Mastodawn

Okay, folks, as you know, I'm watching an anime "16-bit sensation", a show about NEC PC-98 nostalgia. It made me power up my PC-9821 Aile and boot into DOS/V, and finally try to launch some high-end PC-98 games. And I am speechless. Even on an LCD screen from mid-90s, the art is legendary.

PC-98 series is a special beast. Conceived by NEC as a business computer, the first models were based on Intel's powerful 8086 (the year was 1982). Unlike IBM PC clones, PC-98 supported Japanese out of the box, with complicated input system and thousands of kanji. To make the kanji look good, or, rather, at least minimally readable, the computer's graphics was 640x400 in 16 colours.

As you can imagine, adding Japanese support to a regular PC is hard. No one could do it, and NEC PC-98 became the biggest thing.

For PC games, it made all the difference.

🧵

#pc98 #retrocomputing

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

There were a few things that made PC-98 games look so unique.

First, it's the combo of resolution and small palette. Western games of the era could default to 320x200 in 32-256 colours (Amiga and VGA) and deliver a colorful image that doesn't really have any prominent details. Check out this Amiga's version of Monkey Island 2 in 320x200x5bpp. Japanese games needed horizontal and, preferably, vertical resolution, so 640x400 is a must. In 16 colours, that's 128K; twice as much as VGA's 320x200 in 256. If you had more RAM, you'd better have more video RAM pages than more colours, too.

Second, the palette isn't fixed. In the PC world, there were "Super EGA" cards that allowed custom palettes, but if you can have 256 colours, even if the resolution is lower, why bother?

Third, PC-98 were "all business", and the video chip there had no sprite support. Redraws were slow, static images and games with menus made more sense than animating moving elements.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

As PC-98 was "serious business", such games were also targeting adult audience and had nudity. Seriously, you could buy a strategy and accidentally it might have some nudity and sex scenes in it. But whether you like nudity in games or not, you probably can agree that the work of the PC-98 game artists is remarkable.

Here are a few close-ups of 16-colour images from "EVE" and "Yu-No", some of the most famous PC-98 era games. You can see that artists trade off some of the resolution for dithered colours, but thanks to the gigantic screen size, lots and lots of the details can be added.

Like, seriously, the coat hanger on the first screenshot isn't even taking a quarter of the resolution. How. What.

And I was looking at all this on LCD, mind you. I have a CRT, and I have no doubts things look even better on a CRT, but it is busy at the moment, so maybe some next time.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

Here is some more photos, again, "Eve" and "Yu-No". If you're not zooming in, especially if you're using your phone to look at the images, I bet you can't tell that all those are taken in 16-colour mode.

It is quite hard to believe all of them are just 640x400x4bpp. I had to squeeze a screenshot to GIMP and calculate the palette. It's the truth, 16 colours rulez.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

Just how, how in the world, the artists managed to do it in a palette of 16 colours, UI and text included?

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

Well, you know what's happened next, right?

First, IBM PS/55, a successor of IBM PS/2, brought some Japanese support to PC-compatibles.

Then, Windows 95 came. It could run Japanese input and output on any computer. Shortly after, SVGA 640x480x8bpp became widely available.

PC-98 (18 millions of them) were dethroned. NEC tried to stay afloat, and partnered with Microsoft to release Windows 95, 98 and later 2000 on PC-98 series, but it made things only worse. If your program runs on any Windows machine, why pay extra for a PC-98? For its FM sound? But all PCs have at least AdLib now. For its graphics? But PCs have better graphics now. How did it end so quickly and so tragically?

But, at least the aesthetics is alive. Let's keep it alive. Okay?

Bonus: a scene from "16 bit sensation" converted to PC-98 640x400 16 colours mode, thanks to vulgar amount of dithering.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

P.S. There's a nice read with more NSFW screenshots: https://strangecomforts.com/the-strange-world-of-japans-pc-98-computer/

Arcadiagt5 Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina that’s great stuff, thanks.

