Japan Gaming

[Franzh11]

anyone that ever played a game in japanese language get used to easily even if they dont understand ?

I'm interest in buying some n64 japaneses exclusives games but I fear to not play them because I can't read the characters :P

[DefectX11]

Doshin the giant on 64DD. Couldn't read anything (besides a character here and there), but didn't have an issue figuring it out.
Then again, Doshin's a fairly simple game...

As long as it's a game you've played before I don't think it'll be an issue.

[Yakumo]

before I could speak Japanese I played 100's of Japanese games and never had an issue apart from RPG games. It did actually pay Final Fantasy 6 in Japanese on the Super Famicom

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Lots of games can be played without any knowledge of the language in the game. Most arcade-style games, for example.

Knowing katakana can be useful for navigating menus, though.

[7Force]

Most arcade-style games also have menus in English, although there are some weird exceptions - Soukyugurentai is the only shooter I've seen that uses kanji in the main menu (it's still completely playable even without knowing Japanese, though)

[A. Snow]

Pretty much depends on the type of game and how badly you want to play it. For me RPG's, Sim's and the like would be a no but others here like Yakumo were willing to put the effort in to them. Fighters and Arcade shooters are generally no problem. Action and Adventure along with sports games can be a toss up.

[DeckardBR]

For current Japanese RPGs there is usually a native speaker who is nice enough to put together an items or general translation faq to get you through the basics of the game. I remember playing FF Crisis Core imported before US release with the item and magic faq and it was a huge help.

Knowing Katakana also helps a huge amount and you'll find you won't need those item faqs as much as you once did :)

Off topic but why are opening menus in pure english in japanese games? I'm thinking that maybe if they do a US translation that altering those main opening menus would be harder then the general text in the game.

[XxHennersXx]

I do it a lot.

Learn some basic ones like iie and hai so you don't accidentally format your memory card ^_^

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Learn some basic ones like iie and hai so you don't accidentally format your memory card ^_^

はい！

[Lum]

Off topic but why are opening menus in pure english in japanese games? I'm thinking that maybe if they do a US translation that altering those main opening menus would be harder then the general text in the game.

There's never consistency. The Japanese still can't agree whether stuff like Sonic and Rockman should have English or Japanese logos. Heck Sonic Adventure 2 used English on the Dreamcast box front, then switched to Japanese for Gamecube.