[..] NEC launched this series in 1982, just one year after the PC-88, and supported both concurrently for a long time. […]
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[..] NEC launched this series in 1982, just one year after the PC-88, and supported both concurrently for a long time.

Unlike the PC-88, the PC-98 was very PC-like, though not initially compatible with PC software, with an Intel processor, 128KB of RAM, floppy drives, and similar system architecture. A custom video card allowed 640x400 resolution (up from the PC-88's 640x200), which was enormous in 1982, albeit at only 8 colors. For comparison, the best equipped IBM PCs at the time could do 320x200 at 16 colors, or 720x350 in monochrome, and needed different hardware adapters and different displays for that. The PC-98's high resolution was important for rendering legible Japanese text, and having some color support was a big benefit to games, which often used dithering to simulate better color depth.

Like IBM, NEC offered new and improved models each year. By 1986, the PC-98 had a 286 processor, 3.5" floppies, 1MB of RAM, and 16 color support, which still surpassed IBM's EGA, due to a 4096 color palette, and also because 640x400 resolution was standard and widely supported, while most PC games remained at 320x200 even though EGA and VGA were capable of going higher.

By 1990, VGA was common in PC compatibles, which could easily match the PC-98's 640x400 16-color mode, or do 320x200 at 256 colors, and could switch modes on the fly. Also around this time, IBM released DOS/V, a DOS variant that could render Japanese text on these machines and run international software. The PC-98 was losing its advantage over PCs, and cost more to boot.

The 1992 model had 640x480 at 256 colors, which was equivalent to the most basic SVGA resolution. Other specs included a 386SX processor, 40MB hard drive, 1X CD-ROM, and 4MB of RAM, all of which was a bit to a lot out of date compared to the competition, which included the FM Towns, Sharp X68000, and numerous IBM PC compatibles. The system still had a dominant market share, but it was waning. NEC would partner with Microsoft to make a PC-98 compatible version of Windows 95, but this further eroded the system's relevance, as customers did not need a PC-98 to use Windows software. At this point, the PC-98 series just begins to look like another PC compatible, and it's not interesting to follow its specs until its final model in 2000, essentially a budget Celeron.

Thanks to its early market share, the system (like the PC-88) got a very large library of Japanese games, most of which are obscure outside of Japan, but some notable titles became better known through ports to other systems. KOEI is probably the most prolific developer of widely ported PC-98 games.

Select PC-98 titles:
A-Train
Dragon Knight 4
Genghis Khan
Knights of Xentar
Liberty or Death
Policenauts
Power Dolls
Princess Maker 1&2
Romance of the Three Kingdoms III: Dragon of Destiny
Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

Not listed are the numerous PC-88 games that were ported to PC-98.

(it's also the platform of origin of the Touhou Project series, but the early PC-98 entries are not well known and were never ported)

The standard high resolution mode also made it the system of choice for visual novels, including several notorious hentai games that got ported and localized over the years. Among them are:
Amy's Fantasies
Desire
EVE Burst Error
Fatal Relations
Gloria
Immoral Study 1&2
Nocturnal Illusion
Paradise Heights 1&2
Runaway City
Season of the Sakura
Three Sisters' Story
True Love

Source: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/204-clas … gaming/76352712

Edit:

Does anyone know the reason for these differences? Was the Japanese hardware that much further ahead than the average US hardware at the time?

It was higher end. In the 80s, Japan's economy was at its height.
Money was available en masse.
That's why such incredible high-quality anime production was possible, too.

There's a saying that the hardware roughly was 10 years ahead of the time, compared to that of the west. They even had HDTV then (see MUSE system).

The first PC-98 had 640x400 in 8c (later 16c), but with two video processors.
One doing Kanji, one graphics combined via overlay.

The closest the Americans had at that time was the Tandy 2000 computer, which Windows 1.0 was being developed on.

