Free & Fun Japanese Computer Games – Part 1
Your worn boots grit against the dry ground.
You’ve been walking for hours now, in dire need of finding new, fresh, hunting grounds.
You fall to your knees. On the brink of despair, you see a light flicker in the distance.
Feeling a tinge of excitement, you urge yourself back to your feet, and sprint towards the light (normally we don’t do this, but…).
Could it be…?
You find yourself standing in front of four stone gates. If you put your hand out, you can hear a voice talking to you… The voice sounds like a guide.
You raise your hand to the first gate.
アキバクロニクル
Genre: Dating sim – Geared towards guys (But don’t let that stop you from playing it, ladies!).
Author: くりーむそふと
Summary: You play as an otaku living in the hailed holy land Akibahara. But, なんと! You find yourself sheltering an underground (homeless) idol, and back in the life of an old middle school friend, (who now works at a maid café)!
Gameplay: Make the right choice to make her maiden heart go ドキドキ!
Who I think will enjoy it: People who have a general interest in アキバ, identify themselves as an otaku, and love those cute アイドル girls or ever wanted to move from being called ご主人様 to あたしの彼氏!
This game also comes with voice acting for both the girl candidates; if you’re the type who learns best with text read aloud, while you have the text in front of you, this one’s for you!
Thoughts: The storyline was enjoyable. It wasn’t too over the top to where it was unbearable. The game is pretty straight forward in which choices will lead to whose ending. The art is cute.
I was so pleasantly surprised to find the game had voice acting! And the game is free! やった!
Lines from the game:
…美少女ゲームの新作を大量に買いこんでから帰路についていた。
お願いします。新しい居住が見つかるまで、ここに泊めてください!
じゃあ、ちゃっちゃとやっちゃいなさい。適当なメイドさん選んで!
So my lovely otaku(s?) out there! If you can’t wait to delve into a virtual Akibahara and hear the sweet voice of your soon-to-be honey, what’re ya waiting for!?
Gate to アキバクロニクル! Enter!
人喰いさん
Genre: Horror
Author: ぬーん
Summary: A boy and a group of three friends have decided to come check out a high school which supposedly houses an entity called, 人喰いさん (The People Eater). But as soon as they step into the school, they find themselves trapped inside.
Can you solve the mystery of 人喰いさん?Or will you end up as just another one of its victims?
Gameplay: Roam the school, and search for items to solve whatever problems you may face, while trying to avoid a (usually) bloody death. Try and unlock all the endings!
Who I think will enjoy it: Anyone who has played and liked Ib, or Mad Father may enjoy this game. (If you haven’t played those games, I definitely recommend them!) Pixel junkies may enjoy this 2-D game. But, if you don’t enjoy just having sprites to look at, almost all of the characters have nice, clean. dialogue portraits.
There are a few other characters from popular Japanese horror stories who make appearances in this game. Those who like to read horror stories often, may find it fun to try and see how many characters you can recognize. (And post back here on how many you did. I only recognized one other character. orz…)
And, if you’re the person who doesn’t come just for scares, this game has a solid, enjoyable story with it.
Thoughts: The puzzles for the most part were simple. I think on one or two puzzles I needed to see someone else solve. One involved chemistry…but! If you’re stuck on a puzzle, don’t forget you can search up, 人喰いさん 実況プレイ and watch the player solve it!
Save often! Whenever you feel like you’re going to make an important decision soon and you want to unlock all the endings, make multiple save files. (The game comes with 15 empty slots.)
Scariness level(to me): “Will you follow me to the bathroom? ;-;”
The creepy atmosphere of the game is well-done, and it didn’t feel like they were trying too hard to scare me.
Lines from the game:
学校という場所に怖い話はつきものである。
いや・・・・・・だって、気になるじゃんか!あの有名な怪談「人喰いさん」だぞ!?
知らなかった、こんなに美味しいの。
…
「 …You stand in front of the dilapidated building. Will you enter? 」
Chain Chronicle
Genre: RPG
Publisher: SEGA corp
Summary: Play as a hero of destiny as you travel through across the land to fight back the legions of demons encroaching upon the world of light. As commander of your army, you choose who will fight for you on the front lines; or choose to fight alongside them yourself! As you travel on your journey, you will find many who hold the same cause in their hearts, and will fight alongside you.
Come! Rise against the army of darkness!
