So, scalping faggots have finally driven me away from collecting, and I'm looking to learn Japanese and start collecting imports instead after learning that almost every Super Famicom game ever sells for about $5-$20
Have any of you learned japspeak just to play imports? How long did it take to be able to play games in japanese?
Do you enjoy collecting now that you aren't paying $70+ for any game that is remotely enjoyable?
By the time I became literate in Japanese my interests mostly changed and I played a lot less video games. I think it took me about two years of study before I could play anything and not have it be an excruciating, headache inducing experience every time or having to look something up once for every sentence. I couldn't answer the last question; most of the games I've imported have been 3DS or PS2 stuff and some PS1 games. I stick with emulators for older generations.
Playing video games is an excellent reason to learn Japanese but you should expect to sink a lot of time in it and treat it as a second hobby.
>>2855160
>Have any of you learned japspeak just to play imports?
Yes and no. It was really more of a genuine curiosity borne from a broader interest in language.
>How long did it take to be able to play games in japanese?
Let me assume you mean "How long might it take me to able able to play games in Japanese?"
If you want to dedicate all your free time to independent study, you should have sufficient reading skills and vocabulary within several weeks. Maybe if the games are rendered in kana only, or have an option to disable kanji display.
Japanese grammar is very simple. Incredibly simple compared to English. The primary writing system (kana) is also incredibly simple by comparison. Your initial hurdle will be overcoming your existing lack of knowledge about languages and grammar in general - e.g. things like how to identify parts of speech. Japanese, of course, doesn't have all the same parts of speech as English, applies different rules to syntax, and has different ways of illustrating relationships between nouns and verbs.
>>2855191
Any games you would recommend playing as practice while learning the language?
It might be more fun to study if I'm translating a game as I play
>>2855207
I've only played a couple retro games in Japanese; mainly SMT1 and If..., and also FF5. Of those I'd probably recommend FF5 or other games like it at the same reading level. It uses a manageable amount of basic grade school kanji and has fairly simple conversational dialog. If you're less adamant about putting retro gaming first I'd probably recommend something with voice acting though, as it helps a lot.
It's best to avoid old kana-only games. Even with spaces it's hard to parse Japanese and retain Sinitic vocabulary with no kanji and it's directly at odds with the goal of learning the language in the long term.
Not to sound pessimistic buy I wouldn't expect much progress in video games before you've finished studying grammar and gotten hold of basic particles and conjunctions in the language, or in other words I wouldn't suggest playing through games while you're still in the process of learning the language in any sense beyond soaking up huge amounts of vocabulary. Or at least if you're going to do that, do it mainly to sate your curiosity and don't expect so much that you come away from it frustrated. I have bad memories from trying to decode walls of text in instruction manuals and such right after finishing my grammar book. You need a decently robust knowledge of grammar and sentence structure just to be able to break sentences down into an intelligible sequence of words.
pro hint, keep a smartphone in handy and use a dictionary app that lets you look up kanji by writing it. it's a lot faster than learning retarded methods like skip code or radical lookup
I wish I had started earlier, there's too much shit to memorize and I have too little time to burn
>>2855160
>and I'm looking to learn Japanese and start collecting imports instead after learning that almost every Super Famicom game ever sells for about $5-$20
That bubble is about to burst as well, the japs are well aware of western ebay prices. I recommend investing in a flash cart instead.
>>2855247
On a certain level, I hope there is a god out there, and he hates scalpers as much as I do.
Knowing that these american picker, storage war loving faggots will be burning for an eternity for destroying the only thing I love in life just to make a quick buck would at least bring me a bit of comfort.
I wish these assholes would just learn how to make money like a normal person instead of destroying hobbies for people that aren't middle to upper class
>>2855254
Don't worry most of them will end up with a LOT of unsold cartridges.
>>2855247
That wasn't the right term but I understand what you're trying to say. I think prices might go up, sure, but I think for your average collector the language barrier combine with the fact that they don't have that NES and SNES label might be enough to keep them from skyrocketing. I genuinely believe that this fad will die off. Might be a few years, but I really think people will get bored and move on, just like many other things.
>>2855254
Yeah, maybe I just haven't been aware of it, but it really feels like we are living in the age of scalping.
