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First let me say TextFugu is an excellent textbook and it is great at what it is. What I’m wondering is what are some good ‘games’ to help with the language learning for beginners? I know we have the Anki system but I wonder if there is something a bit more basic and interactive to help beginners start out with.
I don’t know how good this site is really (they were the first hit and kinda look like what I was meaning) but here’s an example;
Colour GameIf the link isn’t allowed (I couldn’t find anywhere saying it wouldn’t but…) please remove or let me know and I’ll edit it out (I know how to edit my post after the edit button ‘goes away’ so no worries).
So, any suggestions? I’m trying to get the other half in on learning Japanese but she’s having a hard time here and there. A good game or two might help break it up and help get her back on track.
Thanks.
If you want a good Japanese learning game, go and buy a SNES or a Super Famicom :D No really, they should help you. Get something basic that doesn’t have a lot of Japanese in it at first; I would imagine that’d be the best way to start, though I haven’t actually tried it myself. I changed Sonic Adventure 2: Battle for the GameCube to Japanese audio and subtitles and that was pretty good :)
You don’t have to be good at Japanese to play Japanese games – you GET good at Japanese BECAUSE you play those games haha.
Any of the Pokemon games on DS, those games don’t exactly have the most complex language or plots so they could be a good idea. If you have a Dreamcast you could play Shenmue II, it has Japanese audio and English subtitles, I think the Xbox version has English voiceover with no option for Japanese, but I could be wrong on that one.
Actually you could just use an emulator to play Shenmue, the first game has Japanese audio but no English subtitles, unfortunately the European and US releases don’t have Japanese audio at all.
Dating sims. Your conversational Japanese can potentially get really good, really fast
Some games that I’m rocking out to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezax_Sgh_F4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWSIAcNWPSMand this one that you may or may not have seen floating around on the internet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wduj5X2lHZ8
（↑ really sorry that the commentator/ player sounds like a huge d-bag but there were no other videos to give an example of how the game works. then again, this link works just as fine: http://www.siliconera.com/2011/10/11/go-go-nippon-playtest-when-sightseeing-and-romance-dont-mix/ )
@missingno15: Wow, that guy is just horrendous XD And he says it’s a hentai game, but it’s not at all.
No surprise that you are enjoying yourself with AKB games :P
Go Go Nippon looks fine, and could be really good for learning more spoken language (if you pay attention to the actual conversation in Japanese). Might download it, and see if it is worth buying ^^I guess I’d recommend Cave Story if you like retro Metroidvania sidescrollers. It’s fun, it’s got a pretty nice story and I don’t think the language in it is very complicated, but I can’t say for sure as I’ve only played it in English (though I’m gonna try playing it in Japanse once I finish it in English).
Oh, and it’s free. You can get it here, for example :p http://www.cavestory.org/downloads_game.php
Chrono Trigger along with the fan translation project script for notes and guidance. They explain why some of the English translation stuff is off or incorrect too which is nice.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve got Go Go Nippon (a whole ‘$13.72′ for the virtual copy now but the media version is due out next year) and I’ve downloaded Cave Story so I’ll have to give that a shot soon. I run a Mac so some programs like Go Go Nippon and Cave Story won’t run natively but thankfully there is Parallels to run Windows programs. I’ve also got Chrono Trigger for iOS now and PSP games are always a plus with me… although I may be a bit old for AKB48. It might make for an interesting conversation if someone caught me playing that but I can see your point about learning fast on a dating sim.
I was kinda hoping to find something a bit more basic though. Kinda like Anki but instead of ‘did you know this and how well’ it would be more ‘show/click this’. Something like the drag and drop Hiragana page, you have to answer it. A little game/quiz to help the new beginner get the basics before moving onto something more, but I guess you could do both right off the bat.
Ya, ‘hentai’ is something totally different! Go Go Nippon is a Visual Novel and doesn’t come anywhere close to hentai/ecchi. Well, I guess there is that one shot that could be close to ecchi but that’s only if you turn your head to the side and squint real hard, lol. On the upside I did learn a new slang word :)
I dunno how well this game is, but you could try “Knucles in Chinaland” http://www.tbns.net/knuckles/. Been awhile since I tried it, and I haven´t played it much, but I remember it being a bit like anki. You controll Knucles and travel through some lands where you have to type in how you read kanas and kanjis, to be able to attack monsters.
I just started playing Pokemon White in Japanese and I was mighty surprised to see it ask if you wanted the game in kana or kanji at the start!
I play this game every now and then. You try to beat the other person to the hiragana. Gets seriously difficult in muzukashii mode! :)
http://kids.nifty.com/cs/game/detail/91125000223/1.htm@Robb: Yeah, I assumed you just meant little “learning mini games”, that sorta thing. But then I suggested *proper* video games, and everyone else just followed from there haha. Sorry :P
I loved using games to study. I changed all my gaming consoles to Japanese and obtained a PS3 for the express purpose of importing games from Japan (they’re all region-free, which is a huge plus).
I’ve always been a big fan of the Pokémon series of games since the beginning, but when I started studying I decided to get Pokémon White in Japanese and was pleased with what a good study aid it was.
I can also vouch for dating sims/visual novels. IMO an excellent way to pick up new vocab and phrases as well as studying conversational Japanese (reading and listening). At least, in my case, it helped to boost my vocab and made a marked improvement on my reading.
Though at the moment I’ve all but stopped actively studying, I still play Japanese games if only for the fun of it.
If you have a DS, or a 3DS then there’s some pretty neat titles you can acquire which may help with Japanese, one that is particularly interesting is Beautiful Letter Training which uses the DS’ bottom screen to draw kana and kanji. Video of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALGBCKKpJXw
Full list: http://thejapanesepage.com/fun/nintendo_ds_study_japanese
Also some games use Furigana, like Zelda in the link above which is useful if there’s a kanji you don’t recognise.
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