There's this "so many great untranslated retro games,

>>2822252
is that black/matrix ? damn i gotta start this one.

>>2822276
No it's been fan-translated b8.

>tfw learned both sets of kana, and learned to search on jisho.org
That's literally enough to make most of those games playable, you might miss some of the story but fuck it, I'm in it for the gameplay.

>>2822252
>I mean, not some niche games aimed at a small group of fans
But games like that are what I consider to be my favorites and among the best games I've ever played.

A niche game can be great games, you know.

>>2822270

You could also start Black/Matrix Advanced on the Dreamcast.

>>2822290
Where are the kana in 上位召喚?
You can go in completely blind and still brute force your way through. Though learning Katakana is trivial and solves a lot of menus.
I'd recommend to get Kanjitomo. It's an OCR program with dictionary and the ability to save words for future learning.

>>2822278
Don't think because something is translated there's no reason to play it in its original language.

>>2822303
>But games like that are what I consider to be my favorites and among the best games I've ever played.

Such as?

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>>2822306
>A niche game can be great games, you know.
Could you give some examples, anon?

>>2822306
i think i'd start on the saturn version. I know enough moon to get by and could spend time to translate the story if i felt like it

I've always wanted to play LadyStalker but it's never been translated

>>2822332

That would be pointless with that kind of attitude. Google it while I play.

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>>2822252
Games that are generally considered great are games made to appeal to the vast majority of the audience, they're the fast food of videogames.

Niche games aimed at smaller groups are not made to cater to the general audience so they're more love or hate kind of games.

Granted that there are exceptions on both side, your idea of what makes a game great is flawed, the quality of a game isn't defined by commercial success, but rather how much it successfully caters to the player or contributes to the development of the medium.
Success or localization are largely irrelevant, there are a lot of games that pushed the genre design or hardware further and either weren't successful or weren't localized.

Rudra no Hihou was technically outstanding for a SFC game but it's pretty niche and bombed hard, it also had a definitely unique system marred by some glaring balance mistakes but it's a pretty great game that would probably sell well today, same with Live A Live.

The Romancing SaGa games never got out of Japan but are deeply ingrained in the popular culture there and while the series never had a huge following due to its exotic mechanics it has an extremely dedicated fanbase.

The Elnard series had two titles localized(7nth Saga and Brain Lord) but there are two more games(Mystic Ark on SFC, and Mystic Ark:Maboroshi Gekijyo on PS) that never came out of Japan and while they're not exactly the hottest shit on their systems they are still pretty high quality products with really good art direction and ideas.

There are tons of niche games that are very good and tons of them that are pure garbage, just like standard games, the difference is that good selling games often stand on the plateau of mediocrity and can rely on established and fiercely loyal fanbases built on markets that were limited to a handful of products and further constricted by massive advertisement campaigns that put other stuff in second place, not giving it time to shine.

>>2822354
I don't think anyone could have said it better than this guy.

I still want a translation of Super Famicom Wars.

>>2822309
>Where are the kana in 上位召喚?
That's why I use jisho.org, just look them up based on their radicals or draw them on some IME and get their character. Also most of the time, especially on menus, a lot of the characters are repeated so you only have to look them up once.

If you aren't willing to learn to translate it yourself then at least be willing to learn the proper languages to play it.

>>2822562
Why not just learn how to type them? Sounds extremely inefficient to look up everything all the time.

I want the Saga series translated. All six of them.

>>2822252
>I mean, not some niche games aimed at a small group of fans but actually great games

We;; first of all, if its not being translated it's probably niche. You don't see Final Fantasy or Zelda being left in Japan. Secondly, the vast majority of truly great games are niche.

Regardless, I think Cyber Doll on the Saturn looks great. It probably would have appealed to people who like Snatcher, for obvious reasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TL5HpXEadk

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Will there ever be a complete translation of this game?

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Still pissed off this fucker isn't translated yet.
Only ogre battle game that isnt.

>>2822886

Holy shit, this. Love the Ogre Battle series.