In terms of IBM PCs, EGA and Hercules Plus (and InColor) were the earliest graphics cards on par with PC-98.
They matched it in terms of resolution and flexibility (soft fonts for text characters).

That's why DOS/V came to life.
It used VGA's mode 12h and programmable character generator ("VGA textmode").

This made it possible to display PC-98 games on DOS PCs.
The 640x400 16c graphics was being displayed within a 640x480 16c screen.

However, that doesn't exactly mean that VGA was superior through and through.
The two display processors (NEC µPD7220 VDp) in PC-98 were quite intelligent.

In fact, Intel had licensed this chip design.
It could haven used in western PCs, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEC_%CE%BCPD7220

But the industry didn't adopt it.
The same way that 640x400 Enhanced CGA (Olivetti or AT&T) wasn't being adopted as a standard.

What's helding things back was the unwillingness to go beyond 200 lines.

Doing so would have required making and buying special CRT monitors that leave TV technology behind.

Like the MDA monitor, which is slightly beyond TV specs (18KHz vs 15 KHz, 350 lines vs 200 lines).

The lack of true EGA monitors in the retro community speaks volumes, I suppose.

While being rare, special monitors/high-resolution monitors nevertheless did exist in our hemisphere, in the form of multisync monitors.

They could handle a variety of resolutions and input signals (TTL mono, TTL RGB, analog RGB, CVBS etc).

But they usually weren't used by home users, but professionals.
Graphics workstations by say, SGI had used them.
Early 8514/A and SuperVGA users may had them, too.

And by the 90s, they became more popular, as Windows resolutions had been increased steadily.

_
Generaly speaking, in Japan, all of their business PCs had to handle complex characters, had to have high storage capacity (floppies),
the sound chips were same as found in middle class electronic keyboards. Not just beepers.

By contrast, we in the western hemisphere were using very primitive technology for most of the time.

Atari ST and Amiga could do manage 640x400 when focusing all of their power.

And our dinosaurs, the IBM PCs with Hercules graphics could do high-res graphics, at least.
Even if it was just monochrome and slow.

In the mid/late 80s, merely privileged users had access to multisync monitors and Super EGA/VGA cards with extended features.
Like 800x600 16c with 132 columns for text.

My Schneider Tower AT has such an on-board Super EGA chip, for example.
The PC was being made in West-Germany in 1988.
At its release, it was an top of the line system.

Edit: For the sake of fairness, I have to mention that some graphics cards could display higher resolution graphics on lower end monitors.

They've used interlacing or changed refresh rate accordingly.
That's how some ATI EGA Wonder cards could display EGA 640x350 on a normal video monitor (composite monitor).

There's also a Windows 3.0 driver patch (tweak) that can display 800x600 on a generic VGA card/VGA monitor.
It patches an Paradise VGA driver and uses 800x564 resolution. Monitor needs manual adjustment, I suppose.

Did the Japanese market just expect more from their games than Americans?

Uhm, well, I'm not sure. I'm European. 😅

Which doesn't make much of a difference, maybe. To them, we're all just "westerners", I believe.

Though the USA had an image of being especially cool and trendy in the 70s/80s.

While Europe was nothing but a tourist trap to them, I suppose.
Or an open air museum, hah. 😅

Anyway, thing is that to Japanese developers, the international market or USA market was not really a priority.

The Japanese island alone was such a big and prosperous market to them.
Similarly like the USA are whole world to their citizens.

The international business was rather done separately by their subsidiaries.
JAST had one called JAST USA, for example.

Edit: My bad, I misunderstood the question.
If you mean if there's a difference in sophistication between countries:

I think it was about different genres, also.

RPGs, maze crawlers, graphical adventures and side-scrolling shooters were a "thing" in Japan.

Visual novels, too, but they were rather late in the big picture (more complex graphic adventures with a parser had pre-dated them)..

Also popular were quiz/trivia games and board games, such as Mahjongg.
Or pachinko, a variation of pinball/flipper.

