Anyone who is interested in Japanese games and game companies with a long history may be “familiar” with the PC-98. That includes myself, but just how familiar are we with this computer? People often talk about just how “important” this series of computers was in Japan, and how much of a historical significance it carries. But not enough people really explain much of the background behind why or how it became so, in an era where famous electronics manufacturers were competing fiercer than ever for the rising personal/home computer market. I hope you can read some articles on other sites about the importance of PC-98 to Japanese game developers and musicians who are famous today, and if you are still interested, this article can perhaps help you to further understand the system, as much as writing this article did for me.
First, a common misconception: the PC-98 was not released in the 90s. It started and thrived in the 80s. I believe the confusion arises because of the presence of the PC-88. Here’s another surprisingly common misconception: that the NEC PC-98 and the IBM PCs were somehow equivalents other than the region of sale. But in fact, they were very different systems where software written for these two systems would in general not be compatible at all. The compatibility increased as time progressed due to increasing demand for Windows support, but the PC-98 was not IBM PC compatible at all.
Indeed, the NEC PC-98 remained much more of a mystery machine than the IBM PC compatibles popular elsewhere because many of its components were replaced and modified with proprietary Japanese parts. This resulted in lots of differences in audio, video, and interfacing so much so that trying to bridge the gap between the two systems in either hardware or software would not be worth the amount of effort required. Not that anyone really felt the need to try, because in hindsight, the PC-98 was just another cornerstone of the Japanese “technological Galapagos syndrome”: a powerful overarching phenomenon that refers to their ever-ongoing isolation from the so-called global standards.
However, in this case, there was a more tangible and understandable reason for their deviation from global standards of computing – a key reason why the PC-98 (or its predecessors) destroyed every other foreign computer that took a shot at the Japanese market share. And that was the need for kanji – displaying tens of thousands of complicated unique characters was something that American IBM PCs simply couldn’t do. This made IBM PCs unacceptable in the Japanese PC market for a long time before DOS/V was introduced. Remember, PCs were primarily for work, and a business report written without kanji would look like it was written by a preschooler.
For this underlying reason, Japanese PC manufacturers focused heavily on improving graphics in the 70s to solve the problem of text display. The main problem to be solved here was to improve the resolution such that dense kanji characters could be told apart from each other easily. Anyone who knows Chinese or kanji would know this isn’t easy – but the thing is, the Japanese PC scene had been focused on graphics for this reason since the 70s. This preliminary work allowed Japanese PCs to thrive in the 80s and 90s while IBM-compatibles quickly became the global standard even in countries that had their own unique alphabets such as Korea.
As a result, the NEC PC-98 boasted a resolution of 640×400 and 16 simultaneous colours right from its first model in 1982 – this was akin to VGA standards, far surpassing CGA and EGA in the existing IBM computers. (Refer to this blog post for a quick comparison between these standards in the context of games.) With such superior graphics, together with a dedicated kanji ROM chip with nearly 3000 characters locked and loaded, it’s no wonder why “computer” meant “PC-98” in Japan back then! (A bit of interesting trivia about this: “PC” really did mean PC-9801 and usually no other computer, leading to some confusion about the meaning of “PC” as an acronym for personal computer or the specific NEC PC series. So when PCs installed with Windows 95 started rolling in, the Japanese had to call these PCs “Windows 95” even though Windows 95 is really just the operating system. The Japanese term pasokon to refer to personal computers in general may even have roots in this Japanese mistaking “PC” for the NEC PC series.) Anyway, even though the IBM PS/2 later introduced the VGA standard to Japan, it still lacked kanji displaying abilities until DOS/V was shipped in 1991. Then, again, “DOS/V”, which really refers to the operating system, became synonymous with IBM PCs instead in Japan over the following few years, because for most people IBM PCs only became acceptable for use at this time.
Given this nearly 10-year advantage that the PC-98 had, it may be only natural that it was the most common PC to write programs and create music and art on, and therefore so many games were released for it. After all, it seems that at one point, the PC-9801 alone held about 70% of the 16/32-bit computer market share in Japan. As mentioned earlier and in other posts, the PC-98 is of particular interest today because countless Japanese developers, composers and famous video game franchises today thrived on this computer. Of course, this is similarly the case in the West with MS-DOS games on IBM PCs – a parallel that becomes important when trying to emulate software from this era.
But you may be surprised to know that the PC-98 was actually not meant for gaming at all. Granted, this was already the overarching assumption with PCs and it arguably still is today, but the PC-98 was more work-oriented than ever, all the way from specifications to marketing. First of all, it had a high clocking speed and memory which made it very expensive but popular with businesses. The first model, the PC-9801, only came with a beeper, heavily limiting room for any sound effects and music. It perhaps further demonstrates NEC’s intent to position the PC-98 as a work computer, especially when compared with the PC-6001 home computer which was given a 3-voice PSG right from the get-go.
In addition, it supported the SCSI hard disk standard that boasted speeds up to 5MB/s with SCSI-1 released in 1986, which would rival that of IBM PCs’ ST-506-based IDE or early ATA standards released much later in early to mid 1990s. But by then, the SCSI-2 with a speed of up to 20MB/s had been released. The PC-98 promoted the installation of these hard disks and its high transfer speeds were a key contributor to the computer’s popularity, especially with its easy installation owing to the C-Bus expansion card system.
Finally, the PC-98 lacked any kind of sprite processing or blitter technology, which made sophisticated animations nearly impossible and thus disabling developers from making action games that could take advantage of its beautiful graphics. An empirical evidence of this was the sheer abundance of image-displaying CG collection and photo album “games” made for the PC-98. To put it more bluntly, this thing was a word processor in the day and a porn machine in the night. This is most obvious when compared with its direct predecessor, the PC-88, which is remembered as an action game powerhouse due to series such as Dragon Slayer, Thexder, Ys and many more that originated from that line of computers. As a nail in the coffin, unlike the PC-88 which supported low resolutions such as 320×200 to facilitate action/real-time game development using switchable graphics modes (coded as V1 to V3), the PC-98 prohibited going down to such low resolutions presumably to avoid affecting text readability. As a result, in actuality, the vast majority of PC-98 computers were used for work, and even units bought by individuals were mainly used for working from home, according to a 1993 study published in the Nikkei Personal Computing journal.
So then, how did the PC-98 still come to be remembered as an important piece in video game history? Indeed, there was no doubt a strong synergy between creative inspiration for anime art and the solid graphics capabilities of the system. The CG collection and photo album softwares that I mentioned earlier became fodder for advanced text adventure games (as opposed to basic ones from the 80s) that developed further into pioneer visual novels and dating simulations, such as YU-NO, Rance and Dōkyūsei. The PC-98’s superior memory and clock speed initially meant for work was also found to be suitable for simulation games and SRPGs, and Koei completely settled down on this machine as it proved to be optimal for their Sangokushi series. It could be said that these genres truly excelled at taking advantage of the PC-98’s strengths.
But regardless of genre and computing system, it was very helpful that both indie and corporate game development really started taking off thanks to game magazines such as LOGiN and Micom Basic and game-making softwares promoting game development in homes and schools. This favourable environment created by external factors was another key reason behind how the Japanese game industry was nurtured in general. (Consider that Micom Basic, a very influential programming magazine, taught game development for over 40 different kinds of computers, including the mainstream NEC PCs and major players such as the Sharp X1 and X68000, Fujitsu FM TOWNS, and MSX, and also much more niche PCs such as the Fujitsu FP series, Panasonic JR series, Sord M5, Hitachi Basic Master series and S1, Sega SC-3000, and even the Casio PB-100.)
Still, relatively speaking, competitor PCs X68000 and FM TOWNS did not enjoy such a loyal following by game developers despite having superior game-related specifications and remained more niche, relying on ports a little too much. (By the way, when you read about the NEC PC-98 series, it may appear that many people mention that the PC-98 had poor graphics, which is the opposite of what I have been saying in this article. When people say that, however, they would be comparing it to these competitor PCs in the market in Japan, and not versus the IBM PC clones as I have in this article.) In fact, this counter-intuitive dominance of the graphically “inferior” PC-98 is important to ponder on, because it can be the key question that can lead you to many discoveries about the Japanese computer hardware and software development scene in the 80s.
