Import Problems

Sakura imports NScripter and ONScripter game archives directly on your device. See Importing Games for the full step-by-step flow — this page covers what to do when something goes wrong along the way.

Symptom: Your archive is grayed out or missing from the system file picker when you tap Select Archive.

Cause: The File Ext. Filter setting only shows recognized archive extensions by default.

Solution:

1. Go to Settings > General
2. Turn off File Ext. Filter
3. Try importing again

Symptom: Importing a .exe file shows Unsupported Format: “This .exe isn’t a recognized installer (NSIS, Inno Setup) or self-extractor (zip/7z/LHA SFX) — CAB isn’t supported. Extract it on a computer and repack the game as zip, 7z, rar, or tar.gz.”

Cause: Sakura can import NSIS installers, Inno Setup installers, and zip/7z/LHA self-extracting archives, but CAB-based self-extractors are not supported — iOS has no way to unpack that container format.

Solution: On a computer, extract the installer and repack the game folder as .zip, .7z, .rar, or .tar.gz, then import that archive instead.

Symptom: “Unsupported archive format. Supported types: zip, 7z, rar, tar, tar.gz, bz2.”

Cause: The file isn’t one of Sakura’s supported archive formats at all.

Solution: Repack the game as one of the supported types listed above.

Symptom: Extraction completes (or is aborted before it starts) with: “This archive doesn’t look like an ONScripter game. Look for archives containing 0.txt, nscript.dat, or an arc.nsa pack.”

Cause: Sakura scans the archive for recognizable NScripter/ONScripter markers before importing it — boot scripts such as 0.txt, 00.txt, nscript.dat, nscr_sec.dat, nscript.___, 0.utf, 00.utf, pscript.dat, or script.file (the ONScripter-RU packed script format used by games like Umineko), or packed archives such as arc*.nsa, *.ns2, or *.sar. If none of these are found, the archive is rejected rather than imported as a broken game.

Solutions:

• Make sure the archive actually contains the game’s script/data files, not just an installer wrapper or unrelated folder contents.
• If the archive is nested several folders deep (e.g. Title 1.0/Title 1.0/game files…), Sakura already searches up to 6 folders deep automatically — but check that the real game folder isn’t buried even deeper.
• If you’re confident this is a valid ONScripter game and it’s still rejected, see Support.

Symptom: “RAR extraction incomplete: N essential files missing or truncated (e.g. {sample}). Re-pack the game as ZIP or 7z and import that.”

Cause: After extracting a .rar archive, Sakura double-checks that boot-critical files actually made it to disk intact. If any are missing or truncated — often due to a corrupted download or an unusual RAR variant — the import is stopped rather than left half-extracted.

Solution: Re-download the archive if possible, or repack it as .zip or .7z on a computer and import that instead.

Symptom: Sakura prompts “This archive is password-protected. Please enter the password to continue” and rejects the password you enter.

Cause: Password support is limited to .zip, .rar, and .7z archives, and the password must match exactly.

Solution: Double-check the password (watch for trailing spaces or the wrong case). If the archive uses a different encryption scheme entirely, it may not be supported — try decrypting it on a computer first.

Symptom: “Not enough free space to extract this archive. Please free up storage and try again.”

Cause: Extracting an archive temporarily needs extra headroom — roughly 3× the archive size if it has to be staged locally first (e.g. from iCloud Drive), or 2× if it’s already on-device.

Solution: Free up space using the Storage Manager and try again.

Symptom: The import seems to hang or the archive never seems to actually copy.

Cause: If your archive lives in iCloud Drive but hasn’t been downloaded to the device yet, Sakura has to materialize it locally before it can extract it — this can take a while on a slow connection.

Solution: Open the Files app and manually download the archive first (tap it, or use “Download Now”), then import it from Sakura.

Symptom: Filenames inside an imported Japanese-language game show mojibake instead of readable Japanese characters.

Cause: Zip entry names are decoded as UTF-8 first and fall back to Shift-JIS automatically during in-app import, which fixes most cases. If you instead transferred the game via Web Transfer using browser-side extraction, the browser can’t preserve non-Unicode (Shift-JIS) filenames — Sakura will show a “Japanese filenames detected” prompt in that case.

Solution: When that prompt appears, choose “Send archive as-is (recommended)” so the device extracts the archive itself and keeps the original filenames, instead of “Continue with browser extraction” (which replaces damaged filenames with placeholders).

If your archive still won’t import after trying the steps above, see Support — include the game name and the exact error message you saw.