Chinese video games?

[Takeru47]

I love to play video games and think it would be great practice to play an RPG with a Chinese language patch (think SNES/GBA). Does anyone know where I can find any patches?

[yersi]

The big torrent packs you find floating around usually have the patched versions available as well, and you can find translated versions of games on almost all ROM sites. To get you started, here's Shining Force on one site and Double Dragon II on another.

Couple of things:

1) Most of the translations I've found are in trad Chinese, which can be a bitch to read at low resolutions.

2) Language-wise, games are pretty tough. Your level will have to be advanced-intermediate to get any sort of benefit out of it, and even then there's a lot of dictionary-fu involved which kinda takes the fun out of playing the game.

Also, many of the words you'll learn through playing games (especially RPGs) are not really usable outside a game context; if your time to study is limited you shouldn't be prioritizing stuff like "healing potion" and "broadsword".

Give it a shot, though, and tell us your experiences afterwards.

Edited March 3, 2009 at 09:08 AM by yersi

[Takeru47]

Thanks for the recommendations. I actually did some more searching and found a Chinese website with Chinese versions SNES/DS games. They are mostly simplified, but I managed to find some traditional ones. So far it has been very easy to understand and I already learned a few new words within just the first few minutes. This is much better to start with than a novel I would say. The game is very heavy on text, but it is made for children, so the vocab isn't that advanced. I'm not sure if I am allowed to link to the website (which hosts roms) on this forum, but if roddy says it's okay, I'll post it (since it is for educational purposes).

As for the text itself being difficult to read, yes, some of the characters make me think twice, but for the most part it's fine. By the way, the site has such goodies as Fire Emblem, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest in Chinese. I believe these are fan translations for the SNES games though. I am hoping to have a lot of fun while learning tons of new vocabulary so that I can eventually start reading 金庸 and other such novels.

[yersi]

Nice find! I think it's okay for you to share it here (this site isn't so fuzzy about pirated content), just remove the link if Roddy objects to it. I'd love to play Chrono Trigger in Chinese.

[Takeru47]

All right, the site is HERE. If you click the navigation above, you can find tons of NES (and DS) roms too, all in Chinese.

On another note, after having played for a bit longer, a few of the traditional characters are a tad convoluted and squashed to fit into such a tiny space, but with a bit of intuition and dictionary work I was able to figure out what they were.

[yersi]

I tried out Chrono Trigger from that site and it's... decent, I suppose. It's been a long time since I last played the original so I can't really comment on the quality of the translation. Some parts of it, like names and menus, are in katakana and/or hiragana so I might have to brush up on those.

[Takeru47]

EDIT: Problem fixed.

Edited March 4, 2009 at 07:24 AM by Takeru47

[Gleaves]

Thank you both for this info. I played Shining Force and Fire Emblem for about 20 minutes last night. Very cool. If you all find a game that is particularly good for studying, please share.

I'm having trouble getting games from the site you suggested, Takeru47. I hit the download link, get taken to another page, and am not having any luck beyond that. Any tips?

[yersi]

Gleaves, you have to use Internet Explorer to get the links working.

After playing Chrono Trigger for a few more hours today I've really warmed up to this way of studying. I just ran around and talked to everyone and jotted down any sentences or vocabulary I found interesting in my notebook. Since the dialogue for each person is so short you don't get tired as fast as you would with a book. The only downside is that there's long intervals where you almost don't see any Chinese at all, like in dungeons.

I'll try out a few more ROMs from that site and post my experiences.

[Hofmann]

Hehe...I tried Chrono Trigger. Fortunately I know hiragana and katakana. Playing video games in Chinese could be an effective study method.

[Takeru47]

If you have any problems downloading the files with Chinese file names, you have to use Internet Explorer (with Orbit Downloader). Make sure to use 7zip to unpack the files since winzip has problems with some of them (for some odd reason).

Edited March 5, 2009 at 04:05 AM by Takeru47

[yersi]

After looking around a bit I found 軒轅劍二代 available as a free download . It's a DOS-era game that's the second part of a pretty famous series of Chinese-language RPGs made by a Taiwanese company (I think).

I'm only about one hour into it so far but the game seems written at a much higher level than Chrono Trigger; in dialogues with the villagers in the first town I've encountered tons of idioms, like 紅顏禍水 or 魚肉鄉里. There are also many references to Chinese myths and culture. For example, you talk to an old woman about her missing son (kidnapped by the 山賊) and she tells you that her family is 五代單傳 and if her son dies she will 不知道如何能面對列宗列祖, definitely very Chinese. Good music too.

I'd definitely recommend this if you think Chrono Trigger is too easy and need more of a challenge.

[Gleaves]

IE did the trick for me. Thanks. I'll keep the downloader mentioned in mind, as well.

I'm hoping these game will be a good way to stay in the language when I don't otherwise feel like studying. I just take a screenshot if there is something I feel like looking up later.

