Indeed, infovs is right. VW's release is a ripoff, it's not theirs. I can confirm that the files are identical, and VW has just padded their EXE with zeroes to make it look bigger. The different bytes betweeen the two files are:
japanese vs VW
============
000002C8: 56 73
000002C9: 4F 74
000002CA: 4C 78
000002CB: 4B 74
000002CC: 53 37
000002CD: 57 37
000002CE: 41 34
===============
Those bytes are text:
"stx774" and "VOLKSWA"
000002F0: 47 73
000002F1: 45 74
000002F2: 4E 78
000002F3: 32 74
000002F4: 6F 33
000002F5: 6F 37
000002F6: 36 31
===============
Those bytes are text:
"stxt371 " and "GEN2006"
006E7914: 45 73
006E7915: 4E 74
006E7916: 20 78
006E7917: 20 74
006E7918: 20 33
006E7919: 20 37
=============
Those bytes are text:
"stxt371" and "EN 1"
So, VW's "crack" is just a lame ass ripoff off the Japanese cracked EXE, therefore a FAKE release. It also needs win2000 compatibility mode to work, same as the japanese one. VW have just filled the EXE with junk and put their signatures in it, without changing anything substantial in the file whatsoever.
Please don't upload this to gcw, VW are just lame thieves, who have released their "cracked" exe to spread their name around
Also, it's true that you don't need to set win2000 compatibility mode to get the game to work. You only need to check the "Turn off advanced text services for this program" to get it working, which makes sense, as advanced text services are used for the Japanese language. The "Disable visual themes" checkbox didn't make a difference for me, I only needed to disable advanced text services to play the game
Plus, the VW "crack" has a file modification date of yesterday (4/1/06), exactly 8 minutes before Nightmare85 made his post with the link to it *cough*. Now, I wonder who the people in this VW group really are
*cough*ban?*cough*