists because of technical limitations at the time of development. Japanese can't exist without kanji. If you're shying away from kanji thinking that is a way of learning Japanese, it is not. You're not actually learning Japanese. You're like 0.5 % in and now you've decided to stop for some reason. Your abilities are below a those of a first or second grader and you shouldn't lie to yourself about it either. Be honest with yourself about what the task at hand is and whether or not you want to actually tackle it or not. Don't be the Nth gaijin to waste your time. Either commit or turn back.

[Anonymous No.9237637]

>>9237624
Oh, and kana-only builds up your spoken vocabulary too. But then you won't be able to recognize these words when you see them written somewhere. If you can only read kana you're essentially 90% illiterate. You maybe able to speak and understand spoken language but you're reading is non-existent.

[Anonymous No.9237669]

>>9237562
Fluent speaker here: kys.

[Anonymous No.9237697]

>>9237669
Japanese person here. Shill your patreon elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.9237715]

Any voiced VNs that aren't a) edgy, b) horror or c) muh romance focused?
Even better if they've got some story or adventure beyond slice of life aspect.

[Anonymous No.9237719]

>>9237190
>there’s no simple way of doing word lookups
Depends on the system and game.
A fair bit of PC98 stuff can be hooked with a text extractor.

[Anonymous No.9237732]

>>9237715
There's vndb if you're looking for a specific genre.

[Anonymous No.9237751]

>>9237624
>It ony exists because of technical limitations at the time of development.

That isn't entirely true. Devs also give the explanation that it should be easy to read for children. That they shouldn't have to look up words after words.

[Anonymous No.9237786]

>>9233897
Daikaijuu Monogatari
Phantasy Star 4
Ganpuru
Marvelous mou hitotsu no takarajima was one of the first ones i played in Japanese and has a special place in my heart.
Famicom Tantei Club ushiro ni tatsu shoujo, the snes remake.
Emerald Dragon.
Treasure Hunter G.
Rudra no Hihou is a behemoth of a game but it's great.
If you don't mind all kana, Heracles no Eikou 4 and Momotarou Densetsu are pretty good.

[Anonymous No.9237803]

>>9237751
Sure. If you want to set the bar that low: Children who still struggle with the very basics of reading and writing essentially. You're an adult able to move past that in a week or two because the concepts themselves aren't new to you. You're not sitting there going "a-pl... oh, apple!" There's zero reason to mill around that level. Learning Japenese means studying kanji. Simple as.

People will sometimes say things like: "I know some Japanese. But I can't read any kanji really." The only honest reply to that is: "You don't know shit." Kanji is so integral that you can be certain their spoken Japanese isn't good either. The haven't acquired a vocabulary of note. How could they? Their reading abilities are, again, below that of a 1st grader. Totally illiterate.

[Anonymous No.9237816]

>>9237624
Not OP but I've been playing kana only games like pokemon and metarot, but I make sure to look up words I'm not famillar with a jisho and add the kanji words to my anki deck. I think it's been going alright so far.

[Anonymous No.9237819]

>>9237816
Pokemon seems like the worst thing you could play since you are going to have to learn 150 words of made names of pokemon, absolutely worthless vocabulary to understand anything.

[Anonymous No.9237827]

>>9237535
This also applies to all games. If you wanna play a Japanese game, ALWAYS check the license and make sure you have access to the source code.
Reject proprietary malware.

[Anonymous No.9237830]

>>9237819
You don't really need to learn or remember the names of Pokemon to play Pokemon. They're just names.

[Anonymous No.9237832]

Someone post that 2ch post in English where some Japanese guy explains they don't care about freedom because they only use a computer to play eroge and shut these freetards up.

[Anonymous No.9237835]

>>9237819
Charmander=hitokage=fire lizard
No as worthless as you'd think.

[Anonymous No.9237841]

>>9237816
Yeah but looking that stuff up is just necessary for you to understand what's going on. Like d'uh! That's a given. If you didn't do that you're wouldn't even be making that little bit of progress anymore. The thing is, as you have evidently realized, that these words are very often normally written in kanji. That's what you've been adding to you decks. Because you won't ever seen them again written in kana out in the real world. The reading is just one part, a subset of metadata, attached to these words. Good on you for going that extra step. I however would just call that ineffective in terms of time managment. Putting the cart in front of the hourse kinda, you know? Utlimately it doesn't matter to me. I was just trying to be frank about wasting time by not really getting anywhere if one sticks to kana-only and I stand by that. That's not really up for discussing imo and yet sometimes people do it.