These games were usually featuring humorous, pretty or cutesy graphics, to visually appeal the audience.

While in the US, it were arcade and sports games.
Or poker games, golf sims, chess games.
MS Flight Simulator, Ford Simulator, SimCity..
The usual stuff. Not sure how to put it into words. There are so many things..

Text adventures with graphics and point&click adventures, for example.
Some of them were from Europe, also.

I'm just curious as to why these differences existed and why the improvements never made it back to the US in most cases?

Well, they kind of tried to make it back, I suppose.
The PC-98 processors V20/V30 are from NEC.
We mainly knew them ad cheap CPU upgrade chips.

But for some reason, the market wasn't ready for much else.
Except for video/entertainment technology, maybe.
Laserdisc, VHS, Sony Walkman etc.

In the US, it was all about IBM PC and Macintosh by the time.

While over here in Europe.. Oh, well, let's better don't talk about it. 😥

Edited.

Sharp x68000. 32768 on screen colours, in 512x512, without any 'tricks' (like HAM on the Amiga) and without headache inducing interlacing, or you could do two pages of 256 colours at the same res, or for productivity anything up to 1024x1024 (in mono).

Ym2151 OPM and single channel digital audio.

In 1987.

Yes it was an expensive system, but it shows how far ahead the Japanese market was at the time.

All FM Towns machines had internal CD-Rom drives and could directly boot OS from CD (done by using a rom chip). The CD was it's main selling point, so most games had CD audio soundtracks, even Ultima 1,2,3 has CD audio on Towns. Towns also has a custom 32bit graphics chip, so 256 colors was the norm, not the exception.

X68000 functions more like an arcade board than a traditional computer. Even though Japan was in the bubble years and had tons of money to blow, the X68000 was still very expensive. Sharp made it profitable by keeping sales in house and very careful marketing.

Western PC dev was always about under cutting costs to win a bigger market share.

I mean, Tandy 1000 would be the richest PC line in terms of video/audio capabilities for most of the 80s, I think.

See what happened when Japanese games got ported to PC at the time, like Contra or Castlevania — they clearly catered to the lowest common denominator.

jheronimus wrote on 2024-02-13, 11:22:

I mean, Tandy 1000 would be the richest PC line in terms of video/audio capabilities for most of the 80s, I think.

See what happened when Japanese games got ported to PC at the time, like Contra or Castlevania — they clearly catered to the lowest common denominator.

And Tandy was a success because they were proper PC compatibles sold for less than IBMs. The graphics and sound were just extras really. Always wondered how things would have changed if the PCjr had been an actual PC...

Comment about the western PC market catering to the lowest common denominator are spot on.

Waiting for the comments about the Amiga next.... yes it was a success in the early years, but it never really got any better (fine, you had a few small speed bumps with the processor, but in reality, how much improvement did the market see going from OCS -> ECS -> AGA? Sound stayed the same, the base machines like the 1000/500/600/1200 still couldn't do proper productivity work). It had its time, but it was too restrictive and clearly required too much investment on behalf of Commodore to keep pace with the rest of the market.

Ironically, I think the system that probably had the most promise outside of the PC in the early days was the little MSX. It grew through a big number of platform changes, with substantial improvements compared to the early machines. Sadly though, like the original point of the thread, a lot of the improvements never made it outside of Japan, and most of the western world only ever saw it in its original 32/64KB, Z80, PSG sound guise.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-02-13, 12:01:

Comment about the western PC market catering to the lowest common denominator are spot on.

Waiting for the comments about the Amiga next.... yes it was a success in the early years, but it never really got any better (fine, you had a few small speed bumps with the processor, but in reality, how much improvement did the market see going from OCS -> ECS -> AGA? Sound stayed the same, the base machines like the 1000/500/600/1200 still couldn't do proper productivity work). It had its time, but it was too restrictive and clearly required too much investment on behalf of Commodore to keep pace with the rest of the market.

