Sexy Beach 3 ;-)

Just in case you have never heard of this game, Sexy Beach 3 is an adult title sold exclusively in Japan. In the game, you take the role of some random guy who gets invited for a holiday on “Sexy Island”, a small vacation island populated with a handful of other guests, which, by mere chance, are all good-looking women. You can probably see where this is heading to now… :D

Right, Sexy Beach 3 is basically just another sex simulation game, only that the Japanese are miles and miles ahead of the stuff churned out by western development studios. The game features beautiful anime girls, deforming clothing, real-time skin tanning and realistic boob physics. Yes, really.
Getting this game to install in Windows Vista is quite a headache, so I took the liberty to write down exactly what I did to make it work in a western Windows Vista system.

1. Install Sexy Beach 3. Do not use the Autorun feature or Setup.exe, instead, manually select the .msi file in Windows Explorer.

Screenshot of an explorer window with the Sexy Beach 3 MSI installer selected

2. I’d recommend installing Sexy Beach 3 in a folder without Japanese letters in its name.

Screenshot of the path entry dialog in the Sexy Beach 3 installer

3. Install Sexy Beach 3 Plus if you have it (otherwise skip to step 5). As before, you need to manually select the .msi file in Windows Explorer.

Screenshot of an explorer window with the Sexy Beach 3 add-on installer selected

4. Choose a different folder from the original Sexy Beach 3 folder. The addon is not supposed to be installed into the original game folder. Again, I’d recommend not to use Japanese letters in the folder name.

Screenshot of the path entry dialog in the Sexy Beach 3 add-on installer

5. Install Microsoft AppLocale (download from here). At the time of this writing, AppLocale does not install cleanly on Windows Vista unless run from an Administrator Command Prompt. Windows XP users can skip to step 6.

5.1. Open an Administrator Command Prompt. Locate the Command Prompt entry in your start menu, right click and select “Run as Administrator”.

Screenshot of the DOS Command Prompt in the Windows Start menu

5.2. Execute apploc.msi in this command prompt by typing the full path and file name of the msi file. If you saved the file to your desktop, for example, the path would be C:\Users\<name>\Desktop\apploc.msi. If in doubt, move it into the C:\ root directory and type C:\apploc.msi.

Screenshot of the command to lauch AppLoc.msi being entered in a DOS box

6. Run Microsoft AppLocale

Screenshot of the Microsoft AppLocale in the Windows Start Menu

6.1. Select the Sexy Beach 3 Plus executable. If you don’t have the addon, select the normal Sexy Beach 3 executable.

Screenshot of the Sexy Beach 3 executable selected in a file selector

6.2. Choose Japanese as the language to use (the lastmost entry in the language drop list).

Screenshot of the list of languages in Microsoft AppLocale

6.3. Make sure the ‘Create Shortcut’ option is checked.

Screenshot of Microsoft AppLocale asking whether a shortcut should be created

7. AppLocale will save the shortcut in your start menu. For your convenience, you can drag it onto your desktop if you wish.

Screenshot of the shortcut AppLocale has created in the Windows Start Menu

The game will now run and display proper Japanese letters. One more note to german users: If your system country is set to German / Germany (which is quite likely :P), the game’s characters will be tanned so much they look like afro-americans. You can fix this by specifying that you’re located in the USA or Japan.