Gaming Recommended Japanese DS Videogames with Furigana?

[Technoz]

Hello, All.

Just wondering if anybody knows Japanese games with Furigana script enabled into a game. I've been planning on doing a videogame playthrough for my Japanese assignment with a Japanese game, and I thought that playing something with Furigana would make me be able to learn so much more in terms of variable pronunciations and seeing general characters in their kanji form.

Thanks for taking the time to read my plea.

 

[FAST6191]

The DS' touchscreen and relatively increased power saw a fair bit of Furigana usage compared to earlier consoles (although there is still an aspect of downplaying Kanji a la shonen manga). That said my Japanese on a good day is somewhere around "navigate the menu in a puzzle game" so I do not even have a poor list of such titles I can share and I see it often enough when pulling apart games that I do not really take as much note of it as I might.

To that end I will have to leave it at "first zelda", bonus is the D pad controller hack was originally made for the Japanese version as I recall. Others will probably have several more suggestions though.

 

[Densetsu]

All of the Professor Layton games have furigana. But for the first Layton title, Japan released two versions: the original release and the "friendly version." The only difference between the original and the "friendly" versions is that they added furigana to the "friendly" one (and I think the "friendly version" also includes all the weekly downloadable puzzles already unlocked since it came out after all the puzzles were released). So make sure you get the "friendly version." After the first Layton title (Fushigi na Machi), they decided to include furigana in all subsequent titles.

Both Zelda titles (Mugen no Sunadokei and Daichi no Kiteki) also use furigana, if I remember correctly.

If you have both the Japanese and English releases, be careful about referring to the English version for translations because they don't always translate directly, especially for Professor Layton.

There are a lot more games that use furigana, but I can't recall any others off the top of my head at the moment. When I play Japanese games, I don't really notice the furigana.

*EDIT*
Ninokuni: Shikkoku no Madōshi also uses furigana, but it's not playable without the runebook (though I've heard you can find the runes floating around on the 'Net if you don't own a legit copy of the game).

If I think of any more I'll keep coming back to edit this post.

 

[Technoz]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I will take a look at the recommendations you have sent me soon. I'm a bit hesitant when using kanji only games because there may be a kanji that I don't know the reading of, which will more or less leave me confused for an endless amount of time. However, most people tend to say that they enjoy it the best when they play a game with kanji only. Guess it's just me with the different opinion, hehe.

 

[DS1]

I believe all of the Inazuma Eleven games use furigana. There is a lot of text and very un-subtle directions for where you are supposed to go/ what you're supposed to do, which can be better than games that are filled with puzzles and NPCs deliberately try to obscure what's going on.

 

[Sora de Eclaune]

Alternately, you could try "Little Charo Travels in English," which is an English-teaching visual novel for Japanese-speakers. The game part is very good. I've played some of it and I would pounce on it right away if there was an English-equivalent to learn Japanese (i.e. Little Spot Travels in Japan, maybe?).

Most of the text within the game can be displayed in both English and Japanese (with some text defaulting to Japanese with no option for English), but most of the spoken dialogue is in English and cannot be changed. I don't know if the game has any Furigana text, but I would think having it so you can read the Japanese as you hear the same lines in English (usually) would work very well.

Another option is "My Japanese Coach," a Japanese-teaching tool for English-speakers. This actually gets quite complicated early on, however, and if your memorizing skills aren't up to par then you'll quickly begin to fail every single lesson.

 

[Technoz]

Unfortunately, my DS touch-screen isn't in the best of conditions to be accurately playing DS games while retaining the fun aspect of playing it and not find it mentally frustrating to bear with the demanding effort it will take for me to even take an attempt at playing the game. Hehe. I have already tried ''My Japanese Coach'' and the game is indeed good, but I have to admit that I'm not particularly fond of learning more ways of trying to overcome my touchscreen's problems in the writing section.

By the way, is it a good idea for me to play games with kanji only? And if so, what tools via applications are available for me to...disfigure the characters into their 'on' or 'kun' yomi(readings). It would be quite hard to find out what a kanji is just by looking at it, unless the context of where it is seen blatantly points out the answer.
Thanks for your advice until now, everyone.

 

[fernglas]

I don't know at what stage your Japanese is, but considering your earlier messages it probably won't be higher than JLPT N5, or is it?
I'm not speaking down to you, but it is needed to assess your level correctly to be able to recommend you games that will not frustrate you.

There are several games with furigana like the the „Layton“-series or the latest „Meitantei Conan“ ones, that I think will be to difficult considering their nature.

When I started playing games in Japanese I was fond of „Muumindani no okurimono“ (also written Moomin-dani no okurimono - 4462). Even though it does not feature furigana, it contains only kanji of the easiest kind (JLPT N5-N4) but is not littered with them. The game can be played without the touchscreen. It's an adventure with fetch-quests and without complex gameplay explanations. It's best played after having watched the first 20 episodes (or more) of „Tanoshii Muumin-ikka“ in Japanese (torrent can be found on nyaa). This game also uses proper Japanese without fantasy world jargon.

Other games that could help you to improve your Japanese are „Kodomo no tame no yomi kikase: Ehon de asobou“ 1-6. Each of these games contains 3 more or less known fairy-tales that are being told complete with narrator, sound, text and animated pictures.

If your level is higher you can play more difficult games (language-wise). Games I like are the two „Kaidan Restaurant“ ones (with furigana), „Minna de Taikan Dokusho DS“ (furi) and „Gakkou no kaidan“ (without furi). Those have little gameplay and are more like anthologies of scary stories.

Another game would then be „Dragon Quest 9“ (furi).

All these games won't need your touchscreen to work properly so try them.

 

[Arras]

I think Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition (Pokemon Conquest) has furigana as well, though I'm not completely sure.

 

[Technoz]

Thanks for the further contributions everybody. To be honest, even I'm not too sure what my level is. I've been doing self-study for the past years and have only recently attended classes in my university to learn Japanese in a more formal environment. I guess I might be at a JLPT5 level because of my lack of important grammar necessities seen throughout that level and above.

 

[Fishaman P]

If you're feeling advanced, you could try Retro Game Challenge 2.
It's mostly Katakana and has no furigana, but it'll really help your Kanji if you can pass the Detective game without resorting to a guide.

The detective game is all hiragana, so it'll test your vocab.

 

[proctology]

Zac and Ombra has furigana.