I’m now on Lesson 45 which means I have unlocked the last of the minigames. There are 12 in all. Yesterday I covered the first five. Today I will cover the last seven.

Flash Cards is the most useful of the minigames. It’s also your fastest way through the levels if you play it on Hard as you can earn 50 points in under 20 seconds. You’ll need headphones or a quiet place to play it though. For the first 43 levels you hear a word and then have up to two seconds to select the correct choice in English. Once you hit Lesson 44 you’ll get a mix of audio and visual kanji. For the kanji you see the kanji (and hear nothing) and have two seconds to select the meaning. There are two problems with this game: the kanji are tiny and the card choices aren’t random so you know not to pick the wrong cards that have already been used.

Memory is a decent game but not really great for learning. It is your typical memory game of flipping over cards and matching the two that are the same. The twist is that they are the same in two different languages. You do get kana (after Lesson 30) and kanji (after Lesson 44) instead of romaji which is nice. This game is a slow way to learn the language though.

Bridge Builder (pictured in my entry two days back) is the only part of My Japanese Coach which has you put together sentences. That’s too bad since stringing words together is what speaking a language is all about. This game is too easy though as all the correct words are given. It’s also all in romaji even after Levels 30 and 44. This game could be improved with kanji/kana, instead, and with some incorrect words provided so that you really had to put together the correct words (and not just plop down all of the given words and particles). Also, there are only a few of these, if that, per lesson. There should be many more dealing with each lesson. Sometimes items are in here that haven’t been covered yet in a lesson.

Spelltastic adds nothing that can’t already be gained from Flash Cards. A word is spoken in Japanese, and then the user has to type out the word in romaji on a qwerty keyboard. Ugh. A waste of time really. If you want to practice your listening skills you are much better off with the Flash Cards minigame.

Fill-in-the-Blank is basically Spelltastic with a come-up-with-the-word, instead of listening, requirement. Again, you have to type out a Japanese word in romaji on a qwerty keyboard which makes no sense for Japanese learning.

Yomi is the game pictured above. When I first started playing it, without having read the rules, I couldn’t figure out what it wanted. I tried writing kanji and then alternative readings of the given kanji. Neither worked. It turns out the game was much more basic (and useless) than what I envisioned. You merely need to copy the kanji or kana given. Once again, the recognition is not great, and you will be marked wrong frequently when writing in the correct stroke order. The instructions don’t match what you actually do in the game.

Scrolls relies on My Japanese Coach‘s less than reliable kana and kanji recognition software. You are given a word in romaji and asked to write it in kana. Sometimes it gives you the kana and asks for the kanji. It has yet to recognize a properly written mizu kanji for me.

In summary, all of the minigames could be improved. Only three or four of the twelve are decent for really learning. It’s a shame that Ubisoft merely took My Spanish Coach‘s minigames and thought they would work just as good for a language like Japanese which isn’t written with Roman letters. They should have borrowed/adapted some of the very good games out there for Japanese kids and adults learning Japanese on the DS and added English translations in the game for English speakers learning Japanese on the DS.

Posted on October 27th, 2008 under Japan • Tags: my japanese coach. • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed