typing Japanese on Phantasy Star Online (Famicom/Nintendo)

[the empathogen]

If you've wanted to type in Japanese on a Nintendo/Famicom game like PSO and never could figure out how the hell to do it, here's the answer:

Rather than the lovely convenience that Japanese students have of being able to configure the ability to type in Japanese on their PCs, Japanese students that are GAMERS have it rougher...

I found the secret. You have to change the LANGUAGE VERSION OF THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING.

On PSO in particular, go to the main menu.

Go to Options > Language > Japanese. After you select that, you'll see that the end of that menu (now appearing in Japanese) will say "END." Hit that to go back to the main menu and you're on your way.

Even if you're just a beginning Japanese student - say you only know kana and 150+ kanji or so, don't be intimidated by PSO (unless you've never played it before - you'd better log some serious hours of play time in English before you try it in Japanese, or you won't know WHAT the hell is going on).

Most of the items in the game are in transliterated English, so they're almost all in katakana. You have to sit there and READ it, of course, but hey. You'll need to know the kanji for the area names (forest, mine, cave, ruin) before you try actual online play, too. This is because if one of your Japanese partners runs off into the teleporter without telling you where the funk they're going, and you ask them "doko?" (<where??), you'll need to be able to read their answer to know where to go!

It's obvious if you've played PSO before, but for the record, know your colour kanji so that when someone drops you a telepipe, you'll know which one to take if there is more than one present.

On a final note, I'm assuming that you have a keyboard controller for your Gamecube. Note that the keyboard uses ASCII standard for Japanese typing, rather than Shin-JIS or IME (the latter of which you are used to if you've typed Japanese at home). ASCII standard assumes that you want katakana conversion before kanji.

You'll be welcomed by your Japanese team mates with "konnichi wa" and thanked with "arigatou ne." They'll apologise for slights with "gomen ne." In saying all that, those are good first few choices to program into your shortcut keys for quick online communication.

I've found that Japanese players are far more polite than many American players. They're very considerate in play. They know how to work as a team, they won't steal items practically right out of your hand, and they do what's expected of them (f.e., running up to kill a poisoning enemy if they're an android and everyone else is human). But yeah, play the Japanese version of the game if you want to talk to them - though they all understand romaji, you'll get a lot of outraged reactions to trying to communicate with them in it. They also get a huge bang out of Americans who can speak their language coming onto their servers. ^_^

That's it for this post.

[leathelanime]

I will be Talking on PSo next week! WOOT FOR XBOX!

[SarahtheBoring]

This makes me wonder something:

People typing in English in multiplayer games and such are usually just barely literate (lololollomg!!!!!!1). Are people speaking in other languages also like this, or do they actually have some grasp on their own language?

[Roke]

This makes me wonder something:

People typing in English in multiplayer games and such are usually just barely literate (lololollomg!!!!!!1). Are people speaking in other languages also like this, or do they actually have some grasp on their own language?

I don't even want to know. I just hope it's us.

[rurouni_trelane]

I will be Talking on PSo next week! WOOT FOR XBOX!

I'm sorry. I don't know if the japanese pso xbox servers will be the same way, but I imagine the US servers will be full of lamers, just as the rest of Live is.

[the empathogen]

This makes me wonder something:

People typing in English in multiplayer games and such are usually just barely literate (lololollomg!!!!!!1). Are people speaking in other languages also like this, or do they actually have some grasp on their own language?

Yes, they know their language quite well (unless you count lack of knowledge as including typing mostly in hiragana. This seems like an acceptable laziness online, though, much like us not wanting to capitalise our words online). Japanese (at least over a certain age) are really stuck on precision and doing everything perfectly. Granted, I don't know much of the Japanese language, but if they make typos I know they're going to go back and correct them. Especially with something like kanji in their language. With pictographic characters and the chance of making typos, you could try asking someone to hang out and accidently, I dunno, call them a horse or something. Just a wild example to attempt to illustrate.

But yeah, that's a HUGE advantage to playing with Japanese PSO players than American ones: the Japanese players are twenty times as likely to have BRAINS with developed MINDS inside them.

[rurouni_trelane]

That and Japanese players are extremely helpful and will actually do what their characters are supposed to do, like healing and resurrecting. I have it confirmed from a devoted Xbox player that the Xbox PSO players pretty much all do whatever they want and don't help with healing and stuff unless you ask, and even then, they won't always do it.

[the empathogen]

That and Japanese players are extremely helpful and will actually do what their characters are supposed to do, like healing and resurrecting. I have it confirmed from a devoted Xbox player that the Xbox PSO players pretty much all do whatever they want and don't help with healing and stuff unless you ask, and even then, they won't always do it.

You got that right. If I play PSO with Americans, I have to stay close to those asses just to take advantage of them healing THEMSELVES so I can save myself from dying! They won't heal me for me, despite the fact that it doesn't cost them anything more to heal someone within their physical range!

[Mroni]

Pso sucks! dammit get a real game like everquest that's what pcs are for.


Mr Oni

[rurouni_trelane]

Sigh... Come on Mr. Oni, you know better than to be an ass like that. Respect other people's opinions.
And Dark Age is better than EQ, anyway, imho.