Forum - View topicEver purchase a downloadable game from a Japanese website?
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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I never tried to buy anything off a Japanese website before, mainly because I can't read Japanese and also because shipping from Japan to the US isn't exactly cheap. However, today I came across a commercial Japanese game site that appeared to be having some kind of sale on computer games you could just download. The yen count for some titles was under $15, so I said what the hell and tried to plug in my American address and credit card details to give it shot. Well you know what? Sure enough, after the payment step I received a Japanese email with a download link. So far, so good, but the game is so large that it's scheduled to take over three hours now. I'm not even really sure which game I purchased or if it works on my version of Windows and god help me if it requires extra work to register or unlock it once I have it. Oh well, if I can somehow get it working I'll have yet another excuse to learn Japanese. If not, well, I just donated a few dollars to the Japanese computer game scene as a goodwill gesture. I hope they will appreciate it.
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one3rd
 Posts: 1817 Location: アメリカ |
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Shouldn't you ask this kind of question before you buy something?
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remember love
 Posts: 764 Location: Germany |
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daxomni
Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Who was I going to ask? The website said "JAPAN SALES ONLY" (which was just about the only English text on the entire site), so I don't think they where in the mood to try and answer some amerikajin's silly questions about getting Japanese software to work on an American version of Windows and how long the download would take, and so on. Besides, this was really just a simple lark to see what would happen. They were practically daring me to purchase a game with that "JAPAN SALES ONLY" crap! I know that many Japanese software websites refuse to export their products outside of Japan and I was fully prepared to lose the money and have nothing to show for it. Getting a working game out of it was my ultimate goal, but part of the motivation was just to see what would happen if I pressed my luck. Anyway, I was able to download the game and eventually I was even able to get it running once I found out how to make my version of Windows to work with it. So everything eventually worked out just fine. This particular game wasn't quite what I had in mind, but you could still play it without knowing Japanese and they have some other stuff which looks more promising for a future purchase. My next task is to figure out how to install their third-party license software that I've never used or even heard of before. The English translation is something like "Software Battery" and you have to pay to keep the "battery" charged if you want to keep watching some of their movies or playing some of their games. You apparently start out with a partially charged "battery" for free or at very little cost. Then, once the battery has been depleted (i.e. the grace period has ended) you need to pay to get a new "charge". Much of the content on their site seems to require this system to be installed and working before you can make use of the games and movies which are sold ala carte. Last edited by daxomni on Sat Dec 03, 2005 1:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Could you provide the link to that commercial site? The pricing and its distribution method make me feel it's more like a doujin game instead of a commercial game.
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daxomni
Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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Unless I'm mistaken, "doujin" is something of an unauthorized (but tolerated?) knock-off product by talented and semi-talented amateurs, correct? The products on this site seemed pretty damn polished compared to what I would consider a doujin product. In fact, they looked just like any contemporary JAST conversion to my eyes. But hey, I'll readily admit that I'm no guru, so by all means feel free to check it out yourself. Galge.com was the root domain of the link I came across that was pointing to one of the ol' Viper games. Remember those? In any case, if you try to buy anything you'll eventually be passed through Vector's back-end payment system and any error conditions you encounter can kick you back out to Vector's front-end, which can be a more than a little confusing at first. Original domain visited... http://www.galge.com/ Some stand-alone games that you download after purchase by link in email... http://shop.vector.co.jp/service/c0018/index.html Some games that use the 3rd Party "Software Electric Battery" download and license system... http://shop.vector.co.jp/service/c0018/dl/index.html http://shop.vector.co.jp/service/c0018/dl2/index.html Some movies that use the 3rd Party "Software Electric Battery" download and license system... http://shop.vector.co.jp/service/c0018/anime/index.html (If I'm way off on any of the above, by all means please correct my mistakes.) |
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hpapillon
 Posts: 2 |
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www.dlsite.com is the big source for japanese doujinsoft downloads as far as I know - of course, being semi-amateur doesn't mean that it's not any good. I've never bought from them myself. As I understand it, a lot of it is hentai but not all, and you can even find some free demos on there.
I've seen some vector downloadable commercial products before but only for things that were a few years out of date. no sense being quite as uptight with your export restrictions when it's an older product, right? |
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