One great source of help is GameFAQs (http://www.gamefaqs.com), which offers fan-written hint guides for practically every game ever released as well as separate message board forums for each game, even if there’s no hint guide for that game. Thus, from the day of a game’s release, you can find others who own it and ask them for help.

The genre of the game will largely, but not entirely, determine how much help you’ll need. Sometimes a game’s menus will be partially in English. Very rarely will an English-language option exist for the entire game. Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance is one happy example of this.

Sometimes there will be practically no text at all, or the text will have little bearing on the gameplay. Martial arts fighting games traditionally fall into this category and, traditionally, have their menus in English. But watch out! Games such as Soul Calibur depend heavily on Japanese text, featuring lengthy weapon descriptions, special move commands, and special rules for certain battles. In action-oriented games such as Super Mario Sunshine, it may seem like the only reason for text is for window dressing, but designers sometimes hide crucial puzzle clues in the brief messages.

Of course, some games are extraordinarily text-heavy. Final Fantasy-style RPGs are the most obvious example; if you know no Japanese, it’s hardly worth the trouble of importing the games unless you want a formidable challenge.

For the moment, let’s assume that’s what you want. Maybe you’re trying to learn Japanese on your own, maybe you have a year or two of lessons under your belt, or maybe you’re just fearless. In that case, it helps to understand the nature of the Japanese syllabary.

You may have heard that the Japanese have three different alphabets. This is technically true, if misleading. There are three different sets of characters, but they’re not alphabets. Two, hiragana and katakana, are phonetic, where each character stands for one sound. The other, kanji (Chinese pictographs) cause no end of misery to students of the language, for there are around 2,000 individual characters used in everyday writing. Each kanji has a specific meaning and multiple pronunciations, depending on context and part of speech.

Of the three, you’ll find the most immediate benefit in learning katakana. The Japanese use this system to approximate the sounds of foreign words, many of which appear in Japanese video game lingo. Thus, even with little to no knowledge of Japanese vocabulary, you may be able to pick out some katakana words and use them to help figure out what the game wants you to do.

The first step is to learn to recognize katakana. In general, katakana are sharp, angular characters mostly composed of straight lines. Here are the five vowel sounds of Japanese—a i u e o^[22]—written in hiragana on the top and katakana on the bottom:

See the difference? Learn to recognize katakana, then find a katakana chart on the Web (such as the one at Kids Japan, http://www.kids-japan.com/kata-chart.htm) or in a bookstore and consult it as you play. If you see a word written in katakana, match the symbols to the chart and try to decipher what it could be. It is an approximation of the sound of the original word, so try saying it out loud with accents in different places. Also remember that katakana words might not be English or even foreign at all, so don’t worry too much if you can’t figure it out.

Does sounding out words sound like too much work? It probably is, unless you’re fond of cryptolinguistic puzzles (hey, a game within a game!). The next step is to learn a list of important words that come up most often in games. The biggest problems with playing a game in another language most often come from the failure to understand very basic words. Barring story-specific puzzles and other such complex issues, the translation guides in Tables Table 8-1 and Table 8-2 should be just what the doctor ordered.

Table 8-1. Getting started

Japanese	Pronunciation	Meaning
	hai	Yes
	iie	No
	gêmu	Game
	disuku	Disc
	memori kâdo	Memory card
	nyÛ gêmu	New game
	hajime	Begin/beginning/start
	sutâto	Start
	rôdo	Load
	tsuzuki	Continue
	kontinyÛ	Continue
	opushon	Options
	sêbu	Save
	kesu	Erase

Table 8-2. During play

Japanese	Pronunciation	Meaning
	ue	Up
	shita	Down
	migi	Right
	hidari	Left
	botan	Button
	stikku	Stick
	mappu	Map
	batoru	Battle
	kuria	Clear
	sutêtasu	Status
	kougeki	Attack
	tatakau	Fight
	mahou	Magic
	aitemu	Item
	nigeru	Run
	aka	Red
	ao	Blue
	midori	Green
	shiro	White/light
	kuro	Black/dark
	faiâ	Fire
	aisu	Ice
	uôtâ	Water
	sandâ	Thunder
	toshi	Year
	getsu or tsuki	Month/moon
	hi or nichi	Sun/day
	hi	Fire
	mizu	Water
	ki	Wood/tree
	kin	Gold
	gin	Silver
	den	Thunder

The dash in katakana words and the circumflex in the Romanized versions represent a long vowel sound. Also note that some of these words are in hiragana and/or kanji. Can you tell the difference?

You may notice that there are many different words that convey nearly identical meanings. This is because different games use different words. The title screen of Nintendo’s Giftpia for the GameCube uses hajimeru and tsuzukeru, the verb forms of begin and continue, but the title screen of its game Custom Robo reads, in English, PRESS START.

To start a new game in the Scenario mode of Custom Robo, select atarashii dêta (“new data”). In Square Enix’s Final Fantasy X for the PlayStation 2, however, you begin a new game with nyÛ gêmu (“new game”).

The magic spells used in many RPGs follow a similar fire-ice/water-thunder-air structure, although the names used differ. Some games use the kanji for the various elements in the magic list, but some might use katakana renderings of English-language words. The Final Fantasy series has traditionally used faiaa, burizado, sandâ, and aero.

Tip

To read Japanese dates—to tell your memory card files apart, for example—note that the Japanese dates use the form year/month/day along with the kanji. January 5, 2004 would be 2004/1/5/: