Japanese PS3 Games

Decker5

So I am one of those lucky people who happens to live on the other side of the world in Japan. And I happen to have a bunch of questions related to the PS3.

1) I own a US PS3, will all Japanese games work?
2) Do Japanese games get released with the option to switch to English? Is there a list somewhere?
3) Any must have Japanese PS3 games superior to the English version?
4) Do online games work between different versions of the games? (e.g. SFIV)
5) While I'm at it... any PS2 games worth picking up that weren't released in the US?

Any other comments about Japan and the PS3 are welcome.

Antihippy

PS3 is region free, but I'm pretty sure that Japanese versions don't come in english though

Also PS3 is not region-free when it comes to PS2 games if that's you're talking about.

Chance

Antihippy is correct, but it's worth noting that some really excellent titles get Asian releases at the exact same time as their Japanese release. The Asian versions tend to have English language support - that is, all text is English and all dialogue is subtitled.

The Asian version seems to be for release in China, and given that I've never lived in Japan I don't know how hard they'd be to procure in Japan. Worth looking into!

Unco-ordinated

Decker5 wrote: »

So I am one of those lucky people who happens to live on the other side of the world in Japan. And I happen to have a bunch of questions related to the PS3.

1) I own a US PS3, will all Japanese games work?
2) Do Japanese games get released with the option to switch to English? Is there a list somewhere?
3) Any must have Japanese PS3 games superior to the English version?
4) Do online games work between different versions of the games? (e.g. SFIV)
5) While I'm at it... any PS2 games worth picking up that weren't released in the US?

Any other comments about Japan and the PS3 are welcome.

1) What Antihippy said. The PS3 is region free.
2) Do western games count? Otherwise, no. There are a few Asian version games that are translated into English though, like Afrika and Aquanaut's Holiday (you can import them off renchi or yesasia).
3) Not that I know of.
4) Most but not all. I know that Metal Gear Online doesn't but I'm not sure about any other games. I'm pretty sure SF4 will be fine (though I'm guessing the lag won't).
5) What Antihippy said. Assuming you have a BC equipped US PS3, only US PS2 games will work on it. If you manage to get your hands on a Japanese PS2 then I'd bet there's a lot of games that were never released in the US. I wouldn't know about them though.

cj iwakura

There's a metric ton of great rhythm games on the J-PS2, namely a bunch of Beatmanias(9th & 13th are my favorites). And Namco X Capcom's fun.

The Super Robot Wars games should be good if you like mecha strategic warfare with lots of explosions. Not much issue with a language barrier. NXC was fan translated not long ago, so there's that.

chris: waffle king

Heyo, i'm over here in J-land too. For my experience, most games don't have an English option; though some, like LBP, RE5, and NobyNoby Boy ran in English when my system language was set to English.

Interestingly enough, for PS2, the Silent Hill series /does/ have an all English option in the menu. These are the only ones i've seen with such, and prompted a very drunken check of Metal Gear: Snake Eater at the local Tsutaya (reasoning, hey, its a Konami game too).

Grislo

Unco-ordinated wrote: »

Decker5 wrote: »

2) Do Japanese games get released with the option to switch to English? Is there a list somewhere?


Any other comments about Japan and the PS3 are welcome.

2) Do western games count? Otherwise, no. There are a few Asian version games that are translated into English though, like Afrika and Aquanaut's Holiday (you can import them off renchi or yesasia).

You have to be careful here, as 'Asian' and 'Japanese' are two different things in terms of PS3 releases. 'Japanese' releases tend to be in Japanese only, whereas 'Asian' releases tend to include an English version.

That is assuming the game in question has been translated/dubbed/etc. You should check from case to case, basically.

Bottom line is, though, stay away from Japanese releases in general.

nerve

For the past few months I've only been buying Japanese versions of games. I have about 10 so far between PS3 and DS and none have an english option. If you dont know any japanese you can stumble through with trial and error obviously, but you'd probably want to stick with Asian or English releases if you want to understand exact details of things. I've pretty much stopped playing my 360 since it isn't region free, my PS3 has finally stopped collecting dust !

Dashui

As someone already said, often times the Asian releases of a game (China, Korea) come fully translated. There have been a few threads for some imports recently, specifically Aquanaut's Holiday, Hakuna Matata, and Demon's Souls. All three are fantastic games worth looking into. In Demon's Souls case, even the voice work is completely in English. Aquanaut's Holiday is an adventure game that lets you explore a beautifully rendered ocean, Hakuna Matata is a photography game set in Africa, and Demon's Souls is a very hardcore roguelike/dungeon crawler with some interesting online features.

Chance

I should note though, the Asian release don't always have English support. If Way of the Samurai 3's Asian release had English subtitles I would've been on that like white on rice.