entry 3: The appealing visual style of PC-98 and other Japanese home computer games

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Hōma Hunter Lime by Silence

As I’ve stated in my previous blogpost, I grew up with a stupid amount of unsupervised internet access. The world was my oyster, and as a dumb preteen my primary interest was in consuming as much of this new (to me) genre known as “anime”. Particularly, trolling through endless Google results to find the perfect anime girl image to use for my vampire role plays or trying to find some free 3D models to use with MikuMikuDance that I stumbled upon troves of images of beautiful women drawn from delicately placed pixels, moody night time cityscapes, and strange (often violent or outright nsfw) out-of-context scenes. They intrigued my young mind, and terrified me, but it wouldn’t be until a few years later as a teenager on Tumblr I’d come to understand these were often screen grabs from PC-98 games.

If you don't know what a PC-98 is, it was a line of personal computers sold from 1982 to 2003 and was popular in the 90s in Japan. Also, it was not IBM compatible. I just found that out looking at the wikipedia page, here's a link for you. Anyway, like is natural for all computers, it had video games. And those video games were pretty cool.


Kakyuusei by Elf


Doki Doki Vacation: Kirameku Kisetsu no Naka de by Cocktail Soft

Photo Genic by Fill in Cafe and Zero System

Dōkyūsei by Elf

Travel Junction by Cocktail Soft

Power Slave by Umitsuki Productions


Through blogs like JazzIsTheBestFormofMusic, the visual style of PC-98 games began to make itself clear to me. It’s couched in a 1990s anime style, but a little more vibrant, a little more stylish, and a little more punk. My understanding is most games for these platforms were made either by independent developers (advertising in magazines like Game Urara, which I covered previously), or by pretty small/niche teams. I’m sure some larger companies dipped their toes in the waters, but this was the 90s and it was a time of creativity and discovery pioneered by weirdos. It comes with all the things that type of niche, boundry-pushing art is couched in: sometimes it sucks, sometimes its beautiful, a lot will offend, a lot of it is horny in strange ways. Like all art forms under capitalism, it had to somewhat appeal to a wide enough audience to support the art being created. So like, an absurd amount of them involve pornography. That’s my warning to you if you go search up stuff on its own. They had a game called Sex and Sex 2, for godssakes (see Amelie Doree’s video on Sex 2if you’re interested to understand more why, yes even in the pornography, there’s artistic merit to be had!!!)


Sex 2 by Aypio

Quiz Hao by Active

So, what are the appealing aspects of PC-98 art?

First, I want to say there are a lot of things I just straight up don’t understand because I’m not Japanese, so please don’t take this rambling blog entry as anything besides the aesthetic value I find in this type of art. Second, I’m 28 and grew up online so a lot of the visual language here are things that deeply speak to me. My favorite anime is Gunsmith Cats and I watched Dragon-Half at a very formative age. I consider these essential viewings to understand the overall 90s stylistic trend of drawing really cool, fashionable women!


Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective by TomBoy

Diver's by Mink

Photo Genic by Fill in Cafe and Zero System

Look, it’s quite simply awesome to draw cute girls. There’s an artistic satisfaction in drawing someone who is visually interesting to look at, where character design coalesces with fashion and produces an image our brains like to look at. I get the feeling that’s a huge reason so much PC-98 art that gets featured is of the various games female characters in their thoughtfully framed scenes. Of course, this catering to visual appeal extends to the various scenery as well.


Photo Genic by Fill in Cafe and Zero System

Sayonara no Mukougawaby Foster

Dōkyūsei by Elf

PC-98 art also brings an appealingness to the mundane, in the same way the photograph of something like a diner might be elevated by the framing and the light. Think, Nighthawks (1942) by Edward Hopper, but anime


Kuroneko-Kan by Fairy Dust

Photo Genic by Fill in Cafe and Zero System

Fushigi no Umi no Nadia by Gainax


And, like any good art, it’s home to a lot of Weird, surreal imagry. Pushing the still-early medium of digital art to dizzying, beautiful extremes. Go scroll through Jazzisthebestformofmusic's tumblr archive for a bit and you'll see what I mean.


Photo Genic by Fill in Cafe and Zero System

Cybernetic Hi-School Part 3: Gunbuster by Gainax

Mime by Studio Twinkle



If you’d like to learn more about PC-98 & the games made for it, I’d recommend checking out the following resources:

- Another Tumblr with many sourced PC-98 images: https://decadot.tumblr.com/
- The PC-98 Bot on BlueSky
- For another great dive into the alluring aesthetics of PC-98 games: PC-98 games looked really REALLY cool by ThorHighHeels
- For a breakdown of NEC PC-98 Hardware: Japanese Retro Computing : The NEC PC-9821 Home Computer by Modern Vintage Gamer
- For deep-dives into specific games (as well as someone who can give you FAR better context to these games history than I ever could): Amelie Doree
- For a breakdown of the popular PC-98 game “Dead of the Brain”: Sleazy Retro Horror | Dead of the Brain (PC-98) by Dungeon Chill


Maria ni Sasageru Ballade by FairyTale
^....whoa. boston mention!


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