It's a fairly famous game, and you may know it already. This game is Super Smash Bros. Melee. It's the second game in the Super Smash Bros. series, made for the Nintendo Gamecube console. Since it's a Gamecube game, you can also play it on your Wii (but you will need Gamecube controllers to play!)
The game is a party-platformer-fighting game (it's hard to describe, really!) in which you play as a cast of Nintendo characters from many popular game series. In addition to this, you collect "trophies" (called "figures" in Japanese) as you play that give you information about various characters, objects, and worlds from all kinds of Nintendo games. There are hundreds of these to collect and read!
They look like this:
And you may notice that picture has Japanese text, and there's a lot there to read. Imagine hundreds of these little trophies with interesting trivia about your favorite games, all there ready for you to practice Japanese while you play a fun game.
Well, here's the exciting part, you can actually buy the Japanese version in the North American region, without needing a Japanese Wii or Gamecube to play! That's because the Japanese version is actually included in the North American release!
Within the game's options menu, you have the ability to change the game into Japanese. All of the text and voices will now be their Japanese counterparts! Be warned that once you do this, even the menus will be in Japanese, so if you don't know Japanese well at all, make sure you memorize the menus or have a dictionary handy so you can figure out how to change it back and navigate your way through the game.
There is a lot of reading and interesting trivia to be read in this game. And you can buy it on Amazon.com easily for under $20. Because the game is old now, you might have trouble finding a new copy, but used copies are abundant since it was a huge hit and sold millions of copies.
This game is great for seeing Japanese written naturally for a native audience, and it's on an interesting subject. Also, because it's often about game characters and worlds, there will be a lot of words in katakana, so you can practice your reading of kana in a natural setting. Over the kanji there are furigana (little characters that show you the reading), so you can look up kanji very easily (without having to look up radicals and stuff) or recognize words that you may know that you didn't know the kanji for. All of this while learning all about your favorite games, even down to obscure characters from obscure games that you may have never heard of before. There is a ton of content in this game, so it can keep you entertained for a long time, and it can let you practice Japanese all the while. The more you play, the more trophies you unlock to read and practice with.
I think it's a great game to play just for fun, and it has a lot of Japanese to read, too. And since a lot of people have a Gamecube or Wii, and the game is cheap and can be easily bought in the US, it shouldn't be too hard to pick up for under $20 with no extra costs to play. That's pretty cheap and easy to get your hands on a Japanese game :)
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