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Today's special feature is:
Hey, all you video game freaks! I bet you've heard that many games, including such classics as Super Chinese World 3, Championship Lode Runner and Cutie Suzuki's Ringside Angel, were only released in Japan, denying their fun to the rest of the world. Also, I bet you've tried to play a few of these games, except got frustrated by those goofy looking thingies all over the screen! Well, despair no more; Japanese For Lamers to the rescue! Forget about finding some loser to translate what everyone in the game is saying for you! Forget about sitting in some smelly classroom for a billion years! This web page contains all you need to know to enjoy Japanese games! Read on and be amazed..
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Lesson 1Now, most courses in Japanese start you off with mamby-pamby, simple phrases like "O-namae wa?" or "Ima nanji desu ka" or some other crap. Not this course - Japanese For Lamers starts you right out on the most important word in Japanese video games:
 If you judged simply by video game titles, densetsu is the most commonly-used word in the Japanese language. It more or less means "legend" - and what is a long adventure or RPG game but a retelling of a legend? It's sometimes abbreviated to simply den, and sometimes stuff is added to it, but a densetsu is a densetsu. The name of the Ninja Gaiden series in Japan is Ninja Ryuukenden (Legend of the Ninja Dragon Sword), and it's made up of five characters that get used again and again in titles.
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 The Hyrule Fantasy - Zelda no densetsu |
 White Lion densetsu (Legend of the White Lion, released over here a few years later as Legend of the Ghost Lion
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 JuJu densetsu, released over here as Toki
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 Getsufuu maden from Konami. This one needs some explaining; the ma character means "evil spirit" or "demon", so the title is talking about a legend involving supernatural stuff (the full title is something like Legend of the Lunar Wind). |
Go on to lesson 2 |