Ironically, I think the system that probably had the most promise outside of the PC in the early days was the little MSX. It grew through a big number of platform changes, with substantial improvements compared to the early machines. Sadly though, like the original point of the thread, a lot of the improvements never made it outside of Japan, and most of the western world only ever saw it in its original 32/64KB, Z80, PSG sound guise.

MSX is an interesting case, because it was always seen more of a toy than a serious computer in Japan. It's resolution modes were simply not good enough for professional usage. On top of that Nishi hated games, and went out of his way to break the toy stereotype. (MSX2 has vertical scroll but not horizontal so it could be used for text and kiosk scrolling.) But despite this, it's cheap as hell development costs led to quite the nice game library. Even today, MSX dev is highly active and the amount of hardware upgrades now is rather insane 🤣.

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-02-13, 12:01:

Waiting for the comments about the Amiga next.... yes it was a success in the early years, but it never really got any better (fine, you had a few small speed bumps with the processor, but in reality, how much improvement did the market see going from OCS -> ECS -> AGA? Sound stayed the same, the base machines like the 1000/500/600/1200 still couldn't do proper productivity work). It had its time, but it was too restrictive and clearly required too much investment on behalf of Commodore to keep pace with the rest of the market.

Oh, well. The Amiga always is a hot potato in discussions.
Personally, I think that both the Amiga 2000 and Macintosh II were rivals or sisters of the IBM PC/AT 5170.

Because, just like it they were not being treated very well by history.
Users didn't love them, their creators neglected them..
Despite them being the most capable workhorses of their time.

Edit: The A2000 could be equipped with a flicker-fixer and/or scandoubler (two different, but related things).

That made it quite suitable for productivity work, while staying compatible with TV genlocks.

The use of a VGA monitor on the Amiga was somewhat of an improvement.
With ~31KHz and the flickering being removed (no interlacing), the experience was quite nice.

Edit: I'm saying this, because the higher resolutions of OCS/ECS/AGA were using interlacing.
The low-res modes used "progressive" scan (skipping one of two fields).

megatron-uk wrote on 2024-02-13, 12:01:

Ironically, I think the system that probably had the most promise outside of the PC in the early days was the little MSX. It grew through a big number of platform changes, with substantial improvements compared to the early machines. Sadly though, like the original point of the thread, a lot of the improvements never made it outside of Japan, and most of the western world only ever saw it in its original 32/64KB, Z80, PSG sound guise.

In very simple words, MSX was essentially a Z80 version of the PCJr.
And an open standard, to provide some sort of interoperability among computers of different manufacturers.
MSX had a DOS-like OS with FAT suppport, a GW-Basic like BASIC interpreter. It had cartridges, too.

But it wasn't very sophisticated. The original version, I mean.
Graphics wise it was a reminisce of the ZX Spectrum, sort of. MSX had that TI99/4A video chip.
Too low-res to draw complex characters needed for any sort of productivity work.

MSX2 was quite an improvement, with a much better video chip, more RAM and newer firmware.
And floppy drives now being more of standard component.

That's I think were the fun starts, with thrilling games like Snatcher or Jesus: Kyōfu no Bio-Monster.
MSX1 still had Parodius, at least. 😉

MSX2+ and Turbo R were further expansions, but pretty much a Japanese phenomenon.

Sadly, MSX2 wasn't that widespread here in the west (could have been better).
Despite simultaneously being the most Japanese system we had easy access to.

(Which I assume explains why there were so many early MSX1/2 emulators written for it, for various platforms, even for Windows 3.1.
I mean, if it was a Japanese centric phenomenon, these emulators wouldn't be available in plain English or available on normal AT PCs with English DOS.)

Some later MSX home computers were somewhere between MSX1 and MSX2, in terms of features.
They had higher specs, but weren't fully MSX2 compatible. No idea why these exist. 🤷‍♂️

Edit:

MSX is an interesting case, because it was always seen more of a toy than a serious computer in Japan. It's resolution modes were simply not good enough for professional usage.