>>2855257
Knowing that someone that doesn't give a fuck about games and will never play almost any of the ones they own, and will eventually just have a surplus of old games sitting around doesn't make me feel much better.
I love how I spent my entire childhood waiting to finally be old enough to get a job and make money so that I can start buying all of these old games that I loved and saw in every store for $5-$10, and as soon as I actually have money the prices skyrocket
>>2855160
You do know about emulation, right?
>>2855278
Its not the same.
I might consider buying flashcarts for my consoles though, at least that way I can still sit down and play EVO with a SNES controller on my CRT
>>2855279
Yeah, get a flashcart. I find it hilarious that games like turtles in time goes for around $60 nowadays.
Aliexpress has the Chinese version of the super everdrive for $54 USD most of the time.
I'm literally doing that right now. I thought it would be my chance to score the megaman x series on super famicom at a reasonable price. If I thought of it, and now this thread....shit. Should've been buying famicom games 5 years ago.
>>2855295
>If I thought of it, and now this thread....shit. Should've been buying famicom games 5 years ago.
I feel the same way man,
Lets just hope we can beat the rush to buy them.
I might just start working on an import collection before I'm done learning. That way I can beat the inevitable inflation, and also have more incentive to actually go through with it
I think it took me four months between starting to learn Kanji and playing the first Japanese game for real.
It was still very slow at first but after I learned how to use Kanjitomo is went pretty well.
>>2855160
>Have any of you learned japspeak just to play imports?
No, but in general I've been learning Japanese since 2010 and now live in Japan.
>>2855247
even the japanese on yaj are aware. it's a simple matter of supply and demand. even in Japan, supply is running low and demand is increasing. there are lots of foreign buyers using proxy services AND resellers who moved to Japan specifically to buy all the stock they can find and resell it through ebay.
>>2855254
shut the fuck up you whiny poorfag, it's a free market
>>2855295
rockman x carts are still like $10 (for X) and like $30 for X3. it's very affordable.
>learning another language to save a few bucks
You faggots can't be serious, right?
>>2855160
>japspeak
No. There was no speak in games when I started to learn Japanese so that I could play games.
It took me about 6 months to learn to read.
I do enjoy paying less now. But I paid a lot to import before.
>>2855802
>shut the fuck up you whiny poorfag, it's a free market
Thanks America :^)
You're doing us all a favour by making sure only upper middle class people can have hobbies
>>2855810
I learned it to play porn games.
>>2855810
There's no disadvantages about learning new languages, anon. Even if the primary reason is to play games someone can discover new fields of interest on the new language
>>2855883
I think you can blame things like Storage Wars and internet articles about RARE OLD TOY WORTH 10K DO YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR CLOSET . It is has fetishized old junk and now everyone thinks they can profit by simply buying stuff low and selling high or otherwise investing in random junk with dreams of becoming a millionaire in the future by doing nothing positive for the world.
Hell, just look at the not retro and just fucking released Devil's Third. Go on NintendoAge and they're already freaking out over it and scalpers on ebay are selling it for over $100 based on speculation of no reprints. Shit is getting ridiculous.
>>2855886
Is a good reason.
>>2855810
18K MS13K
SD all day nikka
just got my nds flashcart, looking for gba/nds recs, and emus if there are any good ones for ds lite
already got:
999
advance wars
astro boy omega factor
chrono trigger
contra 4
ffta
fire emblem
henry hatsworth
kirby
layton
mario kart
mario vs dk
megaman zero/zx
meteos
metroid
mother 3
new smb
pokemon
retro game challenge
rhythm heaven
riviera
sonic
mario advance
mario 64
tactics ogre
wario land 4
>>2856169
soz, wrong bread
>>2855898
This is actually good. It makes the vidya bubble more and more like the baseball/comic bubble. Over saturation of collectible issues, the occasional under printed gem that goes for too much. People get sick of the yo-yoing of the perceived value and along with changing interests of the public means things could get a lot better in a few years.
I'm about to just buckle down and blast through the ps2/xbox360/ps3 library. I froze in time 8 years ago with games.
>>2855247
>That bubble is about to burst as well
That's not what that phrase means.
>>2855810
You sound jelly you can't git gud at another language.
