r/pc98

I just attended the FAKKU panel at this year's Anime Expo and CEO Jacob Grady announced that they received permission from FairyTale to translate and port their entire catalog of 150+ games to modern systems (seemingly via Steam). In addition, FairyTale will be able to re-release these ports to the Japanese market as well.

He announced the first ten games which include