So often Steve talks about Lingq and how much it supercharges learning languages given the work of going back from dictionary to novel and back. I speak of when Steve was in HK here.
I think along these lines it’s worth noting what a missed opportunity we had here in language learning for at least Japanese back in the day. I believe a more basic Lingq could have worked quite well under the aforementioned services, esp. given that SegaNet(Sega Japan’s version of Sega Channel) had a number of untranslated Phantasy Star Visual Novels. Pair games like these up along with adding smaller Japanese Niche but still solid RPGs this could have been a thing. Satellaview could have offered any number of the Super Famicom Dragon Quest games with the BSX treatment to the delight of both Japanese and English speakers.
While there was a definite concern for text space on Famicom carts that is much less the case for the SFC. This actually would have worked brilliantly on the Sega Channel and Satellaview and not been terribly demanding on data speed.
I was thinking of this based on the Lingq app. idea for the Switch I mentioned before and a more primitive concept for the earlier consoles mentioned.
Just imagining what could have been.