History Platform / PC98

** ''Ys III: Wanderers from Ys''

When released in the early 1980s, the PC-98 was considerably advanced for its time, featuring higher resolutions (initially up to 640x400) than Western computers of that era, and while the audio quality of a base unit was a beeper that's identical to the one used on the IBM PC, better audio quality could be added on using Yamaha FM synthesis soundcards, which were almost always sold bundled with the machine. The PC-98 eventually sold over 18 million units in Japan alone by 1999, making it one of the best-selling computer systems of the 20th century, rivaled only by the Platform/{{Commodore 64}} (17 million units) and the Platform/IBMPersonalComputer in sales. There were also PC-98 clones manufactured by Toshiba and Seiko Epson[[note]]although Seiko Epson was exceptionally unfortunate as they have only been advertising the machines as coming soon and have not yet started selling their machines when NEC's lawyers came, thus stopping their plans before it made them a single cent[[/note]], although NEC did sue them for their effort in cloning the device. The clones are also why NEC started [[UsefulNotes/CopyProtection copy-protecting]] their OEM versions of MS-DOS.

The PC-98's main computer rivals in Japan were the Platform/SharpX68000 and Platform/FMTowns, released in 1987 and 1989, respectively. Despite the X68000 and FM Towns both being considerably more powerful (almost UsefulNotes/ArcadeGame quality, in fact) than the PC-98, neither computer was able to dethrone the PC-98 as the Japanese market leader (but the X68000 did come close). It wasn't until the late 1990s that the IBM PC finally ended the PC-98's reign over the Japanese PC market. Despite that, and NEC's later commitment to the IBM-compatible standards, [[FranchiseZombie they didn't discontinue the PC-98 till 2003]], which at that time the platform was pretty much dead in Japan.

The PC-98's contribution to Japanese video game history is a checkered one. Most earlier games for the system were essentially Platform/PC88 games running on a faster 16-bit CPU (and identical video hardware). By the time the PC-98 overtook the PC-88 and Platform/{{MSX}}, the tide of the UsefulNotes/PCVsConsole battle in Japan was turning heavily in favor of consoles (including NEC's[=/=]Creator/HudsonSoft's Platform/PCEngine). A few important PC-oriented companies, including Creator/{{Compile}}, Creator/{{Falcom}} and Creator/{{Koei|Tecmo}}, maintained support of the PC-98, though even they started developing many of their important titles for consoles. What ended up thriving on the PC-98 was not so much action games (though [[DoujinSoft indie developers]] made some remarkable efforts) as [=RPGs=] (mainly [[EasternRPG native]] as well as [[WesternRPG Western]]), TurnBasedStrategy games, {{Visual Novel}}s, and (overlapping with the previous categories) {{Eroge}}. In fact, the PC-98's game library most likely contains a greater proportion of H-games than that of any other platform (beware of {{NSFW}} images likely to turn up in searches). By the 1990s, the PC-98 had a very large library of video games, with thousands of titles, though [[NoExportForYou only a small fraction of these games were ever released outside of Japan]].

[[folder: PC-9081/APC-III]]

The PC-98's main computer rivals in Japan were the UsefulNotes/SharpX68000 and Platform/FMTowns, released in 1987 and 1989, respectively. Despite the X68000 and FM Towns both being considerably more powerful (almost UsefulNotes/ArcadeGame quality, in fact) than the PC-98, neither computer was able to dethrone the PC-98 as the Japanese market leader (but the X68000 did come close). It wasn't until the late 1990s that the IBM PC finally ended the PC-98's reign over the Japanese PC market. Despite that, and NEC's later commitment to the IBM-compatible standards, [[FranchiseZombie they didn't discontinue the PC-98 till 2003]], which at that time the platform was pretty much dead in Japan.

** Other possible add-on sound cards are a C-Bus version of the Roland LAPC-I sound card and even the [=SoundBlaster=] series of sound cards.

** Supports all PC CGA modes plus an extra graphics mode with 8 colors from a palette of 4096 at [=640x400=]. Can actually be expanded to get 256 colors from a palette of 4096 at [=640x400=] at the expense of using more system RAM if you have an EMS card to offset.

** Supports all PC CGA modes plus an extra graphics mode with 8 colors from a palette of 4096 at 640x400.

* C-Bus slots- a 100-pin expansion slot that is incompatible with the ISA standard used in the west. Usually used for hard drive adapters, network adapters and sound cards.

* Certain models may have a single low profile PCI slot.

* C-Bus slots- a 100-pin expansion slot that is incompatible with the ISA standard used in the west. Usually used for hard drive adapters, network adapters and sound cards.

* IDE hard drive

* Intel 8086 clocked at 4.77MHz

** Other possible add-on sound cards are a C-Bus version of the Roland LAPC-I sound card and even the [=SoundBlaster=] series of sound cards.

** Also supports hardware assisted scrolling, integer scaling and blitting over a decade before the features became available on western PCs.

