I played through the entire Pokemon Yellow without understanding a lick of english. You just remembered what the commands did, and you learnt by experimenting.
replyThanks for this comment -- it dredged up a memory I had almost forgotten.
replyI did this but inverted. When only pokemon red/blue were out in the US I downloaded a rom for pokemon yellow (discovered on whatever p2p I was using at the time) when searching for pokemon to play in an emulator. I didn't know it existed at the time and it was in Japanese. When I told my friends "pikachu follows you around!" None of them believed me.
Even as an English speaker the Pokémon all sounded gibberish to me so it wouldn't have been much help
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