>>2856543
snot-nosed elitist fagget
>>2856545
at least he isn't uni-lingual
>>2856551
I speak 4 languages and I don't go around acting like a piece of shit spouting le epin "git gud" maymays
>>2856215
>It makes the vidya bubble more and more like the baseball/comic bubble.
Would be pretty sweet if the retro game market went the same way comics have gone, it would be Funcoland prices all over again.
But I agree with what others in this thread have said, if you are serious about playing on the real console with a CRT, flashcarts are the cost-effective way to go. Hell, you can get a Genesis with cables and controller(s) plus a Chinese ED and a 2-4GB SD card(more than enough for every game) for roughly $100. I remember paying $200 for my PS1 with two controllers and two games back in the 90's. As long as you aren't a collector, there has never been a better time to be a retro gamer.
>>2855205
as someone who is familiar with language learning and grammar, what stifled my study of japanese was lexical dissimilarity.
german, latin, norwegian...all these languages have a vocabulary that's related to english's, and thus is easier to remember word meaning.
The difference in "cooking" and "kochen" is minimal, but between "cooking" and "ryoori" is significant.
Grammar is definitely simple though. The japanese basically speak a programming language.
>>2857564
Programming languages aren't full of implied context, homonyms, habitual gapping, heavily overloaded postpositions or ambiguous topic-comment sentence structure that masks the true subject in sentences.
"Speaking a programming language" is something like lojban.
>>2855160
>Have any of you learned japanese just to play imports?
i started learning for other reasons (anime, manga, japanese civil war era and igo) in 1999.
>How long did it take to be able to play games in japanese?
i started playing without even really understanding the language -- first game was fire emblem 3 within around 6 months of learning hiragana/katakana through self-study. i enjoyed as a game but didn't almost anything without a ton of effort. the vocabulary in FE3 is basically middle school level, and i just wasn't anywhere close enough when i first tried.
it took around 2 years of study at a university to become comfortable with basic reading for content, not for fluency. i also went with easier texts (tales of phantasia SFC, for example). it took around 4 years to be comfortable with being able to vocalize it (e.g., reading/speaking the written text aloud at a near-native rate, without having to stop and look up kanji/etc)..
then i graduated and stopped reading/writing japanese for about 6 years, and only recently restarted.
i've found higher quality resolutions make it easier to read. but then again, i'm just a blind old wizard.
>>2857564
The thing that stifled your study of Japanese is your ignorance and lack of motivation. Japanese is half full of loan words and I bet you a dollar you couldn't program yourself out of a paper bag.
It's always seemed to me like a lot of people who can into 日本語 hang out on /vr/. Maybe it's just the fact that it gets less visitors than /v/ so it seems higher, or maybe there's actually a higher ratio.
Anyway, the OP reminded me of something I read a few years ago. It was about some content or something involving Mega Man, it was held in Japan I believe. Like, 8 or so kids got gold Mega Man cartridges I believe and they're really goddamn valuable. Not even sure if they were gold or not, but I've never been able to find the article again. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
>>2857791
that is very discouraging. I would think that for gaming you would only need an intermediate reading comprehension. barring "fluency", how long do you think it would take to interpret games for personal enjoyment, i.e., reading comprehension of a highschool student?
>>2857906
Depends on you. I was playing games like FF VI in 7ish months. Some people can play them earlier than that, some later. Though it was fun, it was also a lot of work. Had to run to a dictionary every line or so. Some games I can play fairly easily now. Dragon Quest makes me feel like I'm actually good at Japanese. When I play something like Fatal Frame my reading speed is slower (for files anyway, cutscenes are usually simple), especially for Fatal Frame III, a game where the writers developed an old Japanese fetish.
Learning a language takes a lot of time and work. You have to be focused on the long term benefits rather than the short term. You're going to suck at everything at first, no matter how easy it is. Eventually things will get easier though and your study time will consist of playing video games and reading manga/novels/porn, translating, etc.
>>2857901
There are also more weeaboos and older users.
What's the best free place to learn japanese online? What study guide did you follow?
>>2858052
I used Tae Kim but I'm not sure if that's the best. The text examples are too complex for a complete beginner so you're better off building a vocabulary first.
>>2857901
Yes, gold Rockman 4 carts are a known rarity. Given away to the robot design contest winners if I remember correctly. One was (and maybe still is) on display/for sale at a Mandarake location.
