Gaming in Foreign

August 12, 2009 5:14 AM

Help me identify these Japanese Gameboy Advance games.

I bought a box of GBA games from a local charity shop for £1.50 yesterday as it had Yoshi's Island - they were in Japanese, but I figured that would be easy enough without translation. However, there were three other games in there I don't recognise. One of them is an RPG and quite text heavy. The second has some kind of tilt mechanism where I need to tilt the console to get things to line up (but as it's Japanese I can't work out what or why). The third (the cart only) seems to involve a boy going to school and talking to his friends about a PET. I have no idea what these are or whether they are unusual - I've told a friend I know who writes for ONM to head down there to get some games, but I wonder if these are well known at all. If you can read Japanese and can at least tell me the names that might help!

posted by mippy to sports, hobbies, & recreation (7 comments total)

The first and last are Tomato Adventure and Battle Network Rockman EXE.
posted by permafrost at 5:26 AM on August 12

Wow, thanks - Tomato Adventure looks very cute, shame I can;t understand it. They had another with a cartoon purple duck on the front which looked cute too.
posted by mippy at 5:28 AM on August 12

And the last is the delightfully named Koro Koro Puzzle Happy Panechu!
posted by permafrost at 5:30 AM on August 12

Thank you! It has a big 'HAPPY' on the back of the box for that one, and the Wikipedia page suggests it might now be easy for me to actually play. I think sadly the excellently-named Tomato Adventure and Battle Network are out.
posted by mippy at 5:33 AM on August 12

If you want to work at it, you can use walkthroughs to get through the games - Tomato Adventure, Battle Network Rockman EXE, and the trial and error/deductive FAQ for Koro Koro Puzzle Happy Panechu!

Oddly enough, someone has translated parts of Tomato Adventure on YouTube: intro (2:28), battles and stuff (2:08)
posted by filthy light thief at 9:02 AM on August 12

In the future you can look these up yourself using the game code printed on the cart, that AGB-XXXX-JPN thing. Just type the whole mess into your favorite search engine. If you're curious the code breaks down into the format (AGB = Advanced GameBoy) the game id, and the region (JPN=Japan).
posted by ecurtz at 9:33 AM on August 12

Aw, walkthroughs spoil the fun. I might get a copy if I ever become bilingual - it might be worth learning just for the weird looking dating sims.
posted by mippy at 8:31 AM on August 13