The characteristic dithered look of PC-98 games is due to the system's idiosyncratic display hardware, namely a pretty anemic Video RAM. Due to the need to display Japanese text with its complex characters, the developers were forced to use high-resolution video mode, which didn't have much of a color depth — early models could show only 8 colors in 640×400 high-res mode[[note]]the mode was given the fan nickname of JEGA- Japanese EGA- by fans. NEC would make this mode one of the many mandatory screen modes in the VESA specification when they formed the standard, which caused it to be co-opted over to the IBM PC compatible world by the mid-90s[[/note]], powered by a pair of NEC NEC µPD7220 GDC chips. The same problem plagued early [[Platform/IBMPersonalComputer IBM PC]]'s high-resolution EGA and VGA modes, which were initially not so popular with Western-developed games, but while Western text looked at least somewhat readable in low-res modes, Japanese developers were left without such respite.

* Up to 128MB of EDO RAM.

** Crystal CS4231-based sound card, connected to the motherboard via a Audio Modem Riser slot.

* 2x 3.5" MF2HD disks, 1.44MB

* IDE 8x CD-ROM drive standard

* Cirrus Logic SVGA graphics, VESA 1.0 compliant.

* C-Bus slots- a 100-pin expansion slot that is incompatible with the ISA standard used in the west. Usually used for hard drive adapters, network adapters and sound cards.

The characteristic dithered look of PC-98 games is due to the system's idiosyncratic display hardware, namely a pretty anemic Video RAM. Due to the need to display Japanese text with its complex characters, the developers were forced to use high-resolution video mode, which didn't have much of a color depth — early models could show only 8 colors in 640×400 high-res mode[[note]]the mode was given the fan nickname of JEGA- Japanese EGA- by fans. NEC would make this mode one of the many mandatory screen modes in the VESA specification when they formed the standard, which caused it to be co-opted over to the IBM PC compatible world by the mid-90s[[/note]]. The same problem plagued early [[Platform/IBMPersonalComputer IBM PC]]'s high-resolution EGA and VGA modes, which were initially not so popular with Western-developed games, but while Western text looked at least somewhat readable in low-res modes, Japanese developers were left without such respite.

An attempt to export the PC-98 platform was made early in the machine's life, believe it or not. The platform were sold outside Japan under the APC (''Advanced Personal Computer'') series moniker by NEC. Their status of being PC-compatible-but-not-quite caused quite the headache to unaware buyers and ultimately caused the platform to fail outside Japan- while most basic text mode programs made for the IBM PC like [=WordStar=] and Lotus 1-2-3 would run without issues on the platform, and while the APC machines do emulate the PC CGA video modes in a bid by NEC to increase compatibility, games and programs that expected the hardware addresses to be identical to that of a PC and tried to access them directly would act up and cause things like spontaneous reboots and hardlocks. NEC quickly discontinued export of the PC-98 platform and started making true PC compatibles for markets outside Japan soon after. Additionally, the fact that NEC’s copies of MS-DOS were copy-protected to ensure it won’t boot on non-PC-98 (and thus non-APC) computers led to further misunderstandings and further contributed to the platform failing outside Japan.[[note]]NEC had incorporated a check for certain signatures in their BIOS that forces the OS to reboot if the signature was not found, in an attempt to thwart clone makers, after seeing how IBM’s hold on the PC market imploded due to clones in the west and upon learning that Toshiba had cloned the PC-98 and Epson was planning on doing so. This led to misconception that PC-98 had a different hardware address arrangement and bootloader requirement than a FM-Towns or stock IBM PC, and thus required a specialized version of MS-DOS that will not boot on other systems and vice-versa.[[/note]]

The PC-98's contribution to Japanese video game history is a checkered one. Most earlier games for the system were essentially UsefulNotes/PC88 games running on a faster 16-bit CPU (and identical video hardware). By the time the PC-98 overtook the PC-88 and UsefulNotes/{{MSX}}, the tide of the UsefulNotes/PCVsConsole battle in Japan was turning heavily in favor of consoles (including NEC's[=/=]Creator/HudsonSoft's Platform/PCEngine). A few important PC-oriented companies, including Creator/{{Compile}}, Creator/{{Falcom}} and Creator/{{Koei|Tecmo}}, maintained support of the PC-98, though even they started developing many of their important titles for consoles. What ended up thriving on the PC-98 was not so much action games (though [[DoujinSoft indie developers]] made some remarkable efforts) as [=RPGs=] (mainly [[EasternRPG native]] as well as [[WesternRPG Western]]), TurnBasedStrategy games, {{Visual Novel}}s, and (overlapping with the previous categories) {{Eroge}}. In fact, the PC-98's game library most likely contains a greater proportion of H-games than that of any other platform (beware of {{NSFW}} images likely to turn up in searches). By the 1990s, the PC-98 had a very large library of video games, with thousands of titles, though [[NoExportForYou only a small fraction of these games were ever released outside of Japan]].