As for your other question, I imagine an older/more mature userbase due to the subject. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a higher concentration of longtime (decade+) 4chan users. I minored in Japanese in college but didn't keep up with it...
played super mario rpg and final fantasy 6 in japanese without knowing a lick of the language, completed them both
>>2858064
Last time i was at Mandarake, about 2 years ago, it still was there. (Sadly) Still and likely forever only for display.
>>2858052
You can't study proper Japanese by yourself. That's a fact. Sure you can start learning Kana and Kanji. But speaking and hearing will be almost impossible. You have to visit a course.
>>2858162
How is hearing impossible?
Speaking can wait if you're a recluse that doesn't even use his mother tongue.
>>2858162
>You can't study proper Japanese by yourself. That's a fact. Sure you can start learning Kana and Kanji. But speaking and hearing will be almost impossible. You have to visit a course.
Bull. I'm not a master of the moons, but I've been studying by myself for nearly three years and generally do fine. Even do some officially contracted translation work sometimes (just lewd stuff, but still). I've still got a lot to learn, definitely, my speaking and listening ability needs a lot of practice because I've focused on reading far more than anything else, but they can and are practiced watching things and talking to people Skype. Not an idea situation, but it works. I know a Canadian who's never been through Japanese courses or Japan itself, but he's a ridiculously good translator, and he's only been studying a few years longer than I have.
Courses would probably help though, especially toward the beginning. I know I wished I had a person who was fluent in Japanese and English to help me out sometimes in my first year.
>>2858163
Simply because the Japanese you hear in online courses or Anime/TV-Shows is way different from daily use, not just because of the dialects but slang and so on.
If you just learn by this, your Japanese will always sound strange to native Japanese. Since you mix up a lot of slang, dialects and half proved pronunciation.
>>2858171
You can get samples from daily use Japanese.
Don't tell me regular courses without any actual Japanese people are any better.
Hearing and speaking are two different things anyway. If you want to learn hearing you want to learn hearing and not speaking.
>>2858171
You'll sound a bit strange, no doubt about it. Don't know how you'd manage to cock up dialects, slang, and pronunciations though. I guess for pronunciations you might speak clearer until you've learned how the average Japanese slur the shit out of their words. Still, you can always watch Japanese news or Let's Plays or any other amateur video made on the internet. No, it's not as good as being in Japan, but when it's all you've got, you've got to make do. Being around a bunch of people who are just learning Japanese and don't know any better than you, or know even less than you, won't make you sound like a home-grown Japanese man anyway.
>>2858171
You're delusional. Animu is far more enunciated and exaggerated compared to conversational language, but it's perfect as a beginner's introduction to speech.
Watching the odd variety show will stop you sounding like a 12 year old girl.
>>2858175
If it's a top certified teacher it doesn't matter if he is Japanese or not. That's what JLPT is for, and you get tested for it.
And hearing and speaking can directly matter in Japanese as i experienced by myself a lot of times.
Speaking of hearing, how do you guys practice it? I've been trying to watch Cowboy Bebop recently, but boy it's difficult, it's almost like when I was learning to read Japanese all over again. I'm fine at reading, but I've been ignoring listening practice. I have to keep going back and listening again and again and then I still normally need to look at the Japanese subs I downloaded because there's a word or two I'm just not getting. Makes a single episode take forever to get through. Is that what you do? Just ho back again and again until you've got every word in the sentence and then move on? What other ways (aside from going to Japan of course, if the opportunity presents itself, I'm there) do you use to practice? There's always talking with people over Skype. I need to find some people to do that with again.
>>2858185
What level of JLPT tests speaking?
>>2858212
1 or 2 I imagine.
>>2857906
>that is very discouraging.
YMMV.
>I would think that for gaming you would only need an intermediate reading comprehension.
No, you're confusing goals. Gaming requires 0% comprehension. Even without a walkthrough most games can be beaten with pattern recognition and trial-and-error. You might not know that 話す is read "hanasu" but you can figure out that it lets you interact with other NPCs. Trial-and-error will show what a stat or skill does, whether it's useful or not. None of that requires knowledge of Japanese.
>how long do you think it would take to interpret games for personal enjoyment, i.e., reading comprehension of a highschool student?
