Gaming in Japanese

Hey gang,

Here’s a new video I put together that covers some essential vocab if you want to start playing games in Japanese. A lot of these words I’m sure you’ll learn in your time here on WK, but it’s always better the have them put into context.

Obviously I couldn’t cover everything in one video, so let me know in the comments if there’s anything you consider to be essential for Japanese gaming.

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Hey nice video! It was fun trying to guess the correct answers since I’ve played a few games in Japanese before as well as learn some new things! I don’t normally play shooters so 弾薬 was new.

One thing I would mention is that I’ve seen Attack as 戦う/たたかう a lot in games like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. Also you left out Defend which I’ve seen as ぼうぎょ.

Nice video indeed!

I haven’t actually seen セーブ though. Super Mario World (what I’m currently playing) uses 記録 and 記録する for save files and asking if you want to save (actually written as キロクシテ ツヅケル since the game doesn’t really use kanji). I’m not sure if that’s just because it’s an older game or what, but it’s probably worth noting anyway.

Actually, that’s a good question: do older games tend to use different language than modern ones?

Probably you already know about these.

some time ago here in Mexico (don’t know if in some other places it was the same) these bootleg famicom games and consoles were super popular and more importantly, cheap.

So, it was pretty common and easy to get some games in japanese. Probably some of the most seeked after titles were the Captain Tsubasa games since the anime was really big in here during the 90’s.

I remember playing them all the time with one of my cousins, we had no idea what the story was or what happened during the cutscenes but we used to do a mix of putting things in context and coming up with our own story based on what we knew about the characters and the story in general.

About the gameplay, everything is in hiragana and Katakana, there’s no kanji and just by trial and error we learned how to play them. It’s a mix of rpg and sport games.

During the game you have to choose what action to perform in a menu in which there are different options (シュート、パース、ブロック) back then we had no idea how to read the menu, but nevertheless we managed to beat those games.

Nowadays I’ve got both games loaded in my NES Classic and I mantain and will keep saying that those are fantasic games, probably some of my all time
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I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV in Japanese for a long time. Voices and menus. I would definitely recommend it. I can’t think of another game with more opportunity for variable content where you can also type and chat to others in Japanese.

The most important question is, if the games are bomb?

Did you changed that in the settings?

Yes, on the launcher, before you enter your login information. At the bottom left you can choose 日本語.

Can anyone recommend some iOS games that are good in Japanese. I’m not much of a gamer but figure that an RPG or simulation game with a bunch of text could be helpful in improving my reading.

Any ideas?

A friend of mine plays Fate Grand Order in Japanese (there’s an iOS version that I can see): https://fate-go.us/

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