This is a change in reviews. For once I’m not reviewing an edutainment game! I’m actually reviewing a “real” game. It just happens that I think it could be helpful to learning japanese.
Soreike Ampanman (also spelled Soreike Anpanman) has a lot of dialogue. A LOT. However all of the dialogue is written in hiragana, with spacing to separate words. Katakana does occur, but there’s hiragana on top of it if you don’t know (also called furigana).
Gameplay:
The only real gameplay are the battles between Ampanman and Vikingman (Bikingman? It’s spelled Baikinguman so it could be either….). The battles get progressively harder but they’re still very easy.
Most other gameplay consists of walking to areas and talking to people; you can also find cards. Here is the travel screenshot. On the bottom screen are three options “Ka-do” (cards – which is an overview of how many cards you’ve collected), “Se-bu” (Save), and “Hinto” (Hint – which tells you where to go).
Blue cards seem to do nothing other than collecting them, however pink cards can unlock mini games.
How to make this a learning game:
Pretend this is just a ds book with occasional gaming. Read a sentence and see if you can make sense out of it without any help. Then, grab yourself a dictionary, and lookup (and write down) words you don’t know. The game is meant for children so it should have pretty basic vocabulary. Most dialogue is fairly short, and you know when it continues, so it’s easy to make a schedule like “do one set of dialogue a day.”
One set of dialogue is maybe 10-20 sentences and then you have to travel to the next. You can save anytime you travel so it’s easy to just pick the game up, do your reading, and then stop and come back another day. The only time the dialogue is longer is after a battle, because you’re going into the next chapter.
Music & Graphics:
The music is cute and fairly well done. The graphics are also fine and cartoony. Since this isn’t a review on how good a game this is , but how well it teaches Japanese, being cute will be enough.
Minigames:
Outside of the story mode, you can play minigames. You can unlock more throughout the story line.
Nurie
Coloring. However instead of being pencil style, it fills it in for you, you just have to click what section is goes to. This makes drawing much quicker and neater.
Mokuratadaki
Just a game of Whackamole. Starts out easy. However later on the holes actually move so it does get harder.
Conclusion:
Game wise this is one of the easiest games ever, however that’s expected since it is a game aimed at young children. Learning wise there is a lot of potential to build vocabulary and reading speed. I rate this Beginner 1, though really is better for Beginner 2. Why is it better at Beginner 2?Although it’s only hiragana, you do need to have a good grasp of it if you don’t want to spend an extremely long time reading. Additionally the game does use conjugations beyond the level of Beginner 1, which requires further look up. Lastly, it’ll be easier for you to read without getting bored if you already have a good basic vocabulary like the one a Beginner 2 student would have.
I think this is a better value than any of the Ehon games. While those occasionally have traditional japanese stories, so there is cultural value to them, the fact is there are only 3 stories and they’re not very interactive. Additionally those cultural stories are already available in Japanese online = the test may vary a bit but they’re fairly the same. Just look at the ebook section of my delicious.com account to find the links. At least with Soreike Ampanman you get an original story, with occasional battles and card collecting. The only perk Ehon games have is that you can easily go back and forth in dialogue, whereas here you really can’t.
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