[HN Gopher] The world of Japan's PC-98 computer
___________________________________________________________________
The world of Japan's PC-98 computer
Author : ecliptik
Score : 151 points
Date : 2025-05-23 20:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (strangecomforts.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (strangecomforts.com)
| TheHideout wrote:
| Because hug of death: https://archive.is/iBrYt
| Taikonerd wrote:
| Apparently this site is hosted by a PC-98 too...
| hello_computer wrote:
| PC-98 eroge art is beautiful. These writers--who freely take pot-
| shots at the "perverted" hikikomori of 30 years ago--wouldn't
| dare criticize the hardcore pornography (Bonnie Blue? The
| OnlyFans Economy!) the world is presently steeped in. It's like
| they know which waggle dance lets you in, and which one gets you
| booted from the hive...
| rtpg wrote:
| Plenty of PC98 games out there that are just pure smut and
| assault fantasies.
|
| You could make an argument about the production environments of
| "actual real person" pornography but if you're talking about
| aesthetics and morality of the end product? I dunno... tough
| sell to me for a "random" one.
|
| Plenty of "real art" PC98 stuff too ofc (there are also of
| course people on the record saying "we put stuff in here so we
| could sell our RPG" and the like... market demands).
| mrandish wrote:
| > this now-forgotten art style native to Japan is known,
| shorthand, as "PC-98"
|
| I'm _really_ into retro computing having collected over a hundred
| 80s 'home' computers (all non-PC/Mac), including at least a
| dozen Japanese models, but have never heard the term "PC-98" to
| describe a particular style of pixel art, probably because I
| don't speak Japanese and haven't lived there. However, I do see
| some traits in how the examples shown were constructed which
| strike me as unique beyond just the obvious Japanese aesthetic of
| the content.
|
| While the article highlights that Japanese computers had greater
| memory and graphics capabilities earlier due to the need to
| represent more complex fonts, there's another factor I suspect is
| behind the differences I'm seeing in those images. Japanese
| business computers tended to have analog RGB output and displays
| earlier and more commonly than those in the U.S. Of course,
| analog RGB was available in the U.S. around the same time but it
| wasn't usually considered worth the increased cost for mainstream
| desktop use in the early 80s. Monochrome or 4 colors were
| generally considered sufficient for 80-column capable text
| displays (~640 pixels wide).
|
| Some of the dot patterns I'm seeing in those examples work well
| on RGB displays but wouldn't work as well on composite video
| displays or TVs. In the US, early home computer pixel art
| targeted resolutions like 256 x 192 and 320 x 200 in 4 or 16
| colors but generally assumed the pixels would be displayed on a
| TV or composite monitor and so leveraged the pixel blending and
| additional artifact colors composite video can uniquely create to
| enhance their artwork. These composite-exploiting blends and
| colors are lost when those images are displayed in RGB, leaving
| only the original pixel patterns which aren't what the original
| pixel artist saw or intended when they created the image (which
| is why original composite-targeted pixel art is best viewed on a
| composite CRT or CRT emulation). I think these Japanese artists
| being able to target analog RGB output is behind some of the
| subtle (but cool) uniqueness I'm seeing in the "PC-98" pixel
| patterns.
| jordibunster wrote:
| I remember trying to install Slackware as a 16 year old living
| as an exchange student in Japan and not getting anywhere. Turns
| out PC98 needed a patched kernel.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| IMO PC-98 is unique because it sits between EGA and VGA in
| capabilities; it is still a 16 color display, but from a much
| broader palette (4096 vs 64). EGA is very distinctive because
| of the limited palette.
| mrandish wrote:
| Indeed, starting with IBM's initial 5150 design, early PC
| graphics made cost, memory and capability trade-offs which
| would soon be seen as _unfortunate_ from a graphics and
| gaming perspective. Although IBM specced the platform and
| chose Motorola 's 6845 video display chip, I assign some
| blame to Motorola too for not having created a range of video
| chips with increasing capabilities to choose from. We'll
| never know if IBM would have ponied up a few dollars more for
| a chip with at least a 256 color palette or a few other
| niceties but it's always possible.
|
| Strangely, Motorola did eventually decide to get serious
| about offering more capable graphics in the form of the RMS
| chipset but not until it was already too little and too late.
| They announced the RMS chipset in 1984 and tried to drum up
| interest among system designers but eventually cancelled it
| before release amidst lukewarm response and bugs in the early
| prototypes (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/question
| s/10977/fat...). It certainly didn't help that other options
| like TI's 99x8 VDP chips were now getting cheaper and the
| pre-Commodore Hi-Toro company was shopping around their Amiga
| chipset to all the major consumer computer manufacturers in
| 1984.
