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Duolingo releases a Japanese language course for iOS
The days of teaching yourself Japanese exclusively through Crunchyroll shows are coming to an end. Online language learning company Duolingo announced on Wednesday that it has released a Japanese language course for its iOS app with an Android version dropping soon.
We wish we could play Mojipittan Wii
Namco Bandai's Wii Ware word game, Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Wii, is exactly the kind of thing that would be up our alley. It's a tile-based word game, like Scrabble, with two important twists. First, it has multiple boards with different layouts, including the one in the screenshot in which every other board has a preplaced "n" on it. Second, it's, you know, Japanese. That's the real challenge of the thing. Our hiragana comprehension is fine, but we don't exactly have a large enough vocabulary to be able to build words from randomly-selected characters. Honestly, at a reduced Wii Ware price, we'd be tempted to jump on this like we wanted to for the PS2, PSP, and DS versions. Of course, there's no chance at all that Namco Bandai will allow that to happen.If you think Mojipittan is cute, check the official Mojipittan site for wallpapers and MP3's from the other games, and try your hand at the demo version!
Explosions! Car crashes! Kanji Ken!
Mentioning Kanji Ken earlier this afternoon prompted us to make a beeline for the Japanese game's official site, scrounging its pages for any new developments on the kanji trainer/brawler. Amidst a pile of nonsensical videos, we were able to unearth a pair of magnificent downloadable wallpapers of incalculable value. Just seeing them will blow your mind right out your ass. Keeping with the game's kung-fu theatre theme, the desktop decorations parody martial arts movie posters with cliches like city skylines in the background and uh... a man screaming for no visible reason. Needless to say, they're every bit as zany as Kanji Ken's cover art! Sweep kick right through the post break for the new trailers and previews of the wallpapers.
Train your Japanese-writing brain in minutes a day!
Kana DS won't teach you how to translate Famitsu magazine scans for your favorite games, but it will help you strengthen your hiragana and katakana skills. Think of the homebrew application as Brain Age for Japanese charsets, minus the floating, decapitated head. An alpha release of the project has been posted, demonstrating its "number sorting" mini-game. The only other implemented feature is a character reference mode, but we can already see a lot of potential for this polished application. Developer Julio Gorgé plans to include handwriting recognition, progress tracking, and difficulty scaling in future builds.It might not be as mind-blowing as Kanji Ken, but few games are. Check past the post break for a preview video of Kana DS. [Via DCEmu]
Kanji Ken's boxart: the legend continues
Kanji Ken's packaging doesn't look like anything you would expect from other "training games," but you could say the same about its teaching methods. The educational title eschews traditional academic themes, opting instead for a style that drills students on Chinese characters through kung-fu battles that play out on the handheld's topscreen. The game's cover art shows its martial arts hero at the crest of his flying kick, clutching a Nintendo DS Lite. A collage of characters surround his dynamite pose, each one more enthralling than the last! There's a drunken kung-fu fighter, an inviting blonde with no visible end to her dress' plunging neckline, and a sinister robot looming in the background. The Great Wall of China is thrown in to sweeten the deal.Head past the post break for a better look at Kanji Ken's casing and a new screenshot of the menacing automaton.
Kanji Ken continues to confuse
The latest screenshots for Kanji Ken give us a better idea of what to expect from the game -- players translate hiragana characters, writing their kanji equivalent on the touchscreen. Scribbling out the correct Chinese symbols assists the kung-fu hero brawling on the top screen. That part of the mystery is solved!What has us befuddled, however, is the new trailer that Success Corp. is using to promote the game. The minute-long video plays out an epic, live-action duel between Kanji Ken's martial arts mascot and... a folding chair? The two opponents exchange a barrage of punches and high-flying kicks, neither of them revealing the motives behind their battle.Head past the post break for the movie clip and screenshots.
Edutainment, language-style
Asuma Entertainment is working on a new language-helper game that will probably not see a release outside Japan, but may be a good import for those trying to learn elementary Japanese. Anpanman to Asobo: Aiueo Kyoushitsu is the DS as a pile of flash cards; objects are shown and the player writes the correct Japanese word for the object. There are already a number of language info-games for the DS, so the concept of this isn't terribly new. However, this game seems aimed at children, and features the pastry-headed Anpanman, and many language students already watch childrens' films and read picture books to help them with language, so why not a kid-friendly DS game?
