This little note came from an AJATTeer named Neige the other day. It was too long for Twitter, so I’ve just gone ahead and stuck it here:
I usually set the language of my PlayStation 3 to Japanese. When my younger brother borrowed it to play Gran Turismo 5 (North American version), we found out that nearly all of the text content of the game was in Japanese.
Just letting you know in case it might help your other readers… 😀
I’ve found that a lot of US releases of japanese games are actually bilingual, although sometimes the language setting is well hidden.
Recently I found the (US) version of secret of mana for the iphone has japanese setting as well. Not only that, but it uses hi-res anti-aliased japanese fonts, which are much more readable than the original super nintendo fonts.
I was thinking that maybe on part of your website there could be a part where we could have all of the North American releases of games that let you change to Japanese text. The community could make it grow and I think it would be pretty interesting.
I know for a fact Blazblue Continuum Shift has both Japanese text and voices because I’ve been playing it. Others I heard have it, but haven’t tested are:
Resident Evil 5
Street Fighter 4
Lost Planet 2
Soul Calibur 4
Resident Evil 5 is in Japanese if your PS3’s settings are Japanese. Dunno about the Xbox version.
As in all Resident Evil games, though, the voice acting’s in English. Still, the amount of Japanese next makes it a nice compromise for when you want to blast through the co op campaign with an English speaking buddy.
“Sonic Adventure 2: Battle” is fully in Japanese on both PAL and NTSC releases I believe. It’s a brilliant game that you can probably pick up for about 5GBP/10USD now and it will work on the Wii. Good times! 😀
Patrick has a good idea there actually. Videogames rarely tell you on the packaging which languages they include. A site that listed them would be a great asset to the language learning community, but let’s include the PAL releases too. Don’t leave us Europeans out!
Yeah, the NA version of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle has Japanese text and voices as well (you seem unsure so I am confirming 😀 ). Also, agreed that it’s a great game.
As for my [short] list of NA games that have Japanese language options in some form:
– Feel the Magic (DS)
– (if you have a modded Wii) Sonic Colors (have to force it into Japanese using homebrew software, but it works fine — I imagine there’s some way to do it with a cheat device too, but I don’t know how)
Sonic Colors is the only game I’ve had success with when forcing into Japanese (other games tried: Super Mario Galaxy 2, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Kirby’s Epic Yarn).
The list above, combined with SA2:B having its own language option, leads me to believe that most Sega games (aside from maybe sports games) will either have language options or won’t run into any problems when being forced into the language. Also, it appears that most Nintendo published games WILL run into problems, so don’t buy a Nintendo game expecting it to switch over to Japanese nicely.
You can just set Sonic Colors to Japanese Text and Voice in the game settings. No modding required.
Haha, I didn’t even try it since my Wii is already modded. I just expected (from posts about the DS version) that there was no such option.
Whoops.
Bayonetta has Japanese text, but not voices. And I seem to recall Super Smash Bros. Melee having Japanese text, too.
No, it switches to full-on Japanese mode. For example, Fox and Falco, who usually have a few lines in English, speak fully in their victory animations in Japanese, and Mewtwo also speaks. The announcer refers to Jigglypuff as Purin, and Bowser as Koopa, which are their Japanese names.
Lost Odyssey had lots of Japanese dialogue, but no subs. It was 4 discs, with lots of cut scenes.
Most of the 3D Sonic Games let you change to Japanese audio, whether by changing the console setting or the in-game settings. Crackdown (1 at least) has Japanese audio. A good chunk of all North American Xbox 360 releases support Japanese text. Many arcade games do, and I recall Halo 3, ODST, Reach, and Dead Rising all having the text as well. I just wish more games had the audio… I have yet to find a good resource for this sort of thing. I hope you can find out some more, Khatz. You seem to be really good at finding this stuff.
Though I’m not sure if this goes for the newer Silent Hill games, Silent Hill 1-3 can be changed to all Japanese text. (Audio still stays English though.)
Same with Ridge Racer 7. All the text is in Japanese.
One of my favorite games of all time was Final Fantasy 7. Recently I downloaded the game and have been playing through it in Korean. It’s great, because the game has an immense amount of dialogue, and since I already know the story, I have huge contextual clues that help me figure out vocabulary I don’t know without having to stop to consult a dictionary.
You can’t even call this studying. It’s my cheat activity. Whenever I’m feeling lazy and don’t feel like doing anything productive, I just fire up the game. But I’m definitely learning a lot from it without even trying. And now I have an excuse to play video games again without feeling like I’m wasting time. I’m not being lazy; I’m ‘studying’ 😉