Japanese Games Entirely Bereft of Nasty Kanji?

[StrychNiNE]

Are there any games out there which were aimed primarily at children and thus are very light on the kanji or have furigana above the characters? Preferably RPG's as action games have so little text that its not very helpful. I'm currently taking Japanese in college and I'm looking for a little extra practice, specifically learning more vocab etc...granted I could probably read manga - but you know...I frequent this forum cuz my addiction is videogames. Thanks in advance.

[davidbrit2]

It seems like Famicom and Gameboy games are usually very light on the Kanji, mostly because of the limited character table sizes. Hopefully by the end of the semester I will be able to play my copy of Pokemon Gold. Heh. The GB/GBC Pokemon games might be good starters.

[Azazel]

Basically all 8 bit systems won't have kanji cause of the limitations on the systems. PC Engine hucards are kind of an exception as a few hucards games like City Hunter have some kanji in them. I've never seen a game that has furigana in them. You could try reading some game manuals as sometime they have that above the kanji. Although your better off if you just start to learn Kanji, It's much easier to understand a game. Plus most games past the 8 bit systesm will have kanji in them so you'll be pretty limited in understanding them. Reading something with Kanji is 10 times more easy so I don't why you would want to play the kanjiless ones.

Somthing you could try is playing a Japanese game that you already have played in english and see well it goes for you. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Battle of Olympus, Metal Gear a few goods one to try on the Famicon and see how much you can understand. If you've already played an english version you should have some idea what it is about. There is a small flaw that some names, items and storylines were changed for released mainly due to lack of space to put it all into the game for the english release.

here are a few games that I know that don't have much or any kanji that you could try.

PC Engine cd
Shin Megami Tensei
Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari
Sorcerian
Dynastic Hero

Snes
Dragon Slayer Legend of Heroes 1

Megadrive
King Colossos
Sorcerian

Although generally I won't play anthing that requires reading unless it's written with Kanji so I might not be the best on to answer.

[GaijinPunch]

Not much use b/c it's out in English, but Shenmue (I and II) have children's mode, which either had Furigana, or no kanji at all (never tried).

Some newer GBA games (Metroid Fusion is one) has a system like the one above. Like Azazel, I have a hard time reading w/o kanji as it's not really 'natural'.

I only played a couple of RPGs when I was in college. Rayearth for the Saturn was one, and since I knew the rough idea of the story (which is basically every story in an anime-based RPG) that helped.

[davidbrit2]

The big issue is the need to learn enough vocabulary before jumping into the Kanji games. For instance, I can read Pokemon Gold just fine, but damned if I know what most of it means. Trying to pile a bunch of Kanji on top of that would just be suicide. So progress like the average Japanese kid would: Hiragana and Katakana reading first, then start adding Kanji incrementally.

[StrychNiNE]

Thanks for your responses, that's pretty helpful.

Azazel: I do agree with you that I should just buck-up and learn kanji - I mean, I plan to - and it would probably be better for me to in the long run. However, the only reason I was looking for games without kanji was because I would most likely have to look up 99% of them as I go along, which would make playing any game a really laborious process. I wanted to pick up some more vocab so that when I finally attempted a game with a ton of kanji it would go a lot quicker.

[GaijinPunch]

How about this idea (something else I did -- it's slow, but it helps).

Spend $50 on what's probably the best investment for someone learning Japanese - The Nelson Kanji Dictionary. Spend a bit of time learning how to look up the kanjis. If there's a word in the game you know you need, then look it up. Yeah, it's painfully slow, but it it'll help you learn in the process.

I should mention you'd probably want to make flash cards out of the new vocab.

And as David said, w/ the kiddie stuff, you can read most of it, but be damned if you know what it means. Japanese has a stupidly huge amount of homonyms, which is what got my ass in gear to learn the kanjis. My mind responds better to visuals.

[davidbrit2]

Oh, I'm not referring to homonyms. I just don't know enough of the damned words to begin with. ;-) And it's really impractical to sit down with a Kanji dictionary and try to memorize until you can play video games. It's not like you sit down with an English dictionary for a few hours until you can read at a graduate level. Vocabulary and Kanji are both learned gradually. Don't try to pile on too much at once, or you'll just go insane. Just study a couple Kanji a day, or something like that.

[GaijinPunch]

But we're not talking about graduate-level stuff. After two years of college-level courses, you could wade through some younger games. After the third, if you take similar courses to me, you could go through some of the harder games. That's what I did -- of course, I wasn't big time into games or anime then, and might've just lucked out with the few I chose.

The point is, the method I pointed out is practical application, which is 100x more effective than text-book studying. It's slow... very slow, but it works, especially if you take notes, study them, and ask someone what stuff means when you don't know.