When people talk about "high school" fluency, they usually mean reading kanji only. Genuine fluency means understanding the joyo kanji, plus several hundred non-joyo kanji (for names at least), plus understanding the puns, wordplay, and implied meanings of phrases, the classic literature upon which modern literature is derived, the historical context/meaning of various events/phrases and such. That's fluency that no one talks about, but is still essential to the experience, and takes a highschooler's lifetime to build up.
The 2000 kanji you can learn in anywhere from 1 to an infinite number of years depending on how much time, effort and practice you put into it, as well as how well you can retain the knowledge that you are learning. If you are an atypical /vr/gin (e.g., you have a job, or friends, or a significant other, or at least have other hobbies, etc) then those individuals/activities will take away from your study time too. background also helps -- if you live in the asia/pacific, or read chinese, or already speak 2+ languages, or live near a large population of japanese speakers you're more likely to succeed more quickly.
If you're an average american /vr/gin with a waifu, then I'd guess 5 years of regular (but not excessive) study would get you somewhere in that range for kanji only.
>>2858493
Are there any kanji only games?
Highest complexity should be something like the Visual Novels on the PC98.
Names should normally be presented in kana at some point so I don't think you have to know every possible reading and even if you get them wrong it's not a big deal
>>2858171
>Anime/TV-Shows
It's 2015, man. Go watch videos of people talking about their cats on Niconico.
>>2858534
>Kanji only games
I just woke up so maybe I'm misunderstanding simple things, but what do you mean kanji only games? While it was possible to write in nothing but kanji in the 8th century, it can't be done anymore.
>>2855160
Not worth it, op. Unless you wanna learn a new language only for that reason.
Learn a more useful language, or anything more useful.
>>2858738
Learn what you want, it's your life. If learning a language for video games makes you happy, then by god do it.
>>2858162
Bullshit.
I've subtitled several videos of japs talking in fucking kansai-ben just by hearing.
>>2858740
That's what I meant. If you want to learn it just to play games, go for it, but its a waste of time for anything else, as it's only spoken in Japan and has no other good use.
>>2858743
The only time I've ever seen kanji only writing is when looking at pictures of an extremely old historical chronicle. I was told by a Japanese person that writing in kanji was a more manly thing to do, while kana was more womanly, but things have obviously changed and the language is no longer equipped to handle kanji only writing, no one would know how to read it. Maybe really hardcore linguists who can read and write ancient Japanese can, but no one else.
>>2855232
One of my biggest issues I have is sentence order - I know it's Subject Object Verb, but it can be pretty hairy when adjectives and stuff are in the mix. Any good resources for this/diagramming sentences?
>>2855243
I've been finding Stickystudy Kanji to be a really good app; it's been very useful to me and helping with retention.
I started using the 10k common / Anki per an anon here, it's going alright (although I've been missing some days). It seems to be working well too, but I've been noticing some errors and instances where it's not clear what the difference is between two terms.
>>2858754
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanbun
Sounds like it was basically written Chinese.
The Google Translate app for iPhones has a translate from photo option. I can only read hiragana/katakana and about 300 kanji but that knowledge plus the app makes it pretty easy to make my way through simple interactions
>>2858767
Man, I'd like to study kobun at some point, but I don't know about kanbun.
>>2858723
Well, then in most cases you still have net or 2ch slang.
>>2858742
Sure you can. Also then it's still a matter of how good the translation is and how you interpreted it.
Also i would not say you completely can't learn hearing, i was more referring to that you can't get used to it and that you are ready to say "i'm master of nihongo" just by listening to videos on the net. Regular real life experience is still very important.
Whole reason i mentioned it, was to give you tips and take care of those stones while learning.
At some point of learning you automatically will notice that you can't do much learning by yourself anymore and have to use it for real to further level up.
Also where is this still /vr/ at all anyway? Take it to /jp/.
>>2858821
>At some point of learning you automatically will notice that you can't do much learning by yourself anymore and have to use it for real to further level up.
What the fuck does this even mean?
By yourself, the only issue you will have is speaking practice, unless you like talking to yourself like a nutjob. A course will barely help with that. You're better off just talking to natives online for free.
You're acting like having someone explain grammar points face to face is somehow more valid than reading an explanation from a textbook, which is exactly what the teacher will be doing anyway.
