Yeah, It's a very old game and I have no idea where the dev is (he was a pretty prominent figure in the RPG Maker community but disappeared a couple years ago).

You'd have to install one of these fonts for the text to display correctly, IIRC: http://divinelegy.com/rmt/utilities/rm2k_fonts.zip I don't remember which exactly but it might be RM2000.FON.

If you can get that far without RPG Maker 2000 I think it'll be fine.