[Behind the Scenes] GTA VC - Exclusive Japanese Content (Patreon)

Hello there and Merry Christmas!

Looking at my statistics, the views are currently pumping. 140k in four days! I can't believe my eyes! I want to say huge thanks to all!

I decided to make a post about "behind the scenes" of this video. I am not sure if you find it interesting, but I will try my best to make it interesting and tell you what I had experienced with while making this video. Let's start.

The idea

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According to my logs, I started thinking about this topic in 2016. Back then I knew that Japanese versions of GTA had "several" regional changes and I wanted to make a video about them, so I tried my luck to find someone with a GTA 3 JP and I found one.

Sadly, GTA 3 JP PC version wasn't so unique as I thought, so I decided to skip it. 

Back in April, I had only JP PS2 version, because it was easy enough to find it. On the other hand, I had no interest to complete the game, because it would take a lot of time and effort, so I decided to mod the game to load everything what I need.

PS2 version was a nightmare to mod

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The problem was, it isn't so easy to mod this version, because emulator loads only ISOs and when I mod something in the ISO, there was a high chance that emulator will crash because of my changes. It was a pain in one place, but I managed to find and film some changes.

For instance, here I saw JP Vercetti gang for the first time, I always thought that it is a myth.

The script was in the heavy development, but I didn't know how to properly film the footage and compare it later. 

I knew if I was going to use JP PS2 version, I had to compare it with the international PS2 release, therefore I decided to compare game contents manually and write down these changes to later think how to film those changes.

Of course I had to see cutscenes first to spot those changes, therefore I wasted a lot of time to make PS2 version load those cutscenes. For instance, I had to make a change in the script which spawned Tommy near the area where cutscene took place to properly load the area and avoid lag spikes. 

Also, PS2 version always had "Trails" effect ON, so I had to load the cutscene first, then skip it, then go to the game menu, disable Trails effect by looking at Japanese language and hit the "New Game". I had to do it every single time I mod the game otherwise it could crash. Dang, it was so inconvenient. 

Better to find JP PC version

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After messing around with PS2 version I knew I had to find Japanese PC version so I started lurking around Amazon JP and eBay. Dang, the price was high and only a few sellers could ship it to Europe. I wanted to give you a approximate price today, but no one from these sellers ships to Europe now... But anyways, trust me it was expensive and about 50 or more dollars.

Messing around with the PC version

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I decided to try my luck and ask people for a help. Thankfully, there was a dude from speedrunners community who gave me an ISO of PC version. Dang, these people are osum! I always wanted to thank this community therefore I decided to include "Distribution" mission glitch in the video although it is kinda outdated. 

So yeah, I started to mod the game and film those changes in the end of April. 

Fun fact is, I didn't use the footage above, because it was later merged with another one where I used a flamethrower on these cars.

Less changes in JP PC version

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I also spotted, that JP PC version appears to have less differences and I started to use PS2 version as well. 

To avoid messing around with the PS2 version, I extracted some files and imported them in the PC version. For instance Vercetti gang was captured on a PC version.

As well as Spotlight

It was much easier, than messing around with the PS2 version.

Xbox version

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The script was still in the heavy development. During the summer I started to think, what about Xbox version? I knew that no one had JP xbox version with a modded xbox to rip me these files. I decided to buy it instead. Thankfully it wasn't so expensive and I got it for 23 Euros from Amazon US, I think.

The sad thing is, it wasn't so unique as I though, but at least I could confirm some changes there and film some unique footage, but nothing more. 

And yeah, I can't sell this disc for a month. I guess, no one needs this crap other than me :D

Whack stuff

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Speaking of footage, some fragments from April were recaptured in November. Why? The more I modded the game, the more I experienced became. 

Old footage had a lot of whack stuff in some places, like closed gates in Film Studios with "unavailable for purchase" icon floating near the golden limo. 

Of course, it looked rather weird and could raise a lot of question, but later I found a way to remove this stuff from screen. Basically if you see a fragment with a "HUD" on screen, then it is an old footage from April. 

Gore censorship

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The more I played, the more I saw differences. For instance, I found that the gore is nerfed by a pure accident. I just decided to smash ped's head with a rifle and saw a change. Later I tried to test every single thing I could by looking at the "cut" German version.

English lines in JP version

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This was the easiest thing I could find. I just extracted JP container and compared it with the English one.

Actually there were more changes, but they were boring, so I didn't include it in the video. For instance,

 Who would care?

Cut information

~~~Green Pepper

There was an additional topic I wanted to talk about. After showing you "fixes and improvements" I wanted to tell that these mission changes reappeared in German "Green Pepper" version in 2009. Spoofer actually voiced me these lines, but I had never used them, because, since I named my video "Exclusive JP content", it would kinda break the logic in the video... so I decided to cut this information. The second reason was that it doesn't talk about JP version, so why should I waste a lot of time to explain this thing.

~~~Extra footage from Trojan Voodoo

When I said that Tommy could speak with ghosts, I wanted to show that the mission becomes more broken. If I recall correctly, the cars will stop near the factory and the mission becomes unplayable, no one would open the gates to let new reinforcements in. The mission will be failed.

I decided to cut this fragment, because I already wasted a lot of time to show "Martha's Mugshot" bugs and I though that people will be bored, so I cut this part.

~~~Release date frame

According to my files, I decided to fully change the frame with "timeline" section. As you can see, it was bad, no wonder I decided to change it.

Things I wanted to cover

~~~Changes in the text

I really wanted to check if the text is different. I know, Rockstar used to change vodka and beer to "sake" in VCS, that's what I heard. But what about VC?

The problem is, I don't know Japanese as well as there are no tools to extract Japanese text. Well, I can easily extract, English strings, but not Japanese, because they become broken.

Conclusion

This was one of the hardest videos to make and I am really happy that people found it interesting.

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I hope that was an interesting post to read. See you soon!