Japan video and pc games · Video and PC games in Japan
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Video and PC games in Japan
Video and PC games in Japan
Video games are a huge business in Japan, but Japan's NTSC-J region code is incompatible with consoles in Europe, North America, Australia and mainland China so you will need to buy a Japanese console to play these games. However, if you are from South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or Southeast Asia, these games should work fine on your console, though the game would just not be in your native language. The exception to this is the PlayStation 3, which features numerous games that have no region protection at all (despite the fact that some games do advertise a region on the box, 99.99% of the time, the game will work on any PS3); although the disadvantage of the language is still present, many games are now multilingual, choosing the language of your console settings. The PSP and DS are also region-free, while the Xbox 360 is on a case-by-case basis. The Wii is totally isolated by region, as even Korean and Japanese Wii systems fall under different regions and are incompatible. The Nintendo 3DS is region locked; software purchased for Japan will not work on a North American or European 3DS console.
PC games, on the other hand, will usually work fine, as long as you understand enough Japanese to install and play them. Only-in-Japan genres include the visual novel (ビジュアルノベル), which are interactive games with anime style art, somewhat similar to dating sims, and its subset the erotic game (エロゲー eroge), which is just what the name says.
Generally the best places for Video Game shopping are Akihabara in Tokyo, and Den Den Town in Osaka (in terms of deals, you can purchase video games from almost anywhere in Japan).
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Japan
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Japan Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.