Final Fantasy IV Name Patcher

This is a patcher for the Steam version of Final Fantasy IV (3D Remake) for playing in Japanese on a non-Japanese version of Windows.

Without using this, all of the game's character names show as jumbled text in the game. For example, Cecil's name shows as ƒZƒVƒ‹ instead of セシル. After applying this patch, the character names will show properly:

Before	After

See the explanation below for more details on what the patch does.

Note

The patcher will automatically backup your existing executable to FF4.exe.original.

Instructions

• Download ffiv-name-patcher.exe from the Releases section.
• Copy/move the ffiv-name-patcher.exe file to the root of your game's installation directory.
• Double click the patcher to open it.
• Run the game to ensure the names are working properly.
• You're done! You can now delete the ffiv-name-patcher.exe file.

Manually Running the Script

If you prefer not to run the executable, you can manually run the script:

• Ensure you have Python 3.11+ installed.
• Open a terminal or Powershell window, and change directory to your Final Fantasy IV's game installation.
• Execute the following commands

curl -OL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/blacktide082/ffiv-name-patcher/master/patch.py
python patch.py

Manually Patch the Executable with a Hex Editor

If you prefer to manually patch the game with a hex editor, you can follow the steps below:

• Create a backup of FF4.exe.
• Open FF4.exe with your favorite hex editor (I recommend ImHex if you don't have one).
• Navigate to offset 2C089, or search for 6A 00 FF D3 and navigate to the first result.
• Replace 6A 00 with EB 66.

  Note: There are two sequences of 6A 00 before FF D3, ensure you are only replacing the two bytes directly before FF D3.

• Navigate to offset 2C0CC, or the second result for 6A 00 FF D3.
• Replace 6A 00 with EB 2A.
• Navigate to 2C0F0 and replace C3 CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC CC with C3 68 A4 03 00 00 EB 93 68 A4 03 00 00 EB CF CC.
• Save the file.

The following image shows the 3 locations that need to be modified:

Explanation

All of the character's names are stored as constant strings in the game's executable file and are encoded with the Shift-JIS encoding.

The game uses the Windows API MultiByteToWideChar to convert these strings from Shift-JIS to UTF-16, but it does so by using codepage 0, which uses the system's codepage (which is only Shift-JIS on Japanese versions of Windows).

This patches the first parameter of the calls to MultiByteToWideChar to 932, which is the codepage for Shift-JIS.

Here is a diff showing the changes to the assembly:

@@ -5,8 +5,8 @@
         0002c081 8b 1d b4        MOV        EBX,dword ptr [KERNEL32.DLL::MultiByteToWideChar]
                  90 58 00
         0002c087 6a 00           PUSH       0x0
-        0002c089 6a 00           PUSH       0x0
+        0002c089 eb 66           JMP        Fix1
+   MultiByteToWideChar1:
         0002c08b ff d3           CALL       EBX
@@ -32,8 +32,8 @@
         0002c0ca 6a 00           PUSH       0x0
-        0002c0cc 6a 00           PUSH       0x0
+        0002c0cc eb 2a           JMP        Fix2
+   MultiByteToWideChar2:
         0002c0ce ff d3           CALL       EBX
@@ -51,18 +51,12 @@
         0002c0f0 c3              RET
-        0002c0f1 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f2 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f3 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f4 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f5 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f6 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f7 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f8 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0f9 cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0fa cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0fb cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0fc cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0fd cc              ??         CCh
-        0002c0fe cc              ??         CCh
+    Fix1:
+        0002c0f1 68 a4 03        PUSH       0x3a4
+                 00 00
+        0002c0f6 eb 93           JMP        MultiByteToWideChar1
+    Fix2:
+        0002c0f8 68 a4 03        PUSH       0x3a4
+                 00 00
+        0002c0fd eb cf           JMP        MultiByteToWideChar2

Building

To build the program into a single executable, ensure you have Python 3.11+ with pyinstaller installed, and run the build.bat file:

pip install pyinstaller
.\build.bat