@nina_kali_nina Makes the nsfw parts of Leisure Suit Larry seem fairly tame - both in motive and execution.

Catherine Berry Nov 24, 2023

@nina_kali_nina

It seems like extreme constraint sometimes produces the most beautiful art. See also sestinas and fugues.

Jeltron Nov 24, 2023

@nina_kali_nina I have always been so fascinated by these artistic limitations. I even made a video about what I discovered but never published it because I was worried it would get picked apart by people with a much deeper technical understanding of the system. The earlier pc88 game limitations are fascinating too.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

@Jeltron I would want to watch such a video! ^_^ PC-88 *_* aww

Jeltron Dec 8, 2023

@nina_kali_nina

I figured out that all the art in Snatcher and other pc-88 games was made with this eye-bleeding palette and they just blended the colors like masterful impressionists.

Jeltron Dec 8, 2023

@nina_kali_nina Also the screen is 200px tall stretched to 400px so every pixel is 2 tall

Nina Kalinina Dec 8, 2023

@Jeltron yeah that sounds about right! :) perhaps if there's a composite mode it looks even better

Jeltron Dec 8, 2023

@nina_kali_nina Yes I've seen photos of it running on CRTs and it looks incredible. It is like if you had to make art by manually painting the rgb pieces of a pixel or something.

Nina Kalinina Dec 8, 2023

@Jeltron yeah, that is somewhat possible if they were making the art on the PC-88 itself! Because the artist wouldn't see pixels, just the result

Allanon 🇮🇹

@nina_kali_nina really hard to believe at first sight, but yes, miracles Iike this are possible thanks to artists that are just gods. If I think about the resources they had at that time I can feel the pain drawing every pixel to achieve such results. I've seen this kind of miracles also on the Amiga 500 in hires mode (640x256) and 16, just 16, colours.
I love all of this ❤️

Shane Celis Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina ditherpunks

Eric Vitiello Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina Really amazing dithering! I wonder if it was all done by hand.

Nina Kalinina Nov 25, 2023

@pixel I want to explore PC-98 graphic editors tomorrow and see!

Eric Vitiello Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina yes! My mind would have been blown had I seen graphics this good back then. I was entranced by Bananoid because of the colors.

Rasmus Sten Nov 25, 2023

@pixel OMG! I had completely forgot that game! That screenshot brings back so many memories

Nina Kalinina Nov 25, 2023

@pixel I just realised that VGA Bananoid was released a year later than Kojima's Snatcher for an 8-bit MSX: https://youtu.be/gGfbyV4Mo2w?si=H0beQrFY-K4NIzfO&t=383

Snatcher MSX part 1

YouTube

The Doctor Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina The screen border is quite pretty. You don't see ones like that often anymore.

Nina Kalinina Nov 25, 2023

@drwho I've checked out the remakes of the games I've mentioned, and sadly they removed the border. Such a shame. We have huge screens now, having a border is totally not going to damage the experience in any way.

Hugo Mills Nov 24, 2023

@nina_kali_nina Wow. Just wow. Those are 4 bits?!

I used an Archimedes for many years, which had 16 bit palettes (selected arbitrarily from a 12-bit colour space) in many screen modes, but there was rarely anything that good.

Nina Kalinina Nov 24, 2023

@darkling yes, this is 4 bit per pixel, or 16 colours, from a palette of 4096 colours (R4G4B4, 12 bit colour space). So, Archimedes could do that, too. If only it was THE computer for everyone, I guess...

Hugo Mills Nov 24, 2023

@nina_kali_nina The tech was there, but clearly the artists weren't.

A little strange, given that it was the platform that produced ArtWorks (later bought by Corel), which is still, to my mind, the best vector art system produced.

I suppose the Archimedes was always a bit of a niche system, despite being the launching point for the ARM. A shame, because it was head and shoulders above most other things of the era.

Kevin Granade has moved Nov 24, 2023

@nina_kali_nina holy crap that orb looks amazing.

