So someone recently made me aware of [Project EGG](https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/) which is sort of a Japanese equivalent to GOG except it’s actually been around since *2001*. They have a lot of games from Oldschool Japanese computers like the MSX and PC-98 and what’s more is once you’ve signed up they have a collection of [over 200 free games](https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/freegames/) with *a lot* of visual novels represented and they add a new one every month! There’s an absolutely massive amount of material at different levels and I think it’s a great resource for practice material. The site is apparently at least partially run in conjunction with a Japanese game preservation group which is pretty cool. Their paid area also has console titles like NES, SNES and Genesis games and I’m always up for legal ways to get ROMS!
The *catch* though, is currently that in order to download these free games and be able to purchase the non-free ones, you have to pay a monthly 500 yen subscription fee (though if you stop subscribing you still keep your stuff). They’re actually going to change things eventually so you don’t have to pay the fee to get the free stuff, so it’ll be *actually free* soon. Frankly it’s weird and seems needlessly complex, but apparently the games are pretty close to DRM-free. That said, if you can only “officially” have them installed to one PC at a time or something and have to do some weird license transfer thing if you want
Their game launcher is a bit… oldschool, it looks like an early 2000’s MP3 player, but supposedly they’re reworking it soon. I’m hoping that will also entail a rework with their weird licensing system but overall the experience has been largely painfree aside from Malwarebytes flagging some games (so I had to whitelist the install folder).
Weirdly they also have a separate english website [with english versions of some games](https://www.amusement-center.com/en/project/egg/memberpage/index.shtml) but it’s clearly had a lot less love and the selection is far smaller, but you’re not here for english games, you’re hear to read some japanese! The switcher lets you swap to your english library which also switches to the english UI, but since the english and japanese
I’m currently checking out a game called [Apple Sauce 7](http://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/game/?product_id=799) which is extremely cute and so far I’ve been able to read the text presented in it. Anyway this post probably reads a bit like an ad but even though I don’t love some decisions they make with their setup the selection’s pretty insane and registration wasn’t hard. They do ask for your name in both Kana and Kanji but it didn’t care when I wrote it in English and paypal works for payments. The only signup issue I had is that the passwrod field doesn’t let you use Symbols like ! or @ but once I realized that I was good.
Really I mostly just thought it was fascinating that Japan’s had their own Steam since before Gaben and a lot of these are obscure games by popular companies that people might be interested in digging into, since part of language learning is getting that good shit you can’t find anywhere else.
Like [there’s apparently a visual novel based off the film Casablanca](http://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/game/?product_id=1016) which does *not* seem to be licensed but nonetheless has a huge picture of Humphrey Bogart on the title screen. Who knew, right?