Super Famicom Games That You Can Enjoy Without Knowing Japanese

Alana shows off some of her collection.

- Alana Dunitz

Since it is the 30th Anniversary of the Super Famicom this month, I decided to get my console hooked up and play some of the games in my collection. I never realised that I own 62 Super Famicom games, and there are a bunch that can still be enjoyed without having to know Japanese. A lot of the games I have are ones that never left Japan, so playing them is a totally new experience. It reminds me of being young and renting games at the video store: you basically relied on the box art to make your choices. Instead of sending you out to guess and possibly buy something unplayable, I’ll let you know some games that should be checked out. There are a lot of games that meet this criteria that I own, so I’m going to divide all the titles over a few articles.

I’ll give a brief description of the type of game and what is going on. Don’t forget that if you happen to play the game and come across some text you don’t understand in the game, you can use Google Translate. It allows you to take a picture, or point your phone at text on the screen and it will try to translate it. I use this when I first start a game and I’m checking out all the options on the main menu. It is incredibly helpful and will save you a lot of research.

Umihara Kawase