Maker - Koei   Catalogue No. - T-7603G

Type - English Education Software

Available for the Super Famicom originally along with an audio CD, EMIT is what’s best described as an English tutorial software. Now before you start thinking “boring” and stop reading, remember that the Japanese education games are actually more interesting than the so called Multimedia education crap we have in the west. Emit is a fully voice driven text digital novel with the added bonus of being fully bilingual. By this I mean you can choose from any combination of Japanese / English text and audio. I play with English text and Japanese audio because those American accents really do grate (No offence to our American readers. I’m sure you find British accents awful (^o^). Anyway, for an educational game the story is quite bizarre to say the least. You may have figured out already that Emit is in fact Time spelt backwards. The game starts with a young girl meeting an old man who asks about a watch makers. It turns out that this man gets younger instead of older and is from another world. I won’t tell you any more apart from the story gets even more warped in volumes 2 and 3.

The educational part of the software is actually very good. You have exercises, English vocabulary tests and a Japanese to English dictionary. The game can also be used to teach English speakers Japanese. Of course you can’t use most of the exercises but at least you can use the dictionary and play the game in English.