Post by boogiepop on Jan 22, 2022 13:34:00 GMT
Hey guys,
As some of you already know, I'm in the process of putting together the materials for a website I'll begin building soon. Its focus will be on helping people play games (mostly retro) in Japanese.
What I know the site will do at the very least is give the player all the necessary vocabulary to play whatever games are featured. It will allow users to download the vocabulary data into formats readable by Anki and Memrise (the flashcard program and site, respectively) for use in those. It will also consolidate multiple meanings or readings for any particular item when that occurs (as it often does). I'm thinking of implementing my own flashcard program as well.
After dozens of hours of work, I am nearly finished collecting and organizing all of the required vocabulary for the first game, Culdcept. I would like, however, to have a second game also available at launch that requires far less work on both my part and the user's (meaning little vocabulary required to fully enjoy it). I'm also looking at some other games to be the next big game to work on.
So my questions are as follows:
1. Supposing you wanted to learn Japanese through video games, what would such a site have to make you come back fairly regularly? In other words, what sort of functionality would you want there to be?
2. Are there any games that you could suggest as my second game (the one with little work to fully enjoy)? It can't be something that the player could fully enjoy without knowing any Japanese at all (like a shmup) but would perhaps just require enough to navigate a menu system (like maybe a dungeon crawler's or sports game's).
3. Which of the following games sound like they'd be a good fit for this site?
- Shadow Tower (a PS1 hard-as-balls first-person dungeon crawler by From Software, the maker of the Souls series of games)
- Psychic Force 2012 (a unique fighting game on the Dreamcast, PS1, and PS2. While this breaks my earlier rule because no Japanese at all is required to play it, there is a plenty of dialogue in the story mode and it's got voice acting as well.)
- Frame Gride (another From Software game, this time an arena fighter with customizable mechs that's a Japanese Dreamcast exclusive)
The absolute best game would be one that either never got an English release or has an English release that is currently hard to obtain but a Japanese one that is easily obtainable, has vocabulary that the player will encounter over and over again (so RPGs would be a bad fit, here), and is actually a good game that people will want to play.
For example, I chose Culdcept because it never got a Western release but is available at affordable prices on the Saturn, Playstation, and Nintendo DS, is a card battle game, so the vocabulary comes up over and over again, and is hella fun. (It had quite the reputation in Japan and got extremely good review scores from Famitsu; Its Dreamcast sequel received even better.)
If you can think of something that fits these criteria (and is preferably available on the Saturn, PS1/2, Nintendo DS, or Gameboy Advance), then please let me know! (Games from the 4th gen. might also be fine, but they tend to use little in the way of Chinese characters which is a bit annoying in my opinion, though some like that. And, of course, there's always the Neo Geo, but those are almost all playable in English and the ones that I'd perhaps want to do (like Garou) will have a bit too much in the way of slang.)
You read this far?
Thank you! ><
And thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have! 
hope you are ok dude