Jyrgen N Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina That is indeed far beyond those that I have seen in the 80s, Sierra games etc. (But then I have never been much into games at all; didn't even make it through Leisure Suit Larry.)
The only place I saw the PC98 mentioned was the FreeBSD kernel config file, where it had some entry.

apophis Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina thank you for this thread... the technical difference really does explain a lot about how these games got that specific look and feel!

Nina Kalinina Nov 25, 2023

@apophis as it turns out, in the West there were computers which had similar features, but either they weren't popular enough, or artists didn't care about them that much. So it also could be a very cultural thing.

@nina_kali_nina the fact that they have a hashed semi-transparent looking text box here is killing me

@nina_kali_nina like, I am used to graphicians making 16-out-of-whatever colours look like there's no restrictions whatsoever, but that on top feels so gratuitous, even if it's not *that* complicated

Arcadiagt5 Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina I’ve been enjoying #16BitSensationAnotherLayer a fair bit but wasn’t aware of this history. Thanks for sharing this info.

Nina Kalinina Nov 25, 2023

@arcadiagt5 now you see why Mamoru-kun wants to "mamoru" (to protect) PC-98? 🥹 Such a refined device, compared to crude IBM PC clones running silly Windows...

Arcadiagt5 Nov 25, 2023

@nina_kali_nina indeed.

Nukleon Dec 17, 2023

@nina_kali_nina They're some amazing looking games. The raw screenshots and from the LCD also look really good, but they were really meant to be displayed at 4:3, since non-square pixels were still very common at this point. Same with the PC VGA games, most were at 320x200, and in something like ScummVM they're wider than intended unless you correct the aspect ratio :)

Nina Kalinina Dec 17, 2023

@Nukleon yes but no! While NEC CRT tubes were physically 4:3, BIOS and virtually everyone assumed that the screen is adjusted to display 16:10 with square-ish pixels. When I tried to connect this laptop to my western VGA monitor, it went into a bizarre horizontal refresh rate and gave me a picture with mostly square pixels.

Nina Kalinina Dec 17, 2023

@Nukleon here's a photo of PC98 from NEC ancient ad I found on a random Japanese website. You can see how massive borders are; just to make 16:10 image on a 4:3 screen.

Coffeehound RetroSharka 🏳️‍⚧️Feb 4

@nina_kali_nina Thank you so much for your lovely thread about PC-98!

I've been PC-98 kick lately after watching through 16-bit Sensation for the first time in December (and loving it!) and finally getting to grips with PC-98 emulation. And yeah, I'm frequently amazed by what they do with such a small colour palette combined with the higher resolution.

Currently playing through Mime - Floating Dream, and it has fast become one of my favourite dungeon crawlers.

Nina Kalinina Feb 4

@SharkaBytes my pleasure! 🥰

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot Feb 4

@nina_kali_nina casually invents the world’s first graphics accellerator chip

(μPD7220)

Nina Kalinina Feb 5

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot Feb 5

@nina_kali_nina the apple macintosh, with its revolutionary software rendered black and white bitmap display came out

four
years
later

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot Feb 5

@nina_kali_nina i archived a thread i wrote about it here

https://notes.yip.pe/notes/notes/The%20PPU%20thread.html

The PPU thread

ARGVMI~1.PIF Feb 5

The Mac's graphics hardware was interesting not because of how many pixels it pushed per second but because:

1. square pixels, and
2. pixel density is exactly ½ that of the Apple ImageWriter printer.

This wasn't amazing for gaming (and Apple spent several years actively discouraging game development), but it was a big deal for desktop publishing. The Mac was the one true platform for desktop publishing until the late 1990s.

@nina_kali_nina

Luci Bitchface Angerfoot Feb 5

@argv_minus_one @nina_kali_nina are you saying the image writer had 144ppi?

ARGVMI~1.PIF Feb 5

Yes.

@nina_kali_nina