FYI on xbox 360 games -- These have Trad. chinese menus/subs (no dubbing): Fable 2, Ninja Blade, Too Human (Simp.), Gears 2, Left 4 Dead. I find play-asia.com is a great site for listing available languages in games as well as region-coding info.

[yersi]

Is there any interest in a FAQ-type master thread for games in Chinese? I'm thinking we could put together a list of games in or translated to Chinese, sorted by difficulty and rated for effectiveness for study purposes.

I downloaded the fifth part of 軒轅劍, the series I mentioned in my post above, and played it for a few hours today. This is definitely the most challenging game I've tried so far; the dialog and narration are written almost exclusively in classically tinged modern Chinese and the story has a multitude of historical references to the Three Kingdoms period. Most of it was just barely within what I'm capable of reading comfortably, some of it pushed my abilities to their breaking point.

Other than that, the presentation was really nice for a Chinese game (especially the menus) and the story seems well put-together so far.

[Takeru47]

I think that would be a great idea yersi. Perhaps we could organize two separate lists (one for simplified and one for traditional). I tried out the old pokemon games (red/blue) in traditional Chinese and found them to have very simple dialogue. I have been grabbing numerous games from that site lately and have come to a few conclusions:

1. Some of the DS games have such a small font that it is nearly impossible to read.
   
2. Old Gameboy games have the largest text followed by NES/SNES.
   
3. So far, the game with the easiest dialogue by far is Pokemon.
   
4. The wordiest game I have played thus far is Dragon Quest (any of them). These games are great for their lengthy dialogues (NPCs will often have numerous dialogues that switch each time you talk with them).
   

I have been typing up interesting sentences/phrases into a notepad file for later evaluation, but this takes a little too long. I love Gleave's idea about taking screen shots instead; however, that will of course only work with games you are emulating on your computer. I'll try that out and see how it goes.

[Hofmann]

Here are some patches for the PC version of Final Fantasy VII, among those are Sinicization patches. (spoiler) Here's one of my screenshots. Edited December 27, 2009 at 05:27 AM by Hofmann

[Gleaves]

I have found most of the tidbits in this thread helpful, so I'd be in favor of a master list.

This thread has some good Chinese rpg details. It also inspired me to download Planescape from verycd.com, since it is a game I had recently picked up anyway. The text is a little fuzzy and small, but I still find it playable. It's the kind of game where there is some spoken English dialogue to start a conversation, but quickly switches to all text. And there is ton of text. I already sunk about 3 hours into it last night. Twisted game.

[yersi]

Thanks for the tip, I just put most of the Black Isle games on download from that site. If you haven't played Planescape before you are in for a real treat.

After playing 軒轅劍5代 for a while I've gotten gradually less enthusiastic about it. The story is basically a mash-up of JRPG cliches grafted onto Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and the game's structure is extremely repetitive: it consists of a sequence of virtually identical "missions" where you run through a two-part dungeon, kill a boss and head back to camp to watch a long cut-scene.

There are some things that I like about it, like the menu design (which is seriously some of the best I've ever seen in a video game) and the main character moving like a 布袋戲 puppet when he attacks, but it's quickly growing stale for me and I'll switch to another game as soon as I have something relatively new to play.

It's still a great way to learn Chinese though, I have over ten pages of new words in my notebook just from playing this game for 10 hours.

[yersi]

Played Planescape for a while today, it's been a long time since I last played the original but it's still kept a lot of its charm. I downloaded the game from VeryCD with Emule, which took about four days.

It seems to me that the people who did the Chinese localization didn't take a lot of artistic liberties with the material and instead did a pretty straight-forward translation without a lot of 成語 or idioms. New words have come mostly from descriptions, through examining the zombies in the mortuary I have learned some fairly disgusting things like 膿水，火化 and 穢物. The descriptions also contain many phrasings that I found useful, like 把頭發編成辮子 "to knit hair into braids" or 裂縫很整齊 "the tear is clean".

The text is pretty hard to read, due to the resolution being so low. I had trouble making out several of the characters and was able to get by mostly because I recognized the words from context.

If you aren't familiar with Planescape, it's a very complex RPG with a lot of text and some pretty deep (for a game) pseudo-philosophical musings on the nature of life and death. It's based on the same engine as Baldur's Gate but the gameplay is completely different, focusing mostly on dialog and exploration rather than combat. This is perhaps the only D&D game where WIS and CHA aren't dump stats.

My impression is that this game would be perfect for an intermediate learner who needs volume training in reading. The story is captivating and always keeps your interest going , and the language so far does not seem prohibitively difficult (like 軒轅劍) or too easy (like Pokemon or Chrono Trigger).

[null]

『空之轨迹』三部曲： (Sora no Kiseki ----Trilogy)

Just Perfect, strongly recommended.