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

Had a go this evening at some #PC98 style #pixelart, trying to imagine what semi-secret Merveilles mascot @maru would look like as a VN character.

Hope you don't mind my attempt at fan-art @rek