Recommendation? Game w/ both English and Japanese text

[Kimuzukashii_MEIJI]

Unfortunately, as far as I am aware, the only game that is supposed to have both English and Japanese text is Casual Romance Club. (It is also the only game I know of that has both English and Japanese voices.) However, this game is well beyond five years old. Also, while I have heard that the game can show Japanese, I’m not sure of how to go about enabling it.

[Nandemonai]

Unfortunately, the only possibly benefit to translating a game into English, if you’re not releasing the game in the West, is as a marketing gimmick. Translating into English a body of text the size of the average b-game costs a small fortune at market rates. That’s too expensive for a gimmick. Which is why I also have only ever heard of two games that did it - Casual Romance Club and an even older title called Gin-Iro.

If you DO want to try CRC, J-List is still saying that they have copies.

If that isn’t what you’re looking for (or you already played it) I would recommend instead looking for the Japanese version of a PC game that has been translated into English. (The Japanese version of Critical Point, say, or the Japanese version of Do You Like Horny Bunnies). Use AGTH or some other kind of text hooker if you want to use online dictionaries to help you out. You can also refer to the English version for a rough idea.

Sure, you have to have two copies of the game open (which may not even be possible, depending how the engine is programmed). And it’s not nearly as convenient to keep the two games synced, as what you want would be. But I think this is the closest thing you’re going to find to what you’re after. If you pick an older game, it is probably available on DL sites for cheap.

[Lancer-X]

Gin’iro DVD

Okay, probably not quite what you’re after wwwwwwwww

EDIT: In any case, the engine doesn’t allow you to have two copies running at once, so you wouldn’t be able to run the English and Japanese modes simultaneously anyway. I tried using onscripter but it seems to crash onscripter

EDIT 2:

Using Windows XP mode as a hack to get around the one-copy-of-nscripter-at-a-time restriction. You still have to advance both of them separately and in any case, I don’t know if Giniro DVD’s English mode can really be called ‘English’. Only the first part is translated anyway.

[zabe]

Buy an original VN in Japanese that has been translated to English via a patch. Get tools to extract scripts or do it the painfully long way using a text hooker, use English patch on game after getting Japanese text then compare as needed. Though considering fan translations will have quirks in the translation that will differ between each translator (that aren’t wrong just interpreted differently) you’d be better off studying your vocab, kanji and grammar as usual. Essentially if your kanji is good the grammar wouldn’t be all that hard to pick up if you can read sentences over and over. Can’t read a kanji pull out a dictionary and remember it.

[HashiriyaGDB]

I don’t know if Giniro DVD’s English mode can really be called ‘English’. Only the first part is translated anyway.

Who decided it was even a good idea to include that mess anyway (has not seen it, and has no plans to see it)?

[Lancer-X]

@hellfire104

I bought a Japanese game in Akihabara recently called “Let’s get the Teacher Pregnant”, or “sensei wo haramaseyou!” Unfortuantely, this game apparently requires the full Japanese version of windows, which I do not have. I have a macbook with a busted CD-rom drive so I can’t bootcamp, and a PC with USA windows 7.

I guess if there is only 1 multi-lingual bishoujo game in the world, does anybody have any suggestions as to how I can get this Japanese game working?

You’re using Windows 7 which makes this easy.

Vistalizator. Install a Japanese MUI and for all intents and purposes your OS will be the Japanese language version of Windows 7.

[Lancer-X]

@hellfire104

I really don’t see how it this Vistalizator was any different than just installing the service pack and then changing the computers language on the control panel.

The entire (or vast majority, anyway) of the Windows UI will change to Japanese. This also defeats anti-foreigner protection on modern games like VisualArt’s titles. The result is essentially identical to installing Japanese Windows 7, whereas setting the language options under the regional and language options in the control panel will only change some things, like the time zone, how dates and times are expressed, how non-unicode text is rendered etc.

@hellfire104

Regardless, the game still won’t install. I double click the Setup file for the game and it opens the InstallShield Wizard but the wizard crashes, but Installshield is giving me a 1155 error. I don’t know how to fix this but its apparently what’s causing me from playing the game.

Sound more likely that the problem is because you’re using Windows 7 and the game (or the installer) doesn’t support it. I suggest trying to install the game under Windows XP using Windows XP Mode / Windows Virtual PC. You may be able to just copy the files over to Windows 7 after doing that- I’ve had some titles that wouldn’t install under Windows 7 but would run under Windows 7 and I just had to install them under XP first.

[Jinnai]

Actually I think my hardcopy of MangaGamer’s Higurashi was in Japanese and English. Maybe it was just the menu installation though.