My Japanese Coach (Nintendo DS) Review

One of the biggest problems with past educational Games - or ‘edutainment’ titles, if you will - is that the actual learning part of the game is often meshed with boring or arcane gameplay, thus destroying the will to learn in the first place. My Japanese Coach already has an advantage, as it is one of very few games to teach the language, although that does not hide the game’s weaknesses in general.

Upon start up, you’re given three profiles to choose from and then set a small test to kick things off. This test’s aim is to gauge how much Japanese you already know; you might know basic phrases like konnichiwa or sayonara, or some of the English language’s borrowed words such as karaoke, or tsunami. In one way, it’s an effective test, in that it eases you into the game’s main learning mechanic. An animated portrait called Haruka guides you through pages of text with definitions of words given, spoken aloud and broken up into groups of similar terms (one group is for numbers, another for months of the year, etc.) with mini-games. In another way, the test isn’t an accurate guesstimate of what you know because anyone would guess, when presented with choices, that kamikaze would be kamikaze in Japanese, even without knowing what it means. Thus, although the game will skip a couple of lessons based on how you do, it is best to play them all in succession if you want to gain a better understanding of the language.

Each lesson consists of a group of words, be it numbers, greetings, or various others, and completing the mini-games for each enough times will gather the necessary points to unlock the next lesson. The games are fairly simple, mainly exercising your ability to remember the words themselves, how they are spelt, matching them up to their English translation, and so on. These games can be extremely basic, and wouldn’t look out of place in a typical low-budget DS mini-game collection, but since they do not distract from the learning purpose at hand, they work fine here. The entire game is touch-screen orientated, and works all the better because of it; an especially vital advantage for learning and writing kana and kanji - that is to say, the written language of Japanese - later on.

My Japanese Coach sticks strongly to its objective, by way of starting off lessons on easier aspects of Japanese. The DS microphone comes into play for practicing pronunciation too; no mini-games revolve around the tool, but it is useful for trying out newly discovered words. Not only that, but a changeable difficulty level for the mini-games ensures you a choice of higher complexity, which will earn you more points to unlock further lessons, or a lower setting that you can take your time with.

One thing that My Japanese Coach has trouble maintaining however, is the motivational aspect. Mini-games are varied throughout the lessons, and you can select whichever one you like from the main menu to revise the group of words you’re currently on, but all of the lessons throughout follow the same structure; look at new words or letters, memorise, practice in mini-games. As such, it is difficult for someone to maintain the minimum 15 minutes study a day the game requires, as constantly following the same formula for lesson upon lesson would bore anyone, even those with high aspirations for learning the language.

It may not keep everybody’s interest for too long, but My Japanese Coach certainly has the content for any serious student willing to give it the time; there are over 1000 lessons on offer here, dealing with nearly all important elements of Japanese: study of the three writing systems, conversation pieces, sentence structure, mannerisms, and many more. The game also has an extensive reference section, where you can check on words you’ve already learned, or find a phrase you can’t remember at that point in time; all are fully voiced and easy to find. Provided you have the motivation, and another source of learning that offers diversity from this one, My Japanese Coach should be a strong consideration for both beginners and more advanced students of the language alike.