FF7 Japanese PC

[amerika.jin]

Is there any way to acquire the Japanese version of FF7 for PC?
Or maybe a language patch to the English one?

Also, what are the chances the mods (to make the game look better) will work for it?

[cmh175]

こんにちはアメリカジン。始めまして。

This is tricky. Getting the JP version of the game isn't hard (though it's nearly impossible to buy...) the issue is unless you buy it and have an activation key you cant do anything with it. The conversion tools that convert the game to the 98 version will work, but only in English, French, German, and Spanish. I believe it works by actually translating the text from one language to the English version, so technically you're always playing the English version of the game. I've been trying to find a way to add support for the JP files so a mod can be made for everyone to play in Japanese, but so far all the text just keeps loading as jibberish, the game isn't able to read and properly display Kana and Kanji.

I'm hoping to find a way to get this to work (and am open to ideas if anyone can think of how to make this work). Realistically I suppose I could just translate the Japanese text to Romaji so the game can at least properly display the characters, but that's not nearly as fun as playing the actual Japanese translation.

~Since I will likely need some help getting this mod to work I'll list what I've tried so far.
First I tried just renaming the JP files to English. Technically this does work and saves a ton of time so retranslating the game isn't necessary. The game can't read the Japanese characters though so it just displays jibberish like trying to open an encrypted file. I think the issue is in the executable, it needs to be patched to be compatible.

I tried translating the text in the kernel and flevel, which does display properly in Walmarket and MakouReactor. However I just get the same jibberish after I save the changes and reopen the kernel and flevel.

Ultimately I think the only way this will work is either the Conversion tools need to be updated to support the Japanese game, or the english game needs to be patched to support Kana and Kanji. I can help with the production and testing of this, but probably need help making it work. I just don't have enough understanding of the games mechanics and executable. When a patch or hex file can be made for this I can easily make a 7thHeaven mod so anyone who's interested can easily play in Japanese without needing to directly installing anything. 

[amerika.jin]

こんにちは、はじめまして！(*'▽')

In terms of ideas of getting it able to display Japanese characters, without having a copy of both to inspect, the only thing I can think of is that it probably has a font file. The font file in the English version most likely doesn't support Japanese characters. If that's the case, I imagine you'd have to change it to one that does.

The only way to get the game (that I could find) is to buy it off the JP Square-Enix store. It appears that a JP VPN + a WebMoney pre-paid card would be the way to go. Though I haven't actually tried it yet.

[cmh175]

I have a legal copy of the Japanese International game (curiously only sold in Japan lol). The trouble is it isn't moddable in nearly any way other than lgp changes. So I'm hoping to figure out how to make the English version of the game display Japanese characters so it can read the JP files. I've been looking for something like that but haven't seen anything. I was hoping to figure out how to patch the english FF7.exe from the 98 version from the JP executable. I ended up patching it directly into the Japanese executable though because it then asked for a serial number lol. If it's possible to figure this out and make a hex file for the changes this can be easily applied and installed using 7thHeaven. I'll have to keep looking, if anyone with a greater understanding of the game has any ideas your input would be appreciated.