Playing Japanese video games...

[forsberg]

...are all rules of Japanese out the window?

1) Lack of Kanji for nouns/adjectives/verbs
2) Some words are written in Katakana when I don't expect it to (ex. オマエ for お前). I've always thought Katakana are only used for English words.

[chryuop]

No, katakana is also used for non foreigner words. It can be used for onomatopeic (spell) sounds, stressing a word, a word used with a meaning which is not the one described in dictionaries...
As per names I really don't know the rule. When I write to my friends in Japan I use kanji and both the kana to write their names. Above all at the beginning of the letter I use the name written in katakana. They have never corrected me...so either they are afraid of offending me or it is fine LOL (but I am not Japanese nor a very good speaker of the language, so you'd better listen to better sources hee hee).

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by forsberg

...are all rules of Japanese out the window?

1) Lack of Kanji for nouns/adjectives/verbs
2) Some words are written in Katakana when I don't expect it to (ex. オマエ for お前). I've always thought Katakana are only used for English words.

It completely depends upon what games you are playing. Anyhow to comment on katakana. Katakana is used to say "spice things up" in Japanese writing many times. You will also notice it tends to be used in "odd" places in manga too. I also notice many times when robots are in games everything they say is in Katakana. I recently just played Castelvania 2 in Japanese on my wii console and all the text was in katakana.. i think Zelda 2 was the same way. I suppose that is because those were made back when games were for kids.

Anyhow I would not say all the rules are out the window, in fact, not much is too weird to me... perhaps you have too rigid a view on the rules? I see many thing sometimes written in Kanji and other times not, from a variety of sources. You probably just having trouble with a lot of the strange terms, and lots of the old or not common words/grammar they may use.

It is all about setting the mood for the game, unfortunately this makes it a pain in the ass for many Japanese learners trying to play video games in Japanese.

[steven]

I think RickOShay is on to something-- it depends on the game. I think that's true for a few reasons. For starters, if the game is really old, then kanji won't typically be used. I suspect this is due to low memory just as much as it is due to the fact that pixel counts can be low thus making kanji impractical. Speaking of memory, I've noticed that a lot of Famicom era games have either just katakana or just hiragana (with some of the alphabet mixed in). I've seen kanji on gameboy/gameboy color games and it is frankly just really hard to read. A native speaker would have an easier time because they would know what to expect-- so even if the kanji would be practically illegible out of context, within the context of the game it can be read.

Within a single game, you will also likely encounter many styles of writing. This is probably to indicate a personality of a character. I've seen games where certain characters will use special endings that are not in the Japanese language to begin with. I've also seen games where certain words are 'spelled' with katakana while others are 'spelled' with hiragana or even kanji.

I mean, I could go on about this... but to make it short- all rules aren't out the window, but they're certainly up in the air considering a character or situation. Speaking of rules, chryuop pointed out that there are uses of katakana beyond what you stated in your question... and I think those rules are invaluable for your Japanese (gaming or non-gaming related). One last note- I've noticed that a lot of games will include a lot of "spoken" Japanese grammar. By that I mean you will encounter a ton of stuff that is usually not written (particularly in any dialogue sequences).

Is there any/are there any game(s) you have in mind?

[chryuop]

I used to have a Japanese computer...ages ago. All games for the MSX system were in Japanese and due to low memory (it was in the 80s') everything was written in kana. Weird thing, they used to place spaces between words like we use in western writing.

[forsberg]

I was trying to play 喧嘩番長5, but I got so confused after the 1st few minutes that I don't even know what I was doing anymore.

Then I played Shining Hearts, which is a lot better in terms of the wordings they use in comparison with what I've learned so far. I can understand the jist of it and any words I don't know I can look it up. Their character names are in katakana, items in kanji, etc.

[RickOShay]

Well I don't know what to tell you other than you are just going to have to deal with it if you wanna play Japanese games. I will say that if you choose to stick it out it will be good for you. Happy gaming.

[chryuop]

Due to the name of the game, isn't it possible that the majority of text are kinda slang-ish?