HiGame

Summertime is associated with beaches, family vacations, and big action movies, but it’s traditionally something of a desert for major video game releases. So if you’re dying for something new to play while you wait for No Man’s Sky and Deus Ex, why not take this opportunity to explore the Japanese catalog on the PS4?

Games like Phantasy Star Online 2 and Dragon’s Dogma Online aren’t available on the US PlayStation Store, and some titles like Puyo Puyo Tetris will likely never be officially released in the US because of licensing conflicts. To sidestep those issues, this post will walk you through the basics of machine translation, acquiring free-to-play games, and purchasing imports.



Dealing with Japanese text

Before we do anything, we need to address the translation issue. When you’re using a Web browser on a PC, this process is relatively simple. Google Chrome has built-in page translation, and other browsers can take advantage of similar functionality through add-ons.

Signing up for Japanese accounts is typically pain-free thanks to machine translation, but there’s a catch. Just like English-based online services, spammers and other ne’er-do-wells try to ruin everyone’s good time. As such, Japanese anti-spam implementations can make signing up for some accounts particularly challenging for those of us with little-to-no experience with Japanese characters. Sadly, there’s no bypassing these little headaches, but we can tackle them with help from the Google Translate app.

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