I think the same, MSX had that stigma.
Not without a reason, considering the varying keyboard quality and lack of a mouse (available by third-parties).

Weren't quite a few MSX computers being made by companies that were of the entertainment industry, originally ?
That Sony HitBit line comes to mind.

PS: I have to admit I'm speaking under correction here, however.
I believe my historical knowledge might a bit lacking in the details.
So please think of it more of a vague explanation/summary.

Well in Europe's case, cassette tapes were quite popular, so most Euro MSX2s have 128kb RAM. Whereas in Japan tapes died fairly quickly so 64kb of RAM was plenty for most users.

MSX was basically seen as a Famicom that doubled as a word processor. The Kids could type and print their homework on it. Also, in traditional Japanese family culture, the man did nothing but work, so the woman did all the family financials. And MSX made this easy as you just plug in the cart and turn it on. The business world was 99% NEC.

Thank you very much for the explanation! ^^

Yes, we saw a lot of cassette use here, on many platforms.

Sometimes I feel a bit ashamed about us for having been such a development country in this regards.

Anyone whoever had worked with CP/M back then saw the shortcomings of the cassette, I think.

It's not only that the cassette is slow and error prone (requires heavy error-correction),
it's also that it's not providing random access.

So the computer can't work with files properly,
but rather has to use data blocks that are being available in a given order.

Like it's with videotext on TV,
in which the data blocks are being sent in a given order and then being looped.

Which means that a cassette operated computer can't be used as a simple electronic typewriter, even.
For every correction, every "save" operation, the cassette would have to be rewinded.

The Sharp MZ-731 that I had when I was little was a simple Z80 system, too, but there was an option for a Quick Disk (QD) system, at least.

It was working with a single track, like a record player, but didn't need a rewinding, at least.
So the computer could record files (data blocks) on its own without user intervention.

Anyway, it was still not very "professional".

My dad had used two 8" floppy drives and two 5,25" floppy drives on his Sharp MZ 80K.

The 8" was mainly being used to boot vanilla CP/M off the retail floppy.
The second 8" drive was being used as a working diskette for temporary data (as a HDD substitute).

The other floppy drives were for copying and installing software.

In terms of games and gaming hardware, it seems like the US had a wave of innovation and investment in the late '70s and early '80s. Then it died out and things stagnated. Japan essentially took the lead from the mid '80s. So the time period OP mentioned is one in which the US side didn't put a lot of weight on gaming. IBM and Apple were more focused on productivity or education. Atari and Commodore were mostly busy milking existing product lines to death. In Japan, new computer models aimed at the home market and new game consoles were rolling out every year. They'd advertise how many colors they could display and how many sound channels they had right on the packaging.

There's an 1984 episode of The Computer Chronicles , "Japanese PCs"..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbh1XP4kCT4

It gives an idea about how the people back then felt about MSX and other Japanese computer platforms.

My only complaint about is that the episode overrated the value of the US market a bit.

They seem to mix up the XT clone export business from Taiwan or Hongkong with Japan.

Or maybe they had said things intentionally to not make the US audience feeling uncomfortable.

I mean, they couldn't have said "Japan is doing great and they don't need US customers". ;)

But that's just my point of view, of course.
I'm not without errors, either.

Whenever I would go buying games in the UK in the 80's (with my weekly saved-up pocket money) the shelves would be full of games for (in order of quantity ) :

C64 (plus a small amount of C16 & Vic20),
Zx Spectrum,
Amstrad CPC
BBC B/Electron
MSX
Then followed up by Ti/99, Dragon, Jupiter Ace and other niche models, but these were never guaranteed compared to the others.

Of course this was all cassette based software!

