Why do some Japanese games have English menus?

[Lorraine Kelly]

I've noticed that some games like Ikaruga, PNO3 and Super Monkey Ball have English menus in the Japanese versions... why is this? Do those companies know people are gonna import and they're hoping it will increase sales in their native land?

Just seems odd, how some games do and others don't.

[quirky]

Maybe English is considered cool in Japan, same as having stuff in Japanese is cool here. Also, people outside the native-english-speaking world learn english a lot more than english-speakers learn foreign languages. But that's just a guess, probably a load of cobblers. I doubt it's the import thing though.

[womblingfree]

All Japanese learn to read English at an early age, so even if they can't speak it they can read it.

Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji AND the Alphabet. We got it easy.

[Tokuda]

All Japanese learn to read English at an early age, so even if they can't speak it they can read it.

Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji AND the Alphabet. We got it easy.

You`re up late mate

[womblingfree]

Drank a bottle of coke and can't get to sleep. I swear it has more caffeine in it over here.

[olly]

They have english all over the world. When you watch foreign television, you'd be suprised how much English there is, even though its targeted at a purely domestic audience.

[Henning]

Aren't allot of people in and around Hong Kong speaking English? I know allot of HK DVD's comes with English Subtitles when the Japanese versions has not.

[Hayabusa]

I used to sell wrestling and Boxing T shirts to japan, if they Had english lettering on them, i couldnt keep tham in stock, if they had asian lettering, well i dont think i sold one in 18 months. Funny Buggers them Fella's

[Greng]

If they are in Hiragana / Katakana, chances are they are basically in English anyway, so 99% of menu's are essentially in English

[Sieg]

Perhaps it's easier or more efficient to code our relatively small alphabet into a game* rather than the thousands of other characters in the local scripts ...

So basically, out of laziness

Maybe when you see games with no Roman characters - you might be able to detect when a staunchly traditional, anti-foreign sort was in control of the project, eh ?

S.

[*edit: developers are probably also considering the amount of work they'll need to do when preparing versions for the western markets...]

[dgnr7982]

Test for titles looks better in English! may Soul Calibur 2 stick box has all the main titles in English and the minor details in Japanese - it looks lovely

[Saurian]

I think it's totally for style - as you say Soul Calibur's menus (and thousands of others) have been done in this dual language format purely for design purposes. Simple words and titles are normally done in English (even if they are written is Japanese Katakana - they are STILL 99% in English) - text explaining things in depth is normally where you will find mostly Hirigana and Kanji.

I wish gamers here would be as open to other cultures as gamers in Japan seen to be.

[Kal_El]

Am I correct in thinking that when theyre not in english that Katakana is predominatly used in games menus etc and that if I was going to start learning to read some Japanese that would be the most beneficial place to start from a games aspect??

[Saurian]

Am I correct in thinking that when theyre not in english that Katakana is predominatly used in games menus etc and that if I was going to start learning to read some Japanese that would be the most beneficial place to start from a games aspect??

Katakana is VERY useful to learn and you should start there.

You'll be able to read around 90% of menus you come across. In most Japanese games the menus are in English, written in Katakana - Character and place names are also mostly in Katakana.

[Tom Salter]

Well the trend is usually this:

Words/phrases in Katakana (probably the simplest of the three alphabets) are usually easily translated into English.

Words/phrases in Hiragana are almost always in japanese, so good luck translating that! (although it's possible with an Japanese->English dictionary)

And then there's Kanji. These are usually used to differentiate the different words of japanese, for example, the word "dai" is spelt the same in Hiragana, but has different Kanji synbols to differentiate between the multiple meanings of the word.

Confused? You should be