🎮 Game Club // Now Voting 🗳️

[WeepingWeeb]

Welcome to Game Club!

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Now: Voting!

Date	Event
15/02/2026	Voting Close
23/02/2026	Club Start

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Overview

Come join if you’re looking to play some games as a club in Japanese! The plan is to have nominations and voting just like with the book clubs, but less frequently as the games will have a longer time commitment. We’ll have weekly threads for chatting and discussing the game and Japanese, and checkpoints to reach each week so we all progress together!

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Proposed Games

Feel free to propose any games you want to play with the club following the guidelines and with the proposal template below!

Guidelines for Proposing

• Nominate something you’re willing to play yourself!
• Do not knowingly nominate anything overly NSFW. A lot of games contain some level of violence which is fine, but if it has an excessive level of gore or sexual content its likely to be less appealing to a wider number of club members. If you’re unsure, make a suggestion and the club can discuss if it seems alright
• The game must have Japanese language options! E.g. voiceover or text

Undecided rules: maximum game length, amount of Japanese in the game (e.g. if there isn’t a lot of dialogue)

Proposal Template

# Name
Pic of the game cover
**Genre:** 
**Summary:**
> Summary of the game from wikipedia, etc., or your own brain :brain:

**Availability:** List the consoles the game is available on, including remakes, and add a few links to where they can be purchased, digital or physical
**Time to Beat:** Use [this site](https://howlongtobeat.com/) and the main story time to beat

**Personal Opinion:** Why you think we should play this game with the club!

**Pros**
- List any pros

**Cons**
- List any cons

Current Proposals

	Name	Time to Beat (hours)
	Pokemon (gen 1)	28
	Boku no Natsuyasumi	11
	デジモンサバイバー・Digimon Survive	31.5
	Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky	23
	Paper Mario	23
	Deltarune	3
	Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass	17
	Racing Lagoon	33
	13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim / 十三機兵防衛圏	36
	Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg	9

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Historic Polls

Interest Poll

I think it would be fun if there was a game club that operated like the book clubs with nominations and voting! Just trying to gauge interest if I should pursue this idea or not! Then there’s always the chance of offshoot clubs if people wanted to continue the series (if the game has a series). The difficulty will probably vary quite a bit but in general I’d probably call it intermediate level.

Personally I’d be wanting to nominate pokemon, maybe zelda, paper mario, yakuza, etc

Would you be interested in joining?

• I’m in!
• I might join depending on the game
• No thanks

I put this in book clubs for now since that’s where the FF club is and such

Poll 1

Set this thread to “watching” to get updates on our upcoming games!

[frequent4832]

Games can be tough because they’re a much bigger commitment (in terms of both time and money) than a book or a volume of manga. I do think that part of the FF club’s success comes down to them having a recent, multilingual rerelease on basically every platform in existence. Also, @simias puts in a ton of work every week preparing the threads and spreadsheets that make it easy to follow along, so I hope you realize what you’d be taking on if you wanted to lead the club. That said, basically all the games you listed are interesting to me so I hope it goes well!

[simias]

Yeah I think games can be great for practicing Japanese but it’s not always easy to make them fit a club format. Those early FF games are pretty nice for that, but something like Yakuza is going to be pretty intense I think. Zelda meanwhile is maybe a bit too light on Japanese usually?

Pokemon and Paper Mario could be decent choices however.

Or shorter “indie” games that wouldn’t require such a big commitment? Not entirely sure of what would be a good fit for that though.

[Sisthra]

I would be in depending on the game, but yeah finding the right balance between something approachable and that’s actually possible to go through in a club format is a bit tough.
The FF club for now is pretty doable, but something like Xenogears takes up a lot more time (and is a lot more difficult).
I would still be interested in following this thread and joining more game “book clubs”, it’s been really fun going through games and discussing it week by week with everyone!

[WeepingWeeb]

I agree there’ll probably be some challenges depending on the types of games picked but in sure whatever gets picked we can find a way to make it work trial and error

Addressing my thoughts on points brought up so far;

@frequent4832

bigger commitment (in terms of both time

Personally I don’t see it as too different from people committing to reading a whole series offshoot, might mean there’s not always a lot of people participating nearer the end of the game but if it does completely die there’s no issue moving onto the next game if that’s what people would prefer!

@frequent4832

and money

That’s very fair tbh, for that I guess participation for each game will just vary quite a bit. If it happens that I can’t buy the current game and nobody else wants to run the club I can still organise the threads just won’t be able to talk about what’s happening (much like the 4989 American life podcast club). And if needed we could have every few clubs the pick has to be free? (e.g. the games offered on steam, epic, etc for free if they have language options), that way everyone can participate at some point!

