Have you ever beaten an unstranslated Japanese game?

[Morgan Katarn]

Many.

Post automatically merged: Sep 4, 2025

Many.

I should maybe say because I did study Japense but my Japanese is not great enugh to finish a JRPG.

So I should maybe give some exmpales
Fightings games easy to read and navigate around so even with no japanese it´s easy.
All 3 Macross games for the PSP
Monster Hunter Portable 3rd on psp before it got fan translated I been a fan of the series sense ps2

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

Does anyone else get kinda' anxious when playing games in a language you don't understand? I get anxious and worried about accidentally deleting my save, getting lost in menus, etc. And I'm often too lazy to want to use my phone to translate stuff with Google/Apple Translate.

Not so much about deleting my save, but I did play one game that was about making several decisions throughout the story. I could kinda piece together the story from context, but I had no idea what decisions I was picking. That made me anxious!

 

[Esidemoken]

Yeah Mischief Makers but i look on the net when i dont really know what to do due to not know japanese, it was about 25% of the time

 

[Leon]

Alot of japanese beat em ups and shooters, but nothing text heavy like rpg's.

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

Some Attack on Titan game I got for my brother

 

[NPC]

Only basara 2 heroes on ps2

Idk what the story is even about,what exactly each buttons do but i manage to finish the game

Me and my brother manage to finish the game
My friends also

We acctually prefered playing the conquest mode thousands of times rather than playing the main story

And lot of people here in indonesia acctually finish the game back in the day without knowing any japanese,we just pressing each button to find out what they do lmao

 

[stealthRUSH stealthRUSH]

Plenty, if they're arcade oriented (fighters, shooter, puzzle, brawler, etc.). As for RPG, I have completed (1) untranslated Japanese game on PC Engine CD Kaze No Densetsu Xanadu II / The Legend of Xanadu 2. Since it's an action role-playing game GameFAQs guides helped me navigate all the way to completion last year.

 

[Isegrim]

Maybe Dracula 2, Noroi no Fuin (aka Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest) on the FDS. I said maybe because I consulted every kind of english media (magazines, Worlds of Power novel...) on the game trying to get every scrap of clue I could find and managed to get some progress. The funny thing is I managed to find a bootleg cart of the U.S. version stuffed into a Famicom shaped cart, bought it and played my last saved game on the FDS version for one last time. I was at this place where there was an "unreachable" high ledge just above a pit of water. Normally you couldn't reach it by jumping but I tried doing a whip at the peak of my jump and click, I somehow ended up on the ledge. After a bit of exploration, it was enough to reach the end and win...and felt quite miffed that I managed to solve it just it when I bought the english cart...

I don't regret buying the cart though. At least I managed to understand AVGN's video describing why the death star is in CV2...

Other than that, some simpler games like Konami Wai Wai World.

Which led to exploring the other games featured in it like Getsu Fuuma Den, Ganbare Goemon 1 and 2 on the Famicom which I managed to beat with persistence.

And maybe Zelda 2. Unlike CV2 where I could only find scattered clues over several sources, I found a series of articles in a game mag describing a full walkthrough of it.

Monster Hunter Portable 3rd but I had to print out several translations I found online to produce my builds.

There's probably more since the majority of the games we bought were Japanese during the 8 and 16-bit era. Due to Japanese consoles were the only thing sold in my country during that time but the above are the most memorable ones.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Yeah but I didn’t feel that accomplished because at the time I didn’t even speak English either so it was all foreign to me. Plus it’s only a challenge with point & click adventure games or word based puzzle games.

 

[030079AR]

i think i often did, in NES, SNES, PSX era
easiest to remember is bad game Rambo : ))
the game is awful hard at the time, but i managed to finish it.
gundam games at the time, in 90s and early 2000, often didn't have any translation. but managed to finish some of them as well. rival school simulation mode, finish it several times, with minimalist guide, but the game is not fighting, but visual novel akin to persona 3 - 5 + tokimeki memory + fighting game combined.

must be a lot, but i can remember clearly.

 

[eyixon]

An old PS1 game called Mawate mucho! Good times man.

Kingdom hearts 2 Final mix+. Back then i didn't even know there was a sequel to the first kingdom hearts. Then my friend showed me a Dengeki article scan from a site called Khinsider.com. So we quickly checked pirate bay to download. We played the hell outta it, memorizing the words to know everything. It's funny how things seemed so much fun back then. Now that the internet is a lot better in my country, that feeling died down a lot.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Yes, I have.

