have you ever beaten a game in a language not your own?

[Quiet Flight]

Only story light games such as shoot em ups and 2d fighters. I have a bunch of my Saturn/PC-Engine. I use translation patches for Fatal Frame IV and some Kunio nes games.

[BakaTanuki]

I play a few doujin games, so I have had plenty experience with shmups and platformers. But text heavy games? No.

[Inazuma]

For me that would be the first Japanese heavy game I played, Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst.

I was a huge PSO fan, but was sick and tired of how the American players always ruined the game. Apparently so was Sega, so when Blue Burst came out, they purposely separated the regions. I decided to play the Japanese version, despite having extremely poor Japanese skills. I knew some random words from watching anime and I could barely read basic hiragana/katakana.

Thanks to my strong desire to play PSOBB, I ended up becoming fluent in Japanese just by playing the game and forcing myself to play with Japanese players.

Once I learned Japanese, I stopped buying American version games altogether and now I only play the Japanese versions.

[the7k]

People saying they played fighting games in Japanese are cheating.

I'd say the same goes for Shmups... or most games, really.

Even RPGs aren't that hard to brute force your way through. There may be a few that will be impossible without some sort of online help due to scripted events, but most'll be easy enough to trial-and-error your way through.

[alienjesus]

I've beaten DoReMi Fantasy on Virtual Console. Most of the time the language barrier didn't matter, but there are some story scenes, which often introduce new game mechanics too. Luckily, these featured an animated example alongside the text, so tbh, I didn't need to stretch my imagination too much to get the idea of what was going on.

Densetsu no Stafi (starfy 1) on GBA was a bit trickier, as often characters give you certain tasks to complete in Japanese. Having no idea what I was meant to do meant I had to resortto guesswork sometimes. Luckily it boiled down to 'find and bring me this item' or 'go and kill this boss'. I get the sense there was some story aswell, but the game didnt explain that very easily to non-japanese speakers anyway.,

Actually, I've been thinking about playing through a DS game in Spanish to practice the language, which I am a beginner in. (not totally new to the language, but i dont know if i can be described as intermediate quite yet :p). I dont suppose any spanish speakers have any suggestions for some games that might not be too overwhelming?

[ZeroAX]

Actually, I've been thinking about playing through a DS game in Spanish to practice the language, which I am a beginner in. (not totally new to the language, but i dont know if i can be described as intermediate quite yet :p). I dont suppose any spanish speakers have any suggestions for some games that might not be too overwhelming?

Most European games come with a language option for at least French/German/Spanish so check your collection and see which game you think is light enough on text.

[lisalover1]

I've beaten both of the Ouendan games for the DS multiple times.

[alienjesus]

Actually, I've been thinking about playing through a DS game in Spanish to practice the language, which I am a beginner in. (not totally new to the language, but i dont know if i can be described as intermediate quite yet :p). I dont suppose any spanish speakers have any suggestions for some games that might not be too overwhelming?

Most European games come with a language option for at least French/German/Spanish so check your collection and see which game you think is light enough on text.

Thats the issue at the minute, I can see the likes of Zelda and Mario & Luigi, but they seem like they could be a bit too much for me. I guess the best thing is to just try and see how I do.

[Ivo]

Well English sort of doesn't count I guess.

The ones I finished in Japanese without understanding what they were saying include Ouendan, Space Channel 5 Part 2 (DC), Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun.
I don't have any examples of RPGs or anything of that kind as I don't think that would still be fun.

Ivo.

[Luke]

Given the option, I always chose subtitles.

Thanks Shenmue and Onimusha!