Gameplay: Fight with a party of 5 (one party member being from another player’s party), on a 6×3 grid. Exterminate the oncoming waves, making sure none make it behind your troops (this boundary indicated by a highlighted strip on the screen).
You can acquire new troops by spinning the gacha. The normal gacha (uses in-game currency, or the special gacha (uses currency acquired by iTunes credit in yen or by clearing lines of quests, or log-in bonuses).
Who I think will enjoy it: People who have soft spots for the “demons-invading-the-land-let-us-rally” stories.
People who love colorful characters. There are characters ranging from short fluffy warriors (yordles!) to old men powered by good old sake in this game.
People who love SEGA and their games.
Thoughts: This game puts a good emphasis on story. If the story was taken away from the game, half the game would be gone.
The main story line is interesting, but there’s also mountains of side story quests centered on the new characters which join your army. Once a new character joins your army, and you’ve unlocked the area where their quest takes place, TA-DA! You may now mosey on over to do their story quest.
There’s also a really important feature of this game.Too caught up in the story to write down what sentences/words you wanted to add to your Anki? No worries! Any scenario you’ve went over in the game, you can access and read again and again through the overworld menu!
Lines from the game:
さすがは最前線だけありますね。気が休まらないです。
いててて、オイラも怪我しちゃった。カトリ、見てみて。鼻血~
作戦は決まってるのかしら?
Definitely, definitely try this game out If you love RPG stories. Tons of interesting characters, simple yet fun game-play, and you could go for a really long time with this game.
Exterminate the demon plague, enter the Gates to Chain Chronicle!
iPhone wielders, enter!
Android wielders, enter!
…
You let your hand down.
The lighted gates hum quietly to themselves. But inside you know a whole new adventure is waiting for you. You look over the four stone gates.
You take a breath and step forward…
…Which adventure will you choose?
Important Important!:
If you plan to play any Japanese games that have been made in RPG maker(人喰いさん, I believe, was made in RPG maker), you will probably need to download the runtime package for RPGツクールVX Ace. Found here. (I downloaded it, so far have had no problems with my computer.)
How to download off freem.ne.jp:
(Thanks for reading! If you’ve played any of these games, make sure to leave a review for the makers of these awesome free-tastic games, and leave a comment here on what you thought of it!)
——————————————-
Warning: Always be careful whenever you download files from the internet. I personally have had no problems with the computer games mentioned in this article, but, when downloading files over the internet, always make sure you have a good anti-virus software, scan often, and keep in mind, better safe than sorry! If you feel a program may put your computer at risk, do not download it.
I take no responsibility for any damage caused to your systems by these programs/downloads. Enter the gates at your own risk.
Hoping to become a teacher one day. Maybe I’ll incorporate games into my curriculum?
Nice article, I’ll try Chain Chronicle!
To iPhone/iTunes users: you need a Japanese iTunes account to find the games. This place shows you how to get one free:
http://nihongoperapera.com/store/itunes-japan-registration-guide-no-cc.html
Any other iPhone games you recommend Gin?
Thanks for a great post. I have been looking for some games to play. I would love to see more ideas for smart phones! Do you know of any insights about resources for MACs? I am having trouble getting my windows boot camp to work!
For Android users living in a country where the app is blocked, you’ll need to use a VPN.
I recommend this one: http://www.vpngate.net/ja/ (the servers are listed on this page
Setup instructions on this page: http://www.vpngate.net/ja/howto_l2tp.aspx#android
Once you’re connected to the VPN, log out of the play store and log back in. You should now have the store contents of the country you’re connected to and have access to apps that were previously blocked before. You don’t need to stay connected to the VPN the whole time — you can disconnect from it as soon as your play store contents have changed.
Aaah, I forgot about needing a Japanese iTunes account! *D’oh!*
And once again, thank you どうして, for being so helpful! Since I don’t have an Android phone, I’m not well-versed on how one would go about getting into the Japnaese store. x_x;;
@Saruman: Tell me what you think of Chain Chronicle! (And maybe we could add each other :D? Though I don’t really have any rare character cards, ahck!)