Something easier? Do the same thing with Manga. When I first moved here, I lived in the sticks, and had nothing to do. My host-brother had a ton of manga... more than I would've wanted to read. If I got bored, I started reading until I got to a word I didn't know. Then I wrote it down. When I had a page, I looked them up, made flash cards, studied them, then re-read where I got the words from.

[davidbrit2]

Right, but if you're starting from a very limited vocabulary, and knowledge of maybe a dozen or two Kanji, it's not the best approach. First, build enough vocabulary to function, then start learning the Kanji.

[Azazel]

It's really not that hard to learn the Kanji. I know probably at least 300 and I've never even really tried to learn them and I've never taken one class of Japanese. After a while some of them you'll see so many times you learn them anyway. If I wanted to put the effort into it I could easily learn 1000 or so Kanjis.

Plus also not all games will have like 2000 kanjis in them. Some will only have like maybe 100 to 300. After you have played it for a while and your used to how the script is written you won't have to do as much looking up as you get further into it.

Something else that hasn't really been touched on yet. It's much easier to figure out the conjugation for verbs and adjectives and stuff like that if it uses Kanji. Where as if it's all done in all Hiragina you have to know how to conjugate it back to the dictionary form so you can look it up in a dictionary. Where as if it written in Kanji and you look up the stand alone Kanji and if you see like a Masen congugation you at least know that it a polite negative form of whatever Kanji that you see.

[davidbrit2]

Right. So the basic idea is this:

If you don't know more than a couple dozen Kanji, reading Kana is easier.

If you know a few hundred Kanji, reading with Kanji is easier.

Currently, I fall into the first category. ;-) Hey, I've only had half a semester of JPN 101 so far. What do you expect? Heh.

[Azazel]

I still say it's much easier with Kanji no matter how much you know of the language.

[davidbrit2]

That's kind of like saying it's faster to type than to write, no matter what your typing skills. I think we know there are countless people who disprove that. ;-)

[GaijinPunch]

HOw about this?
If you don't know 300 or so Kanji, hit the books. You'll have to anyway, it's only memorization, the more you learn the easier it is to learn, and you'll need it if you want to play the imports.

Someone give me a down-side... oh, yeah -- time.
Well, that's a personal problem.

[davidbrit2]

Well, of course, you should learn the Kanji. But there are much better ways than just sitting down with a game and looking them up one by one. That is quite possibly the most tedious approach.

[GaijinPunch]

Well, the "best" way is even more tedious, which is the same method with something loaded with kanji. There's no quick/easy way to learn kanji. It's ALL tedious. The *ONLY* way to learn them is by memorization and practice. If you read (pronounce) it, and know the meaning, there are two anchors to that kanji in your brain. If you see it used in practicality, there is a third, and more important anchor.

So on the contrary - I'd say it's that studying while reading is the best way. That's how I learned them.

[Lord Contaminous]

Basically all 8 bit systems won't have kanji cause of the limitations on the systems. PC Engine hucards are kind of an exception as a few hucards games like City Hunter have some kanji in them. I've never seen a game that has furigana in them. You could try reading some game manuals as sometime they have that above the kanji. Although your better off if you just start to learn Kanji, It's much easier to understand a game. Plus most games past the 8 bit systesm will have kanji in them so you'll be pretty limited in understanding them. Reading something with Kanji is 10 times more easy so I don't why you would want to play the kanjiless ones.

.

One Famicom game I know of that's loaded with Kanji is Konami of Japan's "Cosmic Wars".

Lately I've been trying to translate Japanese. Not too long ago, this guy e-mailed me pictures of Super Star Force and the text in the game, and it's just hiragana and katakana. what is the trick for getting the sounds together when both tables are put together?

[GaijinPunch]

Not sure what you mean by "getting the sounds together". Basiaclly, if you're looking at the standard chart, the sounds are laid out the same.

[Azazel]

Well when you sound out Katakana it should sound something like a word in english. Here's a few examples

�o�g�� romanji=Batolu meaning=Battle
�G�������h�h���S�� romaji=Emeradadaragon meaning=Emerald Dragon

Where as if you sound out something in Hiragina it won't mean much to you. I really don't know a great way to explain in a way you'll understand

Take this sentence for example. This is a pretty easy sentence grammar wise. Plus if you play an RPG you'll see it several times as generally the first person in town will say something like this

(�ނ�)
�����̓_�[���̑��ł�.

Basically just take each part of the sentece and get the meaning from it.

����=here or this place
��=topic marking particle
�_�[��=Daal
��=possessive particle which a lot of times you can translate as of
��(�ނ�)=Village
�ł�=polite copula which can translate to a few different words like is

So you should get something like this in the way that Japanese sentences are ordered
This Daal of Village is=in english This is the Village of Daal.