 

[030079AR]

An old PS1 game called Mawate mucho! Good times man.

Kingdom hearts 2 Final mix+. Back then i didn't even know there was a sequel to the first kingdom hearts. Then my friend showed me a Dengeki article scan from a site called Khinsider.com. So we quickly checked pirate bay to download. We played the hell outta it, memorizing the words to know everything. It's funny how things seemed so much fun back then. Now that the internet is a lot better in my country, that feeling died down a lot.

ah this game! I played this on psx in 98, this game is cool, I'm still occasionally playing this game. I think I played this game on last saturday, the game is simple but addicting.

 

[eyixon]

ah this game! I played this on psx in 98, this game is cool, I'm still occasionally playing this game. I think I played this game on last saturday, the game is simple but addicting.

Dang, now you just made me feel bad for not looking for it again to play. Will check it out! I liked the music in particular

 

[030079AR]

Dang, now you just made me feel bad for not looking for it again to play. Will check it out! I liked the music in particular

Yep, the music is nostalgic. Reminds me to happy saturday morning at the time ;)

If i got the chance, i will make the game like that. I am gamedev after all. But still busy with more important project these days.

 

[Megarockman _1987]

I remember a year ago I downloaded a Captain Tsubasa ROM hack in Japanese.
It wasn't a problem since I knew by heart how to execute each action.

 

[030079AR]

I remember a year ago I downloaded a Captain Tsubasa ROM hack in Japanese.
It wasn't a problem since I knew by heart how to execute each action.

I think i can relate, because at the first I play SD gundam, I'm just randomly push, but few moment later, i grabbed the feel, and adjusted to play it more. somehow, i can play it without knowledge of japanese : ))

 

[SylvanSwordstress]

I finished Falcom's Brandish on the PC-98 recently! It was really fun, and the dialogue wasn't too hard.

 

[030079AR]

I finished Falcom's Brandish on the PC-98 recently! It was really fun, and the dialogue wasn't too hard.

i never finished brandish in any platform, the camera lil bugs me, but i really want to play it actually. the character design is kind of my kind. reminds me i played popmail on snes, without translation as well. not too far, but i like falcom 90s aesthetic, feels reminiscence and nostalgic

 

[CG4R12I4N]

Literally me with G Gen and SRW games. Don't know a lick of Japanese to understand shit yet beat most of them anyway.

Beat other Japanese-only games as well, but most of them aren't that text-heavy like SRWs are and I tend to avoid RPGs if they aren't in English.

 

[R66-Y]

Many years ago i beat Castlevania Curse of Darkness PS2 in japanese.
I know there's an English translation, but my copy of the game came in the NTSC-J version for some reason, so i had to play it like that and it wasn't so bad.

 

[SylvanSwordstress]

i never finished brandish in any platform, the camera lil bugs me, but i really want to play it actually. the character design is kind of my kind. reminds me i played popmail on snes, without translation as well. not too far, but i like falcom 90s aesthetic, feels reminiscence and nostalgic

Once you get used to the camera, it's actually really not that bad! If it bothers you, though, the PSP remake is really good and has an official english version. The camera movement in that one is a lot smoother and takes a lot less getting used to.

 

[OrionP]

I imported a lot back in the day so most of the games I finished were in Japanese.

Trickiest one I've finished is probably Bōken Jidai Katsugeki Goemon on PS2, this took a lot of figuring out! I can remember there were 2 other non-Japanese speaking people on gamefaqs talking about how to progress and between us we got through.

I actually really enjoyed doing a lot of games. It can be like an extra layer of a puzzle that you need to figure out. Mario 64 for example was great fun trying to figure out how to get some of the stars.

 

[Kremiso]

i remember a couple on Super Nintendo (ie International Superstar Soccer jap version) and on PS1, like that not great Resident Evil clone i cannot remember the name atm;
oh yes, i completed Metal Gear Solid on PS1 in jappo when it was released (!)(ofc first version available and played), and also some Captain Tsubasa chapters on various systems

nothing else that had a good bunch of text thank god :)

 

[030079AR]

Once you get used to the camera, it's actually really not that bad! If it bothers you, though, the PSP remake is really good and has an official english version. The camera movement in that one is a lot smoother and takes a lot less getting used to.

i see, i will try it when i got a chance, thank You