(Or find a Japanese playthrough of the game on YouTube to watch lolol)

@frequent4832

recent, multilingual rerelease on basically every platform in existence

We can include platform availability lists in the nominations so hopefully ones most people have access to win, I feel probably some Nintendo series would be the most awkward to follow (without an emulator)

@frequent4832

Also, simias puts in a ton of work every week preparing the threads and spreadsheets

Absolutely, I doubt I can match how comprehensive simias’s threads are, especially if I’m not familiar with the game but I’ll do my best and of course people who nominate are free to run the thread however they want too

My plan in general was to have a look through a walkthrough and pick points to divide the weeks into, people can do any extra talking/exploration if they want but I think it’d just be the main storyline that the weeks are divided by

As for the spreadsheets I’m not planning on transcribing/copying vocab in but we can have spreadsheets available for people to fill in as they go if that’s something they want to do

@simias

Yakuza is going to be pretty intense I think. Zelda meanwhile is maybe a bit too light on Japanese usually?

Good points I think with a chunk of zelda games you’ve got moments where you can do lots of talking and then for the next week or two you’d maybe not be talking at all, personally I’m up for trying harder or “easier” (less Japanese) ones regardless but it’s up to what the club votes anyway so I guess we can see what everyone thinks if it comes to it

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Hopefully that’ll all be ok, as I said we can workshop things if it’s not working but I’m very excited to give it a shot

I’ll turn this post into a home thread at some point and we can get started!

[Daisoujou]

@WeepingWeeb

Personally I don’t see it as too different from people committing to reading a whole series offshoot,

It’s definitely a challenge that exists but it’s also been proven doable for sure. VN club lived for a while and those are pretty much the biggest commitments you’re gonna get even if we did try to pick shorter ones. We were always a small group because of that, and to be fair the club at large isn’t still going, but I think that’s much more because a lot of the core people had things come up, I was dealing with health problems etc.

I do support this and agree with you that it’s all manageable in the end. But I will definitely be fickle based on the games and stuff.

[WeepingWeeb]

Yeah that all makes sense ^^

[Daisoujou]

@WeepingWeeb

I’ll turn this post into a home thread at some point and we can get started!

Looking forward to it; I think I already have a suitable nomination cooked up

[WeepingWeeb]

Pokemon (Gen 1)

Genre: JRPG
Summary:

Pokémon Red and Green were first released in Japan, followed by Blue, then reaching the rest of the world as Red and Blue. Later, the special edition Pokémon Yellow was released. The Red and Blue versions were remade for Game Boy Advance as FireRed and LeafGreen. The player controls the protagonist from an overhead perspective and navigates the fictional region of Kanto in a quest to master Pokémon battling. The goal is to become the champion of the Indigo League by defeating the eight Gym Leaders and the top Pokémon trainers in the land, the Elite Four. Another objective is to complete the Pokédex, an in-game encyclopedia, by obtaining all 151 Pokémon.

Availability: Gameboy, 3DS, Gameboy Advance
Time to Beat: 28 hours

Personal Opinion: Since Pokémon is pretty well known, it could be fun to explore it in Japanese if people haven’t already, and if you’ve played the games before it makes it pretty easy to figure out what’s going on even if you don’t understand. There’s the potential for an offshoot if people want to play the rest of the games. I’ve played black/white in Japanese and found it pretty easy to follow along, and there’s plenty of people that stand around in towns to talk to for practicing reading. There’s also the remake versions FireRed and LeafGreen for GBA if the old graphics make you cry too much.

Pros

• Well known game
• Linear
• Plenty of guides available
• Language is usually not too difficult

Cons

• Physical copies can be expensive
• Move names can be hard to figure out
• If someone chooses Pokemon Yellow its got some differences to the other games

[TobiasW]

Something that might be important to some: All Pokémon games before Black/White are hiragana (and maybe katakana?) only, no kanji.

(A fair bit more info on the pro/cons of the various Pokémon game entries for Japanese language learning can be found in Game Gengo’s video “The BEST Pokémon Games for Learning Japanese”.)

[Daisoujou]

Boku no Natsuyasumi

Genre: Adventure, simulation
Summary:

The game follows the summer vacation of Boku, a city-dwelling nine-year-old boy who in August 1975 is sent to stay with his extended family in the Japanese countryside for a month. Gameplay takes place in an open-ended environment where the player is free to determine how Boku spends the thirty-one in-game days of his summer vacation, with few set goals or specific obligations of gameplay progression.