These competitor PCs also had something like a “retrospective credit” to them, receiving more attention much later in the years by retro game fans and emulation communities and therefore becoming more famous especially overseas. The relative success of the PC-98 also had a lot to do with the pre-existing momentum for NEC with the success of PC-6000 and PC-8801 series, which were already the go-to computers for homes and offices respectively. Anyway, action games naturally moved to consoles, further consolidating the PC’s reputation for eroges and simulation games in Japan.
This development would however not have been possible without NEC’s continuous improvement of the PC-98. While the term “PC-98” is used as an abbreviation for the PC-9800 series, it can really mean any one of the models shown in the schematic below. Due to the series’ popularity and dominance, each of these models are well-documented. However, a few changes are particularly important for understanding the evolution of PC-98 as a gaming platform.
The most important change occurred with the release of the PC-9801-26(K), which was an optional sound card that contained the infamous Yamaha 2203 (YM2203 also known as OPN) sound chip, that was also available on the PC-8801. To call the upgrade from beepers to the YM2203 a “step up” would be like calling me a fan of Japanese culture (a major understatement). This sound chip was no YM2612 (FM), no Ricoh RF5c68 (PCM), no Red Book (CD-DA), but it was practically the first FM sound chip for many. It came before big names like Sound Blaster or AdLib (both use the YM3812) which were the standard cards for IBM compatibles. Even though the development of the YM2203 was unrelated to the PC-98, they have since been discussed almost always together, because of how much it synergized with the active independent programming that was being done at home on the PC-98. FM synthesis was accessible and produced high quality results. Importantly, the ability to easily use inharmonic sounds was extremely useful for game music and sound effect composition that needed to create the right atmosphere in a variety of contexts.
Give a listen to the music of Sorcerian, one of the most important video game soundtracks, arranged for the PC-9801 and played with its YM2203:
The development of PC-98’s audio capabilities continued with the release of the YM2608 (OPNA). This was the successor chip to YM2203 that was contained in the PC-9801-86 sound card that came with the PC-9821’s release in 1992. The superiority of the YM2608 is best experienced by listening to its sound, making it undoubtedly the best FM sound chip to play DOS games on. However, it was not ideal for early Windows games on the PC-98 because the sound card did not use Direct Memory Access (DAM) and instead wrote the data directly to the CPU, causing games to lag badly.
This unexpectedly opened a small but important room for competition for sound cards within the PC-9821 environment in the mid to late 90s, where running Windows software had become more important than previously. Many sound cards equipped with a DAM controller attempted to take the market but failed because they failed to capture all 3 worlds that had become important to consumers with high sound quality and compatibility expectations: FM, PCM, and WSS (Windows Sound System). In this regard, two sound cards remained notable, and these are Q-Vision WaveStar and Sound Blaster 16. The former, released in 1996, was a domestic C-Bus compatible sound card which contained the CS4231A for WSS-PCM support and a modified version of YM2608 called YMF288 (also known as OPN3) for the FM sound source, topped up with yet another domestic Hitachi 8-bit microprocessor to handle the joystick/MIDI interfacing and ensure PCM compatibility for the PC-9801-86 on DOS. Long story short, this sound card could solve all the compatibility problems regarding this coexistence of Windows and DOS on the PC-98 in the 90s, but the only problem was that it was released too late.
Meanwhile the latter, which is Sound Blaster 16, was released earlier in 1992 and offered some FM, PCM and MIDI compatibility and this card was also available for the PC-98. However, this was a card native to the IBM compatibles and did not receive much attention in Japan, and therefore many Japanese games were not compatible with Sound Blaster 16. However, rare exceptions do exist, such as Eiyuu Densetsu IV: Akai Shizuku, as you can see in my screenshot below:
As you can see, this sound system difference is an important change from the PC-9801 to the PC-9821. However, officially, the main difference between the PC-9801 and the PC-9821 was that the latter supported 256 simultaneous colours while the resolution marginally improved to 640×480 to fully match VGA standards. Of course, because of the 256-colour palette, it was still regarded as superior to VGA and it was very much of an improvement from the early PC-9801s which probably further encouraged game development. The PC-9821 was the PC-98 that faced the Windows era, seeing the release of Windows 3.1, 95, and 2000 all in its lifetime. Several variants of the PC-9821 were released with some even being equipped with the Pentium to keep up with times.
