Japanese games

[Tiberius]

Planning to buy some japanese games (that have no english support) during this upcoming sale. Do i need to change system regional setting to japan? I remember this has always been the case for many VN games, so i wonder if i need to do the same thing for steam games

[Mailer]

What games are you conflicted on buying?
Usually if there's need for a dramatic system change like that then the PCGamingWiki should also cover it. Check there, and any store page disclaimers before buying.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Planning to buy some japanese games (that have no english support) during this upcoming sale. Do i need to change system regional setting to japan? I remember this has always been the case for many VN games, so i wonder if i need to do the same thing for steam games

Depending on the game, yes. Although I'd be curious which games you're looking at. Not many Japanese language only games I know of on Steam that are sold outside of Japan.

[Tiberius]

something like this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203040/_/

[Kargor]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

something like this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203040/_/

Well, this only says there's no English in this game. They are still selling it to Germany, though. Don't know about the US, or wherever you are. Just put it into the cart and see if lets you buy it.

There are some games that give you a "Japanese-only" release when you buy them in Japan, usually because they have different publishers for Japan and the rest of the world. Some of them might not even include the Japanese version on the western release...

In other words: what you can or cannot buy inside or outside of Japan (or any country) very much depends on the game itself.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Kargor:

Originally posted by Tiberius:

something like this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203040/_/

Well, this only says there's no English in this game. They are still selling it to Germany, though. Don't know about the US, or wherever you are. Just put it into the cart and see if lets you buy it.

There are some games that give you a "Japanese-only" release when you buy them in Japan, usually because they have different publishers for Japan and the rest of the world. Some of them might not even include the Japanese version on the western release...

In other words: what you can or cannot buy inside or outside of Japan (or any country) very much depends on the game itself.

My question was not abt whether i can buy it or not. Its abt whether i have to change the windows system regional setting to japan to play it, something thats very common in non steam japanese games

[Kargor]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

My question was not abt whether i can buy it or not. Its abt whether i have to change the windows system regional setting to japan to play it, something thats very common in non steam japanese games

That definitely depends on the game; Steam has nothing to do with that.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Kargor:

Originally posted by Tiberius:

My question was not abt whether i can buy it or not. Its abt whether i have to change the windows system regional setting to japan to play it, something thats very common in non steam japanese games

That definitely depends on the game; Steam has nothing to do with that.

Thats why im making this thread, i'm trying to ask ppl who have bought those games (obviously you havent) if the steam versions tend to have the same requirement.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

something like this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203040/_/

Well, that one has a demo. Try it. But as for any others, without mentioning their titles, how could people say? But generally it will very much depend on the specifics of your Windows installation.

If it cannot support the native display of Japanese fonts, you'll have to find a way so it can. Locale Emulator or something similar *may* work, but it doesn't work with all games.

[Qbert ⭐]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Originally posted by Kargor:

Well, this only says there's no English in this game. They are still selling it to Germany, though. Don't know about the US, or wherever you are. Just put it into the cart and see if lets you buy it.

There are some games that give you a "Japanese-only" release when you buy them in Japan, usually because they have different publishers for Japan and the rest of the world. Some of them might not even include the Japanese version on the western release...

In other words: what you can or cannot buy inside or outside of Japan (or any country) very much depends on the game itself.

My question was not abt whether i can buy it or not. Its abt whether i have to change the windows system regional setting to japan to play it, something thats very common in non steam japanese games

Usually, that's a thing for older games (to avoid beign played outside Japan)

Nowdays I havent found one on steam with that (they may be region locked?)

Try the demo and see if they check for windows language.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by Qbert ⭐:

Usually, that's a thing for older games (to avoid beign played outside Japan)

It's not something done intentionally. The problem stems down to language display. English, etc., are single-byte languages. Japanese (and similar) are double-byte languages. So anything not using unicode to display languages will throw up problems when encountering double-byte languages -- they simply don't have the ability to recognise the characters (hence you get square boxes, garbled text, and executables that cannot run because they can't find what they're looking for.

Now, this goes both ways. For OSes older than Windows 10, several games sold on Steam won't work on Japanese language OSes because their special characters don't match up (usually a problem for games that include the TM symbol in their directory names or executable names. Windows 10 handles this differently and negates the problem almost entirely.

Locale Emulator and similar programs allow the running of (most) Japanese games by tricking the executable into thinking the correct language versions are being used. But if you don't actually have the language packs installed, you're still going to see squares or garbled characters. This isn't actually specific to non-Japanese language versions of Windows either. If, like me, you have a Japanese language version of Windows and choose to use English as it's display language, the same problems can occur -- with the same solutions.

[ValentB]

https://xupefei.github.io/Locale-Emulator/

[Qbert ⭐]

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

Originally posted by Qbert ⭐:

Usually, that's a thing for older games (to avoid beign played outside Japan)

It's not something done intentionally. The problem stems down to language display. English, etc., are single-byte languages. Japanese (and similar) are double-byte languages. So anything not using unicode to display languages will throw up problems when encountering double-byte languages -- they simply don't have the ability to recognise the characters (hence you get square boxes, garbled text, and executables that cannot run because they can't find what they're looking for.

Now, this goes both ways. For OSes older than Windows 10, several games sold on Steam won't work on Japanese language OSes because their special characters don't match up (usually a problem for games that include the TM symbol in their directory names or executable names. Windows 10 handles this differently and negates the problem almost entirely.

Locale Emulator and similar programs allow the running of (most) Japanese games by tricking the executable into thinking the correct language versions are being used. But if you don't actually have the language packs installed, you're still going to see squares or garbled characters. This isn't actually specific to non-Japanese language versions of Windows either. If, like me, you have a Japanese language version of Windows and choose to use English as it's display language, the same problems can occur -- with the same solutions.

Now I know something usefull, thanks for the info!

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Chika Ogiue:

Originally posted by Tiberius:

something like this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2203040/_/

Well, that one has a demo. Try it. But as for any others, without mentioning their titles, how could people say? But generally it will very much depend on the specifics of your Windows installation.

If it cannot support the native display of Japanese fonts, you'll have to find a way so it can. Locale Emulator or something similar *may* work, but it doesn't work with all games.

Oh well.. i was hoping it'd be different for steam games

[pkd09492]

something like this

[ywz15035]

That definitely depends on the game; Steam has nothing to do with that.