Availability: Playstation 1, Playstation Portable
Time to Beat: 11 hours

Personal Opinion: To preface, I’ve never played this so I’m working with information I’ve gathered. There are a lot of RPG clubs going on so one of my goals was to nominate a non-RPG game. Boku is arguably one of the progenitors of the “cozy game,” where stakes are low and we get to soak in the atmosphere. Emulating an (idealized) Japanese summer vacation should be a nice cultural experience, and the game has never officially released in English at all so this is a chance to put your Japanese skills to use in something you outright could not play otherwise. The Japanese is pretty easy level to my understanding. There are two versions, PSP has extra content and was described as a sort of director’s cut, but arguably worse visuals. It’s impossible to really fail to progress too since summer keeps passing either way. The non-linear nature of choosing what to do is a double edge sword, we won’t be seeing the same exact stuff but it could also be fun to check in with our personal summer vacation records. I’ve remained relatively unspoiled but I believe most days will feature SOME totally shared experiences through the stuff at the start and end of the day that is shared.

I haven’t watched through it, but Game Gengo has a video on using Boku for Japanese learning (note that he thinks you can’t pause the dialog but there’s a correction in the comments): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZUG2rKI-Qs

Pros

• Fully voiced
• Relatively easy, very everyday “useful” Japanese
• Well regarded hidden gem type experience
• Many (also beloved) sequels and spiritual successor type games for spinoff clubs if we have a good time
• Chill experience that shouldn’t make anyone hit any gameplay walls
• Pretty short to clear
• Easy to split weeks into playing X number of days

Cons

• Dialog is pausable but you have to press to pause each line which interrupts the remaining voice acting apparently?
• You have to either import a game for an old console or emulate
• Non-linearity is a mixed good/bad thing

[WeepingWeeb]

Oo that looks pretty cute

[VikingSchism]

This is a game I’ve been meaning to get around to properly. I’ve played the first few days (was just testing it, then got absorbed). I’d definitely be down for a club of this

[Sisthra]

I have heard so much about this game, I would definitely love to play this with the club.
People doing different things would also be cool because everyone could pitch in with their own vocabulary they’ve found, screenshots and so on

[araigoshi]

デジモンサヴァイブ・Digimon Survive

Genre: VN + Tactics battles
Summary:

Digimon Survive is primarily a visual novel though it also has tactical battles and digimon raising so it’s not all story. A bunch of high schoolers go on a school trip where they’re staying in a retro school building when suddenly weird occurrences start happening and they end up meeting with their digimon to explore the mystery.

Availability: PS4, Switch, PC, Xbox
Time to Beat: 31.5 hours

Personal Opinion:

This has been on my to-play list since Game Gengo gave it a pretty decent rating on his “games for language learners on Steam” list last year. A familiar franchise might have nostalgia for some

Pros

• VN with text replay (in the same scene) if you miss anything
• Sort of rural Japan setting
• Turn based gameplay lets you pause to look up language

Cons

• Western PC release requires modding to enable Japanese text
• Digimon names/attacks are not really useful language outside the franchise

[araigoshi]

@WeepingWeeb

If someone chooses Pokemon Yellow its got some differences to the other games

I would actually say FireRed/LeafGreen are more different than Yellow (though less different than Lets Go Pikachu/Eevee, the re-remakes)

[VikingSchism]

@araigoshi

Western PC release requires modding to enable Japanese text

This kind of thing annoys me to no end - and the worst part is that people learning Japanese outside of Japan to the point where they play these sorts of games is niche enough that it doesn’t even register as an issue to the vast majority of people. But for those for whom it is an issue, it’s often quite hard to work around (at least that doesn’t seem to be too much of an issue in this case, thanks to the mod)

[Daisoujou]

I like that our first act as a club is to restart Pokemon vs Digimon arguments.

I’ll have to have a look into this one, hadn’t really paid attention to Digimon games before but the things people are saying about the newer Time Stranger got me really curious about that one at least.

[WeepingWeeb]

@araigoshi

I would actually say FireRed/LeafGreen are more different than Yellow

Oh ok that’s interesting

@Daisoujou

I like that our first act as a club is to restart Pokemon vs Digimon arguments.

Ikr that’s quite funny

[araigoshi]

@Daisoujou

I’ll have to have a look into this one, hadn’t really paid attention to Digimon games before but the things people are saying about the newer Time Stranger got me really curious about that one at least.

So Digimon games are basically divided into three groups:

“Digimon Story” - These are JRPGs with turn based battles and monster collecting as a focus. Time Stranger is the latest game in this subseries.

“Digimon World” - These are mostly about raising Digimon, it’s sort of a pet battler. You won’t have huge collections of everything all at once and the raising has a bunch of tamagotchi/farming game esque elements. The most recent game in this was Next Order, which got a PC port in 2023

“Other” - they’ve had a bunch of once off games which are not part of either of their big sub-series, including Digimon Survive.

It’s probably worth mentioning that the Digimon series is more like Final Fantasy than like Pokemon in that from one installment to the next (even within the same subseries) the gameplay and setting can be entirely different. Continuity is relatively rare.