| michalpleban wrote:
| The Motorola 6845 CRTC chip is quite versatile, and one of
| its unique characteristics is that it knows and cares
| nothing about the resolution or number of colors on the
| screen. It is just a display address generator, which is
| meant to provide some external hardware with a memory
| address that contains data to be displayed at some part of
| the screen. What to do with this address and data is
| completely up to the computer hardware, which can interpret
| it whichever it wants. So there is nothing in the 6845 chip
| that prevents using it to display 256, 4096 or 16777216
| colors on the screen.
| flomo wrote:
| IBM only gave maybe 1.0 shits about gaming, to the extent
| they needed "business graphics" like charts, and maybe just
| some extra fun shit. The primary competition was loads of
| CP/M "business micros" with not many real graphical games
| at all. IBM benchmarked the Apple II+ with a Z80 Softcard
| because that was the ultimate mullet machine, all the
| business software upfront, all the gaming party in the
| back. CGA was good enough for an Apple II game or a pie
| chart, and that's all they cared about.
| mrandish wrote:
| +1 for describing the "Apple II+ with a Z80 Softcard" as
| "the ultimate mullet machine, all the business software
| upfront, all the gaming party in the back."
|
| I agree with your point, the bar IBM was shooting for was
| set by existing popular microcomputers circa 1979. The
| only significant consideration for future
| growth/competition was seemingly that the established
| trend of RAM size growth would probably continue. At the
| time there wasn't really any established trend of
| progressive growth in graphics resolution or colors. Pre-
| Apple II examples like the Cromemco Dazzler for the
| Altair weren't fundamentally different than the Apple II
| and probably not even on their radar due to being barely
| out of the kit/hobbyist level.
|
| I'll add that when considering the 5150's initial design,
| the "IBM" we're talking about isn't really " _The_ IBM "
| but rather a sole skunkworks project located in a
| backwater division down in Boca Raton Florida intended as
| an experiment to learn more about these new
| microcomputers. Most of the rest of the traditional IBM
| management structure barely knew about it during
| development and those parts that did mostly ignored it.
| If 'mainstream IBM' had approached the PC as a real IBM
| project, it would have certainly been very different and
| probably unsuccessful (if it had managed to ship at all).
| As it was, the 5150 was only able to use off the shelf
| components (including the CPU) because it was considered
| a one-off experiment initially given a month for the
| design and a year to ship.
| simne wrote:
| > RAM size growth would probably continue.
|
| True. But note - very long RAM grows ~ periodically
| doubling one chip size, and first chips don't have
| controller inside, so require very short traces to bus
| chip or CPU.
|
| And usually, old chip becomes for example 10% cheaper,
| but twice size priced ~50% more than old, and to adopt
| new chips you need new memory controller with additional
| pins.
|
| > At the time there wasn't really any established trend
| of progressive growth in graphics resolution or colors
|
| Unfortunately, only partially true.
|
| You may hear about RAMDAC on video forums topics. It is
| partially palette, but also generator of video signal,
| reading from RAM very fast.
|
| Problem is that first "fast page" DRAM have very slow
| interface, so when larger chips become available (and
| with cheaper kilobytes than older, this was real logic of
| semiconductor technology progress), speed of RAM was not
| grow. And unfortunately, this once become bottleneck, it
| limits grow pixelrate, so even with twice RAM you could
| not got twice resolution.
|
| In past, I few times calculated speed of RAM need to give
| classic 60 FPS, and at least up to (and including) first
| SDRAM machines just show their screen was enough to eat
| significant share of main RAM throughput, so internal
| graphics could even affect CPU performance.
|
| On consoles problem was not so harmful, because limited
| resolution of consumer TV, but on few consoles used
| expensive frame buffer inside graphics chip.
|
| On modern GPUs problem of RAM throughput solved by used
| overclocked designed VRAM chips and with extremely wide
| RAM bus, so chips run in parallel - in computers typical
| ~64bit, but GPUs start with 128 and top models have 512
| or even 1024 bits.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I didn't read your comment all the way to the end; later EGA
| games used similar dithering patterns (Loom[1] was one of the
| later and most visually impressive EGA games)
|
| 1: https://www.superrune.com/tutorials/loom_ega.php
| mrandish wrote:
| Those Loom comparisons between EGA and VGA are cool. Very
| impressive work that they did back then. It really highlights
| how much 16 color palettes forced artists toward simplified
| cartoon or comic-like representations yet adding just a
| couple hundred colors enabled the best artists to evoke
| almost photographic dimensionality, texture and lighting
| effects.
