What are some gaming slang that are used in Japanese

4 comments

1. Dunno about the slang but ハードコアゲーマー (ha-do coa ge-ma-) has 32,000 matches on google so it’s understandable.

   スキル (sukiru) is one way to say skill in Japanese.

2. A lot of “gaming slang” as we know it does not necessarily have a directly equivalent slang term in Japanese. In actuality, for most online English-language video games, the majority of the terms are left untranslated. e.g. in league of legends, creep are often called クリープ, etc. [Here](http://loljp.net/wiki/index.php?%BD%E9%BF%B4%BC%D4%B8%FE%A4%B1%2F%CD%D1%B8%EC%BD%B8)’s a link to a Japanese LOL community’s website and their, “vocabulary list,” but as you can see, it’s really just more of a list of what the English slang terms mean (which in turn are used by Japanese players).

   I can’t think of any really good “slang” terms in Japanese, because most of the terminology used by video game players to describe video games aren’t “slangy”, but rather just standard Japanese. e.g. “He has skills” -> 彼は上手ですね, which is just the same as saying, “He’s good.”

   ハードコアゲーマー will likely be understood by gamers, but not by the rest of the population, so I guess that’s a slang term for you.

   Other examples:

   pro – 上手 (lit. “skilled”)

   noob – 初心者 (lit. “novice”)

   tanky – 硬い (lit. “tough”)

   and the like. As you can see, the slang terms we in the West use just get “regular” terms in Japan.

   There are some slang terms, but they’re saying things like “FPS” or “RPG” that only gamers would understand, and not really comparable to the English equivalent of things like “noob” and “pro”.

3. Here’s a list of some terms I’ve seen used. A lot of them aren’t necessarily gaming-specific, but are commonly used in gaming discussion.

   * スキル、レベル、○○力（りょく） — skill
   * ラスボス / ラスボス戦（せん） — last boss / last boss battle
   * 雑魚（ざこ） — weak enemy (Goomba, zombies in Minecraft, etc.)
   * 試合（しあい） — a game; a match (ex. タオカカを使用して、1試合中に挑発を5回以上ヒットさせた。)
   * 経験値（けいけんち） — EXP
   * 攻撃（こうげき） — attack
   * 防御（ぼうぎょ） — defense
   * 相手（あいて） — opponent
   * 必殺技（ひっさつわざ） — insta-kill attack; most powerful attack
   * 初盤・中盤・終盤（しょばん・ちゅうばん・しゅうばん） — early game, mid-game, end game
   * ラスト — the final portion of the game (the last dungeon, the last cutscenes, etc.)
   * シーン — cutscene

   I have to go to work now, but I might come back and update this later. 🙂 Hope it helps!

4. I strongly recommend you watch [Game Center CX](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVwVcXjml3k) if you want to learn this kind of vocabulary.