Zalor

I second Symphonic Rain. It not only fits the bill, but is one of my favorite VNs.

I was about to, but then you told me to. Then I decided to vote for you instead.

Most copyright laws are based on stupidity. After all, that was the belief this site was originally founded under.

Currently got myself into Yggdra Union. I heard the gba version was way harder than the PSP version, oh well. I'm not willing to spend the money on a psp just for one or two games. Edit: WTF! I just discovered that Morale doesn't recover after you finish a map! Does this mean I have to rely on items to heal myself throughout the whole game?!?

I noticed the lackluster T-shirt with a tie before you mentioned it. I humbly disagree though, a good button down shirt with a sport coat looks better than having a tie with anything. I Fucking hate ties!!! Although judging by the satire of the video, I think you'd agree with me. Edit: "Matsukaze" is a VN character? Lol, I had to read a 500 year old Noh play called Matsukaze in my traditional Japanese Theater class.

Thanks all! ^^ This means a lot to me, thanks. I don't know what I'm going to write about next though. ;P Happy Birthday Zalor! Hope you have a good one! Had to put it inside a spoiler for space constraint, but that is definitely one of the best pictures of Lyn I've seen.

I can't help you much with the vita, but you can use programs that extract the text to a clipboard program and then that attaches furigana to the text. Specifically the programs you will need are Interactive Text Hooker, Translation Aggregator, Jparser and Mecab. Here is a guide on how to install the said programs onto your computer (again, can't help with the vita): /index.php?/topic/8239-how-to-install-and-run-untranslated-visual-novel-text-hooking-tools/">How to Install and Run Untranslated Visual Novel Text Hooking Tools. I know this isn't exactly what you asked for, but I hope it helps.

Thanks so much. It was intimidating to navigate foolmaker, but I managed to find what I wanted.

Earlier today I started reading Snow after achieving a satisfying understanding of basic and essential grammar in Tae Kim's guide. Everything was going fine until I reached my first choice and realize that I have no idea where to find a walkthrough for Untld VNs. I've always treated VNs more as books than games, and consequently have always used walkthroughs. I would rather not start "playing" VNs now if I can avoid that.

It's a competition between Serene and Fia for best girl. Thanks for this! I may actually give Yggrdra Union a second chance now.

I think it's unfair that everyone is bashing Machine translator's without really answering the OP's question. Yes, the general consensus is that Machine translator's suck and that you are better off learning Japanese, and I fully agree with that. However, not everybody is motivated or has the time to spare to learn Japanese, so lets be considerate of that. Majikoi's difficulty doesn't strike me as that difficult, and I think you could get by with a machine translator if you really want to. I highly recommend reading this blog post if you want to set up a machine translator to work decently well: An Aero-Gamer’s Guide to Using ATLAS

The GBA is my absolute favorite gaming system. As you can tell by that previous sentence, I'm not much of a gamer. Aside from VNs (which I don't count as games anyway), I only play retro games. (At this point I count GBA as retro). Ah, Super Mario bros 3. My first ever video game, and damn did I play the hell out of that game. I beat that game countless times. In fact, I played it so much as a kid that I can't even look at it anymore, lol. I love so many GBA games that it is hard to pick; so I'll just list my favorite franchises: Final Fantasy gba remakes, Megaman Zero, Megaman Battle Network, Pokemon, Castlevania, Sonic Advance, Earthbound (Mother), and Fire Emblem. Other franchises I like but don't love: Klonoa, Super Mario, Naruto Ninja Council. Franchises I still need to play: Advance Wars, Golden Sun, Zelda, Super Robot Wars, Sword of Mana, Tactics Ogre, and Yggdra Union!!! My favorite games not in a franchise: Rivera the Promised land and Tetris Worlds.

Riviera The Promised Land is an interesting anomaly. This is perhaps the closest thing to a VN that was released and localized for the Gameboy advance. It is a heavily text based JRPG with a dating sim element. VNDB dismissed this game as being too much of a JRPG, and while I agree with them that this isn't quite a VN, it doesn't fit in very well with other JRPGs either. While most JRPGs focus on grinding and fighting with story in between every now and then, this game is all about character interaction with fighting and grinding between the dialogue. Infact, even the way you explore the world and examine items is heavily unconventional and focused around character interaction. It's not a difficult system of exploration, but it's so different that you could only understand it by playing the game yourself. This game came to mind recently as I was digging through my old GBA collection. This was quite easily my favorite game during 8th grade, and my fondness for it then probably easily explains why I fell in love with the VN medium. I'm not sure how many of you actually know of this game, but hopefully some. And for those that don't know of it, I think this review does a great job explaining this game without giving any major spoilers:

Excuse my late reply, but YMK is one of my most nostalgic VNs as well. I could go on about it, but I'll spare you. If you're curious though, I wrote a rather long post on my fondness for YMK in this thread: Visual Novels and their emotional meanings to you. Oh, and welcome to the community!

How did I miss this thread the first time around? That sounds like an awesome experience. I want to do a similar thing one day, to visit the landmarks in Narcissu and the landmarks from the Kanon anime. In fact, years ago there was a guy who made a blog post about visiting the land marks in Kanon, let me find it. Here we go! Kanon Anime Pilgrimage, Kanon Anime Pilgrimage Part 2 Thanks for sharing this InvertMouse!

You know of Chicago but not New York? I feel really sad now *sniff sniff*.

Dude, I live in America. I feel like most of world hates us. Infact, many Americans hate each other too (usually this is because of political disagreements though). ;p But I agree with what Julyan said above me, it's just people being people.

Lol, one of the colleges I was interested in is in Wisconsin (Beloit college). However, I got into the school I'm more interested in, but that's still in Indiana. For an East coaster like myself, I don't really know the difference other than the fact that Indiana is closer to home.

Assuming there is a specific VN you really want to read, I think the best thing you could do is read up on basic and essential Japanese Grammar using Tae Kim's guide (should take a week to a month depending on how thoroughly you read it), then hook up the VN with Jparser (here is a tutorial on how to do that) and slog through it. You'll ability to read Japanese will increase gradually using this method, and then you'll be able to read other untranslated VNs. Of course if you don't want to invest time in learning grammar and slogging through Japanese, Machine translators exist for a reason. And they translate for free. The results are usually bearable but not satisfying from what I've heard. To answer the thread: I think if you pay a translator to translate the extracted script of the VN and you only use it for yourself, it should be legal. However, I believe translators generally get paid by how many words they translate, so I would imagine it would get rather expensive.