[Anonymous No.9237852]

>>9237624
But im literally only learning jap to play old games.

[Anonymous No.9237860]

>>9237852
Maybe so, but as described in >>9237072
you need to read higher-end stuff, and lots of it, to have the mental 余裕 to read the easy stuff easily so you can enjoy it rather than stumbling through it slowly and awkwardly.

[Anonymous No.9237872]

>>9237832
That screenshot was staged. Today we know that Japanese people take software freedom seriously.

[Anonymous No.9237880]

>>9237841
Well, I’m not only sticking to kana only idk about op. I just got done playing digimon card ws which also had kanji. I got books and manga I’m trying to read through too, I think at the end of the day the most important thing is to find something interesting to read or play because that’s what helps you stick with it.

>>9237819
I don’t add the names ofc, but it’s funny seeing some of the puns they have with those and the cities

[Anonymous No.9237882]

>>9237852
You're learning Japanese but you're still headed for illiteracy. Native speakers understand these words and scripts not because they've learned them as kana-only vocabulary like you're doing. The recognize them despite being abnormally written in kana. You won't improve above all that much either imo, unable to move past a certain level and even these simple scripts will remain somewhat of a challenge to you forever. Without kanji you simply can't get through to the core of how this language works. If those characters or the studying scare you then maybe it's not for you.

[Anonymous No.9237886]

>>9237852
Are those free (libre) games? Japs are known to sell proprietary malware games.

[Anonymous No.9237893]

>>9237882
I have no intention of ever going to Japan or interacting with a Japanese person. Im literally only trying to figure out how to navigate through some menus in Famicom games without needing to look stuff up.

[Anonymous No.9237895]

>>9237732
>vndb
Haven't they removed tags like voiced?
I'm not really desperate for a specific genre, I just don't enjoy the newer style of dating sims and am not into 80% of horror particularly the edgy kind.

[Anonymous No.9237901]

>>9237893
If you genuinely only care about famicom games and no other Japanese media you don't need to learn kanji. You are doing 80% of the work for 20% of the reward but have at it.

[Anonymous No.9238386]

By coincidence over the weekend I finally set up an old gaming laptop with retroarch and the entire NES/GB/GBC/GBA/SNES no-intro library and was browsing through them cleaning and deleting the Europe/Germany/France roms and leaving the Eng/JP and started to do this.
I was surprised how quickly I could pick up the hiraganas after a few years of neglecting.
Also I'm rediscovering the GBC library since I skipped it as a kid, pretty impressive.

[Anonymous No.9238470]

Pokemon in general. I know the newer ones that you play with kanji, but the older ones have little enough text that it shouldn't be too rough.

Also, not vidya but One Piece's manga is supposed to be good for learning Japanese because all of Luffy's dialogue is written in kanji.

[Anonymous No.9238786]

>>9237841
Anon, you realize that nip kids know how to pronounce words, and thus how to write them with kana, before they learn which kanji they're written with, right?

[Anonymous No.9238789]

>>9237697
1) I haven't shilled a Patreon anywhere. I don't have a Patreon you stupid fuck.
2) you're not Japanese, tatsumoto.

[Anonymous No.9238792]

>>9238470
>Also, not vidya but One Piece's manga is supposed to be good for learning Japanese because all of Luffy's dialogue is written in kanji.
The hell are you on about? All children's manga use kanji with furigana, it's the industry standard.

[Anonymous No.9238804]

>>9238386
>deleting the Europe/Germany/France roms

You do know there are European exclusive games right?

Anyway what game is this?

[Anonymous No.9238820]

>>9238804
That's clearly one of the early game boy One Piece rpgs.

[Anonymous No.9238853]

>>9238786
Your point?

[Anonymous No.9239006]

>>9238853
The point is that there's nothing really wrong with learning the pronunciation/kana spelling of the word first and the the kanji later, since this is what actual nips did too.

[Anonymous No.9239107]

>>9233897
I've been thinking of doing this as I'm not good at sticking to other learning methods. I've been watching game center cx and it looks like famicom games don't use any kanji at all presumably because of the low resolution. I've ordered a famicom and flashcard. Not sure what games are good for it though.

[Anonymous No.9239127]

>>9238804
Yeah I reviewed them first to check they were a duplicated of a USA/Japan rom first.
Also a lot of (Beta), (Rev1), (Rev2), (Switch) etc, it took over 3 to go through the folders and delete these excess roms. In hindsight I should have used a Bulk Rename program.

[Anonymous No.9239217]

>>9239006
Yes of course, people start acquiring their native language from their early childhood days long before they ever have any notion of the written word. This the same for any language community no matter their writing system and it also stays true all throughout one's life, as we don't attain these skills exclusively by reading. I never claimed otherwise or said there was anything wrong with this. But it is also certainly not the only mechanic on the road to reaching proficiency - especially not when studying a foreign language which is what all of YOU are doing.

If you make the conversion to kanji eventually with the words you got from your kana-only games when applicable, then you're merely being inefficient in the way you're creating your curriculum. At least if that's your main method. It's work intesive. But at least you're doing it. If you are on the other hand sticking entirely to kana and never studying any kanji, you are never moving out of 1st year grade school tier and are essentially forever illiterate. This is what I've been saying. It is true. There are no ifs, whens or buts about it. That's just how it is. Japanese uses kanji, they're not fucking optional if you want to be able to read. Kana-only is not really a thing in todays world.

[Anonymous No.9239242]

>>9239107
>it looks like famicom games don't use any kanji at all
Depends on the game, as mentioned.

[Anonymous No.9239247]

>>9239006
but youre not a kid acquiring japanese as a native language learning only kana is just crippling yourself

[Anonymous No.9239252]

>>9239242
btw this scene is super iconic in Japanese but really loses something in the localization.

[Anonymous No.9239302]

>>9239217
So...what you're saying is...
Kanji is not retro.

[Anonymous No.9239309]

>>9238792
Just going by what I've heard.

[Anonymous No.9239426]

>>9239309
I'm really wondering who you heard this from, it's such a nonsensical statement.
>Spider-man is supposed to be good for learning English because all of Peter's dialogue consists of words

[Anonymous No.9239836]

>>9237841
Has anyone ever accused you of being patronising

[Anonymous No.9240563]

>>9233897
I recommend SD Gundam Knight 3 on the NES. Any of the games on the series should be readable but this one is very simple as far as DQ clones go. There's no equipment to worry about, you just collect a single resource item found through the dungeons which then you can spend along with money to upgrade either your weapon or armor, progression should also be simple enough if you talk to all NPCs in every town and there's even a helpful hint store in every town that you can pay a minimal fee to get a clue of what to do next. May be slightly grindy at the start, but soon after you start getting one party member after another and things get much easier, all but two (i think?) of your party members are fighters too, so battles boil down to hitting and hitting harder.

There's also a single FAQ on gamefaqs if you really do get stuck too.

[Anonymous No.9240716]

I finished genki 1 and then start playing japanese version of games i'm familiar with. It's not a perfect method but so far so good.

[Anonymous No.9240749]

Can anyone recommend me some good non-erotic retro VNs? On another thread someone mentioned Another Mind for PlayStation which looks pretty interesting.

[Anonymous No.9240759]

>>9239836
They probably used "douchebag" instead

[Anonymous No.9240785]

>>9240563
Seems legit. I'm reading the words into VoiceTra app on my phone to get the meaning.
>kuregure mo muri wa ikemasenzo

[Anonymous No.9240795]

>>9240785
just use the Google translate app, you point the camera at a word and it will translate it. also handy for getting kanji readings

[Anonymous No.9240801]

>>9240795
I'll try that too, but I like to pronounce it too.

[Anonymous No.9240808]

>>9234839
4th gen consoles got comparable resolutions but use kanji all the time, the limit here is memory rather than resolution.

[Anonymous No.9240816]

>>9234371
>Just read visual novels.
I dont like doing this i end up just looking at the english words from text hooking kek

[Anonymous No.9240872]

You can play fully voiced RPGs like Riviera Special Edition, that way you get how everything is read and associate it with the word and you know what to search for if you don't know something

[Anonymous No.9240959]

>>9240872
That’s a fucking great idea, anon

[Anonymous No.9241241]

>>9240872
A PSP remake of a Wonderswan colour game that is fully voiced seems like it would be really cool. How is it?

[Anonymous No.9241557]

>>9233897
どうしてどうして
あなたの顔がそーんなでっかいの?

[Anonymous No.9243092]

>>9237715
that's usually the games about fighting, fantasy worlds, wars and so on. So Utawarerumono for example

[Anonymous No.9243347]

>>9237715
Axanael maybe?

[Anonymous No.9243354]

>>9240749
All of Tantei Club, SNES Remakes are great. Kamaitachi no yoru and if you're up to there's stuff like Twilight Syndrome.