Hmm…another game I enjoy that’s like Chain Chronicle in the sense it has a good (but not as good as CC’s) focus on the story. It’s called Thousand Memories! (千メモ)
Of course, there’s the ever popular Puzzle & Dragons app you could try. I used to play that game as if it were my life! (Gotta get those mega combos!) Buuuut, there’s no storyline to follow, so I lost interest in it. -w-;;
Oh my goodness, so many iPhone games I could recommend!*App junkie, eeek* But I don’t want to just brush over them all. I want to introduce them properly! In one of my future game introduction articles I will definitely include more iPhone games. Look forward to it! o(^▽^)o
@Ember_Seed: As for Macs…I could look into it! Though I don’t own a Mac, so I’m not sure if I’ll be of much assistance in that department; But maybe I can surprise you. ^^
My pleasure~
I enjoyed the the article and look forward to your future ones. ^^
ps) I also used to play パズドラ like it was my life for a few weeks…
Sooo I thought to myself “I got a couple of minutes to spare let’s give this Chain Chronicle a go..”
TWO HOURS later I thought to myself – stop playing and get on with your life! ;D
It’s great fun although I’m only in the very beginning so far. I recommend it to other iPhone/iPad users wholeheartedly! A fair amount of text but well suited for intermediate Japanese levels.
@Gin: Eh.. I don’t know HOW but I’d be happy to become “Chain-buddies”(!?).
(oh my god, we sound like a gang…BUT)
HERE’S MY FRIEND CODE!: 198244234
Go to friends and in the 3rd tab is where you can add people by ID!
有り難う御座います!I got it now, so if you *don’t* want to really start a gang you can remove it. :) “The Chain-Gang”って pretty badass…
I run windows 7. I want to play the first game you recommended. It downloaded and extracted fine. It will not go beyond the openning screen without crashing. Did this happen to you ever? Am I miss a codex or something? Any idea where to look? Thanks for your time!
You need to go to your regional settings and select Japanese for non-unicode programs.
Oh my good golly goodness! I forgot some important things in this article. I’m sorry if I caused any frustration for you! As どうして said, setting your computer’s regional settings to Japanese should fix it, and you should be able to enter Akiba Chronicle without any more problems!
I found out the other day that I could play Skyrim with japanese audio and japanese subtitles just by changing the language in Steam, so I’ve played that for only a couple of days now, picking out sentences along the day. Since I absolutely loved Skyrim the first time I played it in 2011, it’s awesome.
Yes, another important resource to remember for getting Japanese games without the painful shipping is Steam! (Though I’m not sure whether or not you’re using Steam to play Skyrim, and if you’re not, I definitely recommend to look at the games in Japanese on Steam!)
I’ve also played Skyrim in Japanese. For some reason it’s just so funny to hear all the Nord names in katakana…lol! It makes me giggle thinking about it.
Er, I meant to write “along the way”. Either way, it’s great. I’ve only started, so I have yet to hear “I took an arrow to the knee” in Japanese yet^^
Do you have any other Japanese steam game recommendations?
LOL! Ya gotta listen for the, “Did someone steal your sweet roll,” line too! Hehee.
Hmm…one other steam game I can really recommend, is Recettear. You play as a girl who runs a shop with a fairy in an attempt to repay the debt your dad left behind (Parenting 101). It was cute, and a refreshing play.
Thanks for the suggestion! ^^
Sadly, using a Mac, I can’t get アキバクロニクル. And I adore maid cafes too! I don’t have a smart device either. Most of my gaming is done on my Japanese 3DSLL which, being region-locked, won’t let me play English games if I want to. Luckily I don’t.
Fortunately the eShop makes most retail releases available for download, (not Bravely Default though, for some reason) – so it’s a bit like Steam without the sales (not quite true, I got a nice little game for ¥100 in a New Year Sale).
Also Miiverse, which is now accessible via 3DS, provides another place for Japanese interaction. You can set it to worldwide or home-country only, and if you are using a Japanese machine “home country” means Japan.
Uwawawawa! I’ve isolated Mac users! If only I had a Mac computer…orz
Maybe I could find something for Macs! But…my search may turn up only stones. ;o; (But who knows, I may find something! Hehehe.)
I’ve always thought of saving for a JP 3DS, but at the same time I worry if it’s worth the price…*fret fret*
Well I have to say I’ve never regretted the purchase. I am not at all 金持ち myself but one thing I have had since the Gameboy Color is Nintendo’s current handheld. Well I managed with a plain DS (not even a DSi – that upgrade seemed unnecessary) for quite a while, but I am really happy to have upgraded to 3DS. Pokemon XY alone is a very compelling reason! I just LOVE seeing all the darlings in 3D, though sometimes it makes it slightly hard to fight them. I have to remind myself it is sport to them. And you can PET them! And there is now a FAIRY type.