If there were ever any IBM games, this was always a very small selection or seemed as if it was an afterthought. It was only towards the very late 80s when the 8bit machines were fading away and the Atari sT and Amiga started appearing on shelves that PC software also started appearing with more frequency. Before then, you just didn't see the hardware in the typical UK high street shops.

Of course this was all cassette based software!

I believe you. I heard this from relatives, too.

Edit: In our neighbor country in the east (GDR), citizens couldn't buy commercial datasettes, even.
They had to record games and applications from radio.

They had to lie in wait at home, with a blank cassette in their radio cassette recorder.
And press play+record quickly, once the radio moderator told them to.

I guess I could be glad to have missed out on this side of the hobby.
Not that this wasn't exciting, but I think it wasn't for me.

By the time I got an C64 (C128D, actually; used) there were C64 magazines with cover disks.

They were in 5,25" format and contained mostly public domain, demos and freeware.

That's something I felt familiar with and could relate to, because shareware scene was a thing on DOS/Win3 platform, as well.

Except that CD-ROM technology was already available on PC.

What I liked the most were indie games made by bedroom programmers.
My first C64 graphics adventure I played was "Planet des Todes", I believe.
A funny little homebrew game, with hidden stuff to be discovered.

GEOS on C64 was also cool, of course.
It had reminded me of GEM on PC at the time.

If I hadn't have a floppy drive, I would have had missed out on GEOS.
Gratefully, the C128D had one built-in.

Edit: My bad, I don't have to comment on every posting here.
Hope you don't mind. The cassette topic is just something that hits a nerve.

Edit: double checked. Found the magazine. It's 64er Magazine (special issue 37, '88) w/ cover disk.

So by late 80s, we had gotten floppies on a mainstream level here, at least. Thank lord.

Even if was the old school 5,25" type, rather than the "normal" 3,5" type what MSX, Mac, Atari/Amiga had used for years by then.

It was the same with the Spectrum and BBC. Yes, there were models with disk drives, but when you look at the cost of those machines (or add-ons) and the amount of them that were actually sold, it's pales into insignificance compared to the 'standard' cassette models.

I did/do have an MSX2(+) and Spectrum +3 and BBC (Master) now, but at the time I, like almost all of the people I knew, only had base models in the ranges, so no floppy convenience.

First machine that I bought which had floppies as standard in the base models was an A500., and it was only a year or two after that I moved onto the PC with hard drives (all 20mb of it!)... What a revelation that was! 😀

Thanks for all the replies and insight, everyone. I have a much better understanding now of the why and how of the situation of computer gaming in Japan, Europe, & the US during that time period.

You're welcome. ^^

Btw, I didn't meant to make it sound as if the US market was irrelevant or whatsoever.
Silicon Valley had a huge impact on computing for sure. 😎

I just meant to say that it seems Japan was a bit of a thing of its own. Like the UK, maybe.
Both were a bit insular and had a computing landscape that wasn't been so focused on export.

I mean, back then I've never heard of UK's BBC Micro series, RM Nimbus or that Acorn Archimedes, for example.
The latter was an multimedia PC like the X68000 or the Amiga.

On the bright side, though, the US citizens -especially students- also had early access to Macintoshs or Apple IIs.
Here in Europe (or W-Germany at least), they were rather niche in comparison to MS-DOS PCs or Atari STs.
These computers had good software support and were historically relevant, in gaming too.

For example, Sierra On-line had started had out on Apple II and more or less defined the early text adventure with graphics genre.
->See the Hi-Res game series: https://www.mobygames.com/group/7351/sierra-h … res-adventures/

That in turn must have inspired quite some Japanese game developers on NEC PC-6000, PC-8000 or Fujitsu FM-7 and other early 8-Bit systems.
Because, in the 80s, they had made quite a few text adventures with graphics (aka "interactive fiction with graphics").

And in the early 90s, the Macintosh platform had gotten many good ports with enhanced audio and graphics.
On eye level with the FM Towns released in late 80s.