|
| If you haven't seen it, you might find this site useful.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_color_palettes. I use
| it as a reference when I'm exploring original retro pixel art
| from various platforms.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| So far only collect 2 Casio one basic and one, well, lisp (!)
| calculators ... interesting artefacts. Still try to get a
| national those tube-like display scientific calendars used during
| my senior secondary school.
|
| This is a total different genre. So hard level .... In 1980s just
| thought it was a j model to be ... wonder any simulation would
| see as collecting one just have a look is impossible.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| This emulation seems to say pc98 is msdos based and hence can run
| on dosbox-x
|
| https://dosbox-x.com/wiki/Guide%3APC%E2%80%9098-emulation-in...
|
| Seeing some yt even more confused as pointed out by wiki it is a
| 16/32 bit ...
| theogravity wrote:
| I totally recommend the Basement Brothers YouTube channel which
| has a large set of reviews with summarized playthroughs and
| historical background for PC-88 and 98 games:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96tLZTtNcZA&list=PL_W1EM66_B...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| For those into light-novel or anime, 16bit sensation is straight
| into this topic, right as the PC-98 area was under pressure.
|
| [0] https://16bitsensation-al.com/
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| And, fully in line with its themes, the legendary Akiba Mister
| Doughnut it features shut its doors for the last time last
| year.
| mastazi wrote:
| Link seems to be experiencing HN's hug of death, archived link:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250523210148/https://strangeco...
|
| Note: the link contains some slightly NSFW images
| TD-Linux wrote:
| Almost none of the games pictured are actually "doujin" games -
| they are commercial publishers.
|
| Also, the reason we don't remember PC-98 is because it was never
| sold in the US (except for the very unpopular APC-III). It was
| the most popular computer on Japan from late 80s to early 90s and
| is well remembered there. Being the most popular PC, there is a
| huge amount of software for it, including huge amounts of office
| and productivity software, many genres of games, and plenty of
| Western ports.
| msephton wrote:
| I agree. Whilst it's great to see a mention of PC-98 the
| article views it through a very odd lens, and gets a lot of
| things confused or even just plain wrong.
| bitbasher wrote:
| I agree. I posted a documentary on actual doujin gamedev in
| Japan, but it looks like the documentary was removed from
| Youtube. You can still find it on archive.org though for those
| that are interested in the scene.
|
| https://archive.org/details/branching-paths
| djur wrote:
| And there similarly was a market for relatively low-budget
| and/or pornographic and/or copyright-infringing computer games
| in western markets, it's just that people today find weird old
| ecchi VNs with anime art more interesting than weird old strip
| poker games with digitized photos.
| tempodox wrote:
| > ...incompatible with MS-DOS computers at the time...
|
| Thank goodness! The PC-98 colors are great, while the colors on
| DOS boxes of the time were so horrible, it's a miracle our
| retinas and optic nerves survived.
| rollcat wrote:
| I've learned about the PC-98 by accident, by browsing FreeBSD
| releases. It used to be a tier-1 target, later degraded, and
| finally dropped in 12.0. Since FreeBSD is now moving to drop
| _all_ 32bit CPUs entirely, it wouldn 't have lived much longer.
|
| In a way, supporting PC-98 sounds like exactly the kind of
| problem we currently have with Arm. The ISA is technically the
| same, but everything else is just what it is. The x86(-64) PCs
| with BIOS/UEFI are the closest we have to a standard, but still-
| check all the ACPI&friends quirks.
| krispyfi wrote:
| > Metal Gear creator / problematic gaming legend Hideo Kojima got
| his start on the platform with his classic potboiler
| "Policenauts"
|
| That should be "Snatcher". Criminally overlooked game.
| wk_end wrote:
| Hmm. I'm pretty sure Kojima directed Metal Gear before Snatcher
| (and worked on various other Konami games before that). And
| Snatcher was a PC-88 game, not a PC-98 game. All great games,
| at any rate.
| msephton wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38409692
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| I don't appreciate cartoon pornography being shared here. I think
| this website is best when it's professional.
| sombragris wrote:
| In some previous life, while studying biochemistry at my
| university's Faculty (school) of Chemical Sciences, I hung around
| the Botany Department (yes, they had one. Because you know,
| chemistry schools teach pharmacy, which in turn uses plants and
| so...). That was in 1989-1992.
|
| The Department had a NEC PC 9801 (IIRC), with two floppy drives
| and no hard disk, and they used to register plants cataloged in
| their herbarium using a simple dBase-II application. Quite nice
| setup for that time. I never saw any graphics; all I saw was a
| very well-built system with a beautiful text font (it looked very
| well IMHO representing Western Latin characters).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-24 23:01 UTC)