Unfortunately, there are two reasons why PC-9821 is mentioned significantly less than the PC-9801 despite all the improvements. Firstly, the difference between the two was not that systematically obvious. While I mentioned the graphics improvement, this was only that big of a deal when comparing the early PC-9801s and the PC-9821, since late models of PC-9801 already had specifications comparable to the PC-9821 in many regards. Long story short, an important takeaway is simply that the PC-9821 was a 32-bit version of the PC-98 that faced the Windows era. While it certainly represented NEC’s best chance at surviving through the 90s, it wasn’t enough – this is the second reason. By the time the PC-9821 was released, NEC’s market share had already dropped significantly, succumbing to IBM compatibles with DOS/V and Windows 95 support (as the Japanese called them, “Windows 95s”, as explained in the 5th paragraph of this article). In other words, the PC-9821 could be said to represent NEC’s end times as a home computer manufacturer – as in, it wasn’t the cause of their downfall, but it is indeed like a landmark. By this time, the PC-98 was in a position to start losing market share profusely to DOS/V computers: in 1992, Compaq released a DOS/V computer priced at 128,000 yen that was nearly half the lowest price of PC-98 at 248,000 yen. Then the year after that, Toshiba, Fujitsu and Epson all jumped into the DOS/V PC market.
Importantly, it should be noted that despite all this, it was only after Windows 95 (1995) was released that the DOS/V PCs successfully displaced NEC’s dominance. However, the PC-9821 was still a valid player in its own right, and the PC-9821 receives attention even today mainly because of its OPNA sound chip. Many VGM enthusiasts enjoy emulating and listening to PC-98 music played by the OPNA, and discussing differences in its sound from the predecessor, the OPN. Such comparisons and compilations are commonly available throughout VGM databases and YouTube channels.
Anyway, after PC-9821 was introduced, NEC continued support for both the PC-9801 and the PC-9821, almost stubbornly – ultimately until 2010! However, this was mainly for businesses that still relied heavily on the PC-98 infrastructure, and realistically the PC-9821’s competitiveness had ended comfortably before the year 2000. The final models of the PC-9821 and the historical PC-98 series of computers were the Intel Celeron-equipped PC-9821ra43 and the Intel Pentium-equipped PC-9821nr300 laptop computer. All PC-98 computers were discontinued in 2003, after a long history from the ported N88-BASIC operating system all the way to Windows 2000 and with more than 18 million units sold.
And that about covers it. Fortunately, the PC-98 is relatively well-documented which allows me to write such an article. However, there are still many gaps in English coverage, and many details that have to be verified are hidden in old Japanese websites. Some details were also written from memory, from when I used to be more enthusiastic about DOS games. There is of course tons of information missing from this article that you could learn from reading the Wikipedia articles alone, but I hope that it could serve as a useful review of the background regarding this system.
Today, the PC-98 has a pretty large global community that discusses both emulation and actual hardware handling. While for the hardware you might have to go down to retro shops in Japan with a very full bank account (something I do not have), PC-98 emulation is extremely doable although tangibly harder than console emulation (e.g. PC-Engine, Sega Genesis/Dreamcast, etc.) If you are keen on playing PC-98 games on your modern computer, there are many useful resources such as the Internet Archive of PC-98 game files. I use Neko Project II and Anex86 to emulate PC-98 software but if the software had been ported to MS-DOS before, I would sometimes prefer using DOSBox. If I have time again, I would like to write a step-by-step guide on emulating PC-98 games along with a pretty complete list of my recommendations for PC-98 classics.
Degen Aura 
Thanks for the read, looking forward to future ones about PC-98. Also enjoyed reading your Suchi-pie post, which was how I found the blog.
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Thanks a lot for reading and for the comment! I’ll try my best.
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