>>2858821
It has only little to do with Otaku culture.
Language learning would fall under /int/ if anything but there's a reasonable basis to discuss learning Japanese for the purpose of playing retro games.
>>2858842
Yeah this. As long as the mods don't throw a fit, I don't see why the occasional Japanese thread will hurt. They have them on 八chan's /v/ and they seem generally fine.
>>2858813
That's important stuff to know that few textbooks will teach you.
>>2858851
>few
Well, if you happen to have books on 2ch slang...
That reminds me though. Why does almost nothing explaining the に particle go over the fact that it can serve the same function as "and"? I think I've only see that in Japanese: The Manga Way or whatever that book's called. Can't remember if it's in the Dictionary of Japanese Particles or not.
>>2858743
No, I wasn't suggesting that there are kanji-only games. I mean, I guess someone's probably made one, but that's neither here nor there.
I was talking relative ease by which you can read and understand a game's text. Now, FE3 doesn't have any unusual names/etc, but some NES/SNES text-heavy games did. Ditto if you were interested in anime/manga names; mostly easy to read/write, but sometimes you'll see something odd.
I mentioned FE3 was middle-school level text. Here's the first line of the opening prologue in FE3:
その昔 アカネイア大陸は、マムクート(竜人族)の王メディウス率いるドルーア帝国に侵略され、人々は、恐怖と絶望の中にあった。
Most of the kanji are fairly common, but 大陸 and 率いる are late-elementary. 率いる is JLPT N1, so it's a word that an elementary kid would know, but a foreigner would not be likely to encounter it until late in the study material. Anime fans might recognize 侵略 from Ika-musume, but it's also middle school kanji. Likewise, 恐怖 are also middle school kanji. Now, if you spoke to an elementary school kid and asked what きょうふ meant, they could tell you -- but if you asked them to write it, they might not be able to.
That's what I meant by FE3 being a middle school-level game. Certainly you don't need to be in HS to understand FE3; it's not that complicated.
OP asked about what it would take to be as fluent as a high school student -- and my argument is that fluency is deeper than just knowing the kanji and meanings. Knowing the words is one thing, but cultural knowledge is as important as the words.
A simple example is, say, the PCE game "JJ and Jeff". It's "Kato-chan and Ken-chan" in Japan, and was based on an 80s comedy show. A high schooler would likely know that, but a foreigner would not unless they bothered to research it. It's hard to quantify that knowledge and how much time or effort it would take to learn.
Are there any good online resources for learning Japanese? I set up a ghetto method in excel to memorize hiragana and katakana, and I plan on using it when I move on to kanji, but I'm not sure if that's my best approach or if there is some better method floating around out there.
>>2859653
Not a one. Sorry, the internet sucks for learning languages.
>>2855160
Just get a flash cart. It's way easier than learning a new language.
>buy jap carts
>buy eprom programmer
>swap jap rom chips for flashed eprom chips
>laugh at faggots trying to learn moonrunes
>>2859747
>Learn Jap
>Play games that'll never be translated or were poorly translated/had the shit censored out of them
>Laugh at EOPs
>>2858759
I started using that anki set too, probably from the same thread. I got confused about stuff like the variants on 四 and 七 and 九 but fortunately it gave me an excuse to look that stuff up.
Are there more instances of it? I'm pretty lax about my studies the last few weeks so I'm just starting to get serious about it now. I hope it doesn't get too obfuscated down the road.
>>2855279
flashcarts really are solid, though I will say that I haven't actually played my N64 much since buying one aside from playing a real cart I had.That's my fault just not having any recent interest though, I've been playing Wii more than anything lately.
>>2857519
god damn you shut them up in such a good way
>>2859747
>already know japanese
>play japanese games
>???
>PROFIT
>>2859473
率いる is in the core decks.
I don't think there are words with 竜 and obviously not 竜人族 though 竜 is still middle school kanji.
>>2858859
really? how does that work out?
>>2859980
You got me, it seems kinda important. Then again, I rarely see に used that way.
>>2859894
I've been slipping myself, don't be too hard on yourself. I've been trying to do at least a half hour of studying a day, and then some listening comprehension (been playing Yakuza 5, and looking up words I keep hearing/don't recognize).