Erk! I should look into one. Maybe buy that nice pearly white one…fwehehehe
In theory it should be possible to run these on a Mac or other Unix variant using Wine (for Macs the easiest route might be Winebottler). That said, I’ve been trying to get アキバクロニクル running on either my Mac or Linux machines for the past few days with no luck. It consistently crashes about where I think it was crashing for InTheWind which leads me to suspect it’s a locale problem, but so far as I can tell I have the locale set up properly. Anyway, I’m giving up for the moment, but just to let folks know there might be a way forward for someone with more patience or cleverness than I have. Of course failing that we could just watch someone else play it.
In any case, thanks for the post! It reminded me that I had bookmarked a visual novel called 私の黒猫 a long time back, but unfortunately it looks like I missed my chance to get the Japanese version, although the English port is still up. That site has a pretty extensive list of other VNs, maybe I’ll see if I can get something else running under wine.
That looks so good! Oh well, I think I may be getting ファンタジーライフ in a month so so, so I’ll just have to be gaman suru for a while. Meanwhile I have フラベベ and ルリリ to keep me happy. Just watching ルリリ bouncing around on her water-filled beach-ball of a tail makes me happy! Isn’t that bad to talk of gaman suru no when I am so lucky? It was only a joke though really!
For me, watching someone else play the game can be good in a different way, as some players read aloud the dialogue. Sometimes hearing a real person say it can really make it stick!
Thank you for reading! Huh, this site is interesting. (I love visual novels omgggg) Thanks for sharing! *heart heart*
Hi!
Does anyone know of a japanese game similar to Shining Force, Langrisser, Yggdra Union, Fire emblem? I only have PC and Android atm (I can use emulators for old consoles).
Problem is i have played most of these kind of games that i have found in English. Now that im learning Jap, i hope i can find some hidden gems that are jap only. Unfortunately i still havent found a good place to find games in jap.
Thank you.
Btw, for people who want games for android/Iphone you could check out Kemco Games and Kairosoft. First company make oldschool rpgs, second make sim games. Most of their games are translated, and you can switch between eng and jap anytime. Hundreds of other games out there too probably, but these two is what i have tried till now.
Hmm…well, if you’re into RPG games, you could try buying Skyrim on Steam and playing it in Japanese! Steam’s a great way to find Japanese games for PC (although I may admit, their available games in Japanese may be a bit lacking, it’s worth a look-through!).
Ah man, I looove Fire Emblem. I fought so hard against buying the new Fire Emblem game in English! (But ofc, I did.)
I love Kairosoft! Yes, I must agree their games are simply addicting. The game developer one was my favorite.
I would recommend re-playing your favorite game in Japanese. Having already played it in English is a great help – unless your Japanese is too good to need the boost, of course. It is also really interesting to see how subtly different it is in Japanese.
Thanks for your replies :)
@Gin Hmm Skyrim is too “Western” to be my cup of tea. (I dont like looting, open worlds nor controlling only a single character), but ty anyway. Didnt know you could sort games by language availability in steam though. I found a couple games I`d like to play in jap there ;) ty.
@Dolly Yeah i guess i could play one of my old favs. Just hoped i would find some hidden gems in my favourite genre, now that i know some japanese. :P Do you guys know of pages like gamefaqs.com or gamerankings.com for finding games in jap ?
I don’t think there is one quite like that in Japanese (not that I know of anyway)
but if you just google the name of the game followed by 攻略 you can usually find some pretty detailed sites dedicated just for that game / series.
For example, here’s one for テイルズ オブ エクシリア http://h1g.jp/tox/ (there are several more available just for this one game as well.
Looking at the image provided by the second gate, the game’s title clearly seems to be 人喰いさん instead of 人食いさん.
Thanks for pointing out the error. Fixed!
Ahck! My bad. Thank you! I will be more careful in the future. ^^
I have almost every single game in japanese on steam, being huge fan of 洋ゲー. That’s great but is always good to expand horizons, the only Japanese game I played in Japanese was 人魚沼 there’s several others by the same author too:http://2style.in/uri/
I just realized how poor my immersion was, I never finished a novel, read only about 6 manga volumes until the end (「僕は友達が少ない」と「ゆるゆり」). I like my style of learning but now is time to go hardcore. I’m going forward for every anime, novel and game recommendation I see.
Thank you for this post. I didn’t know there were free indie visual novels in japanese. Pretty nice site for indie games, any other similar site like freem.ne.jp?