J-Rock Like You can't Stop

Games that I have played in Japanese, either exclusively or before I could get my hands on an English-language copy.

List items

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  1. Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
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  1. Resident Evil 4

  I played it first as Biohazard 4, on the easy difficulty absent from the American version. Cutscenes were in English but all the notes you find in the gameworld, as well as contextual button prompts, were in Japanese. Fairly heavy Kanji.

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  1. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

  It's mostly Hiragana, and seeing as I was getting through Japanese games with my Chinese (i.e. Kanji) at the time, it wasn't much fun.

  Try to avoid RPGs if you're playing games in a foreign language!

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  1. Metroid Prime

  I was able to play this game easily with decent knowledge of Kanji. You don't really need any Asian language skill at all to play this game in Japanese.

  But then, unless you're in a country without Nintendo games in English (like Taiwan or Japan itself) why would you?

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  1. Killer7

  I don't recall how bad this was language-wise, but I never came close to finishing it, presumably because I was missing some of the cooler plot points.