Japanese for Gamers

Trying to configure my Japanese Wii has been difficult at times. Due to the Japanese containing lots of Mandarin characters my girlfriend has been able to translate a lot of the menu options but it’s still quite hit-and-miss with a lot of the options. Against the difficulties I’ve managed to configure wirelesss and access the online store, but I’m still quite lost in the menus, especially on my own.

Today I found a site that covers a lot of Japanese language that is directly related to gaming. Japanese for Gamers covers common Japanese for reading game magazines, using game menus, RPG, Sports and strategy games and gaming companies. After a quick look I can already recognise some of the options that I’ve seen in the Wii menus. I’ll fire up the Wii later and see if I can put them to the test.

The site is a geocities site, so I’ve Vacuumed it just in case it dissapears. If it does I’ll post up the archive. If there’s any more resources for import game players please post them in the comments.

Taiwan Visa run to Tokyo

My last Visa run for a new Taiwanese Visa was to Tokyo. Thankfully this time I got an extendable Visa as I am now registered on a course at Kaohsiung University to study Mandarin. This means it’ll be at least three months before I have to do another run. Hopefully I can register on another course before this one is up and extend the Visa for four months

For anyone else thinking of doing the Tokyo run, here are photos of the Journey from the train station to the Visa office so you can easily find your way there:

Translator Required - Famicom TV Remote Controller

I picked up a Famicom controller TV remote while in Tokyo recently. The only problem is, the instructions (unsurprisingly) are in Japanese. Most of the Japanese includes Mandarin though, so my girlfriend has been able to decipher some of the instructions, but we still can’t get it to work.

From what we can tell, the A button should be pressed once, followed by the B button and while keeping the B button held down press and hold the left arrow on the D-pad. The red LED on the controller lights and stays lit, and as far as I know it should turn off when it has the correct frequency for the TV. I’m not sure if it’s the translated instructions, or the rare brand of TV that we’re using that is the problem. I’m posting the Japanese instructions here in the hope that someone can translate them, in the meantime I’ll try and track down some Japanese reading Taiwanese and see if they can help.

Japanese Wii advertising

The recent sales figures from Japan for the Wii release show that Wii Sports came out on top, outselling the US favourite, Zelda: Twlight Princess. This has been reported on a few blogs as perplexing or a shocker.

While this is strange in comparison with the US figures, when considering that the advertising in Japan features almost solely Wii sports, and that this is the flagship title, it is no suprise the this game is outselling the others. The Tokyo subway is covered with poster ads for Wii and Wii Sports, and a Wii Sports TV advertisement is running inside of the newer trains.

This could also be proof that the Wii is selling as planned - that non-gamers are buying the console who may not have heard of Zelda, opening the new market that Nintendo is aiming for.