Japanese games, Win98?

[Edmond Dantes]

Okay, so after playing Lolo for my blog, I downloaded "Eggerland Episode 0: Quest of Lala" and installed it on my Windows 98 computer.

The game plays fine, its just that text doesn't display--it all comes out as either gibberish or underscores.

I'm wondering how I can make it display actual Japanese text (including system text) without installing a Japanese version of Windows.

Any suggestions?

[bb_hood]

Might be the emulator you are using

[bb_hood]

Might be the emulator you are using

sorry, i thought it was a nes rom

[Parodius Duh!]

positive the Japanese language pack is up to date on your computer?

I hate to say it but you prob need a Japanese version of windows if you have the right language packs installed. My friend purchased a bunch of Space Shooters for Windows 98-XP and he ended up having to download a Japanese version of XP to run them correctly.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Windows XP has a language pack you can install to play games in Japanese. Windows 98... I used to do a ton of crap for Japanese games and software to look right back in my early romhacking days.

You might have to install a Japanese Windows 98. :\

[Edmond Dantes]

Okay, so I did some additional research...

Apparently, I need a program called a Japanese Global IME (file name: JAMONDO.EXE) that used to be downloadable from Microsoft's own home page, but not anymore, and apparently nobody foresaw this possibility so now I can't find it. All these websites talk about it and offer "guides" to installing and setting it up (you double-click an icon and watch it go, why does this need a guide?) but their download links all link to Microsoft's now-nonexistant download page. And apparently, its not on the Internet Archive either.

If any of you have a program called JAMONDO.EXE, let me know.

[Gameguy]

If any of you have a program called JAMONDO.EXE, let me know.
I think I found it, I'll post a link below. I found it on some website written in Portuguese discussing Japanese culture.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie5/IME/5.02/W9XNT4/EN-US/JAMONDO.exe

I've actually been looking for this since you posted this topic, I've found the same info as you on Global IME but I didn't post earlier as I couldn't find anything useful before now. It took me this long to finally find this.

[Jorpho]

NJStar CJK Viewer. It is magical. Unfortunately, it's not free either.

The more serious problem with Japanese games in Windows 98 is that Windows 98 does not recognize Japanese characters (or at least mojibake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake)) as valid for use in file names: Scandisk will complain when it finds files with Japanese names, and decompression utilities will refuse to write files. I'm not sure if anything short of Japanese Windows 98 will fix the problem. Fortuantely, a lot of stuff that runs under Windows 98 does not use Japanese file names for critical stuff.

[Edmond Dantes]

Thanks, Gameguy. Downloaded and installed the IME.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to fix the issue... I'm guessing I'm just gonna have to live with the text problems. That being said, Lolo games aren't very text-dependent anyway.

[Gameguy]

Are you sure it's actually in Japanese? I'm just looking up the game on Youtube and all of the menus are in English and the ending text is also in broken English. I don't know if this had a translation to English or if it's supposed to be like that, I've played some Japanese games that were entirely in English so I'm thinking it's possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLNYm9p4WyE

[Jorpho]

NJStar CJK Viewer. It is magical. Unfortunately, it's not free either.To be quite clear, there's a "shareware" version up for download. Seriously, it works wonders.

If you want a suitable test game to see if the IME is doing its job, try Virtual In from http://www.vector.co.jp/download/file/win95/game/fh293060.html .

[Edmond Dantes]

Are you sure it's actually in Japanese? I'm just looking up the game on Youtube and all of the menus are in English and the ending text is also in broken English. I don't know if this had a translation to English or if it's supposed to be like that, I've played some Japanese games that were entirely in English so I'm thinking it's possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLNYm9p4WyE

If you go to the "Config" menu in-game, at the bottom of the screen there's Lolo saying something (I think describing the options), but on my comp it appears as a bunch of underscores.

Also, system dialogue (IE error messages telling you to switch to 256 colors, asking if you want to save etc) appear as gibberish.

Admittedly Lolo's dialogue balloon may be something else entirely, but the system dialogue I'm sure is supposed to be Japanese.

[Gameguy]

Did you try changing the regional settings of your computer? There should be an option somewhere in the control panel.

Just checking, can you actually type in Japanese now that you've installed Global IME? You should be able to now write in Japanese in word processing programs. At least you'd know if your computer can access the fonts correctly.

[Edmond Dantes]

Windows 98 doesn't have regional settings, I think. I'll test that and your other suggestion later today.

[otaku]

hope this can be figured out I'm curious now and interested in revisiting the good ol days of being a teen with windows 98 and xp lol. Some cool old japanese games I'm sure