Japanese Saturn Questions

[AreaMan]

Hi all (woot noob post ftw)

I've been drooling over some of the deals on japanese saturns on ebay lately, but I have a question about language settings in games: are they all in japanese? Do some allow you to select english if you manage to navigate the settings correctly? I can't believe the prices on ebay for some of the games that command a crazy premium for US copies, but i guess it's a moot point if I can't understand them... =/

Thanks!

[ImportBoy]

Make sure you read the shipping prices to places outside of Japan! Sometimes they are more expensive them the console itself. Shipping from Japan is a bitch when it comes to prices.

As the owner of a white Japanese Saturn and a large set of games I can assure you the vast majority of games are in Japanese only. A lot of the arcade games (like Virtua Fighter, King of Fighters, Daytona USA, Toshoden, etc) though are actually in English. Most other games are only in Japanese.

If you really have your eye on a particular game and don't understand Japanese I would suggest seeing if it was released in the US or Europe. If not, see if it was on other systems or the PC.

As for the console itself - you can set the language to English (and a few others) for the interface, but this won't have any effect in games.

[NebachadnezzaR]

It depends on the genre of the game. While most RPG's and visual novels are in Japanese, most fighters, shooters and racers are in English, and even the ones who aren't, due to the simplistic nature of the genre, are easily playable even in Japanese. For me the only truly unplayable games are the text-heavy ones. For all the others we can always rely on translations or simply in our intuition.

[Doctor Fugue]

It depends on the genre of the game. While most RPG's and visual novels are in Japanese, most fighters, shooters and racers are in English, and even the ones who aren't, due to the simplistic nature of the genre, are easily playable even in Japanese. For me the only truly unplayable games are the text-heavy ones. For all the others we can always rely on translations or simply in our intuition.

Totally agree...it depends what kind of games you want to play. I generally only play arcade-type games and I have never had a problem. Many game menus have at least a little English and most that are totally Japanese have been translated.

A couple examples: Radiant Silvergun's menus are in English, Battle Garegga's menus can be changed to English, and even something like the dialog for Guardian Heroes has been translated and posted on the web.

Shipping also depends where you are...it is almost always cheaper for me to import from Japan than to get something from the States (I'm in Canada).

[halosoul]

Have to agree with everything that's been said on this subject already. I'd totally recommend a Japanese Saturn, there's plenty of great games that don't rely on having to read text to enjoy. For example something like Guardian Heroes is great fun to play because the gameplay's so enjoyable, I don't have a clue what the story is, and while that's a shame, it doesn't actually prevent you from enjoying the gameplay and it's not particularly text heavy anyway.

If you like fighting games, get a Jap Saturn, simple as that. That's why I bought one, most of my collection is fighting games but there's plenty of other Gems on the system to warrant a purchase, such as Astal, Nights, Panzer Dragoon (both of them), there's some great 2-D shooters too like, Sexy Parodius, Cotton 2 etc.
That's another point, the Saturn's got some excellent 2-D games, games like Astal and Cotton 2 really push what you can do in 2-D and the result is amazing.

So yea, if you like arcade/action games, especially fighting games, don't think twice but if you care about things like 'Story' and want to play RPG's or strategy games that require menu navigation don't bother, its very rare that those types of games have an english option.

And you're right, Japanese games are as cheap as chips in most cases!

I realise I've really just repeated what others have said already but I hope what I've said has been a help in some way.

Happy Gaming!

[AreaMan]

Thanks for all the replies I'm keeping my eyes out for a north american-based ebay auction for one (of which it looks like there are many, woot!) as we speak...