I found this book at Half Price Books a while back, "Kodansha's Effective Japanese Usage Dictionary" - unfortunately it's gone up in price a lot it looks like. If you can find a copy I highly recommend it though; it deals with synonyms/similar terms, and what circumstances you can use them in. That's actually helped me a bit with some of the weird near-identical cards in the 10k deck, and with understanding/retaining a lot of words.
As for 四 and 九, the on-yomi readings are homophones for "death" and "pain" respectively, and were(are?) considered bad luck numbers - not sure if people are that superstitious though.
I'm still trying to get a handle on when you use the on or kun readings beyond just memorizing the compound words they're used in - any anons have hints?
>>2855160
Most of my SNES collection is imports but it seems like a lot of hard work just to play video games. And aside from RPGs you don't really need the language to play the games anyway.
>>2859747
>having your games bitrot over time
>WIN
>>2859747
>to stupid to learn moon
>to stupid to burn an eprom
>shitpost on 4chan and pretend otherwise
I'm still kicking myself for not picking up that SFC copy of Front Mission I saw for $10 years ago at a shop in Edmonton. I can't read moon to save my life, but Front Mission is one of my favorite games ever. Guess I'll keep playing my pleb translated rom that hasn't been updated since 2001.
>>2861469
Shit, didn't mean to post so soon. I found the page on numbers but lost it. IIRC the main difference was in remembering that shi and ku had negative connotations and to avoid using them in certain times, but also that counting forward used one set and counting backward used the other.
/vr/ Should really have a small weekly thread for learning japanese and translating some gems.
>>2861728
I agree, but people would probably report it to the mods because it's "not /vr/ related".
>>2861728
>learning Japanese and translating some gems.
These things do not go together. A couple of months into my "let's learn Japanese" phase, I realised that I never wanted to spend a single second translating anything again. It doesn't help you learn the language, if anything it's confusing because you have to reverse a lot of the word order instead of just reading naturally. It takes a lot of time to edit Japanese turns of phrase into their English equivalents, and for /vr/ titles, you have to do a ton of hacking to get text into the game without breaking things.
Being a good J>E translator isn't about being good at Japanese. It's about being a good English writer.
/vr/ also doesn't lend itself well to JP discussion, pretty much every title won't support text hooking, which is what most beginners wind up using to get through kanji they don't know yet. So you'd just have beginners who mashed through all the text and the odd intermediate who actually played the game.
Moral support is nice, but there are other places to get that.
>>2855160
I recently played through this on the Sega CD.
Not much text but pretty easy to understand. And it's pretty hot. I think there are a good amount of anime based games that never made it out of Japan.
I tried a hand at Metroid Fusion in Japanese.
It's not too bad, but God damn is there a lot of science-y jargon.
>>2861772
>/vr/ also doesn't lend itself well to JP discussion, pretty much every title won't support text hooking, which is what most beginners wind up using to get through kanji they don't know yet.
Just use Kanjitomo.
What Win9x adventure games don't support text hooking?
>>2862162
>Just use Kanjitomo.
You really want to try that on some blurry font from 20 years ago?
>>2862212
It works fine with most emulators and if it has trouble with the program itself it should work with screenshots. The biggest issues in my experience is overlaid text.
With manuals and other scanned material it depends but it certainly doesn't hurt to try.
>>2859473
cool, so I'm dead in the water.
eh, i'm not one to marginalize a culture so i knew it would be hard. this would've been my first asian/ east asian language so that's not surprising.
thanks for the reply though
>>2855160
Literally started to learn jap about 2 weeks ago for this very same reason
>>2864060
Seems a little silly, you can get 99% of SNES games for 50 bucks with a flashcart, and of the remaining 1% requiring chips, only a few are worth playing and they're not that text heavy.
Learning Japanese is a good idea, I just think it's a dumb reason for it.
>>2859473
>but a foreigner would not unless they bothered to research it.
You don't necessarily have to actively research things, you pick things up as you're exposed to them.
A middle schooler would also need to look up things as school can't teach you everything.
Maybe full Kanji would be the best description for text that has everything that can be written with Kanji in modern Japanese that way.
Things like 流石 or 貴方 don't use complex kanji yet I was still a bit stoked when I first saw them used instead of Hiragana.
