running japanese games with japanese fonts on linux (lutris + wine)

i bought the game 魔棒少女みらくるくるん.

installing on lutris

1. install lutris (if u dont have it yet).

   https://lutris.net/downloads

2. click the + (at the top) and "add locally installed game".

3. fill the name and choose "wine" as the "runner".

4. in the "game options" tab, u point to where the .exe file u downloaded is.

5. this is the important part: go to the "system options" tab.
6. down there, there will be "environment variables".
7. click "add" and put this:
   • key: LANG
   • value: ja_JP.UTF-8

done! when u open the game through lutris, it will "pretend" ur pc is in japanese just for that game!

if ur not using lutris, u can do this via terminal too:

LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8 wine /path/to/your/game.exe

2. install japanese fonts (for ur linux)

besides that, ur linux needs to have the fonts (letters) for japanese! otherwise, even if wine does it right, the system doesnt know how to "draw" the kanjis and hiraganas.

• if u use ubuntu, mint or debian: sudo apt install fonts-noto-cjk
• if u use arch or manjaro: sudo pacman -S noto-fonts-cjk
• if u use fedora: sudo dnf install google-noto-cjk-fonts

fix: install codecs (winetricks)

in my case, it gave "black screen + music playing". its the most classic symptom in the world of missing video codecs! (¬‿¬)

lutris makes this easy!

1. in lutris, find ur game in the list.
2. right click on it > winetricks.
3. a small window will open. choose select the default wineprefix (should already be selected) > ok.

4. in the next window, choose install a windows dll or component > ok.

5. now a giant list will open.
6. we need to install video codecs. look for and mark these (u might need to install one at a time):
   • lavfilters (this one is really good, its modern!)
   • k-lite_codec_pack (this is a classic big pack, should have what we need)
   • wmp10 (or wmp9) (installs windows media player, many old japanese games use this)
   • (might as well install d3dx9 and d3dcompiler_43 too, its always good for games like this)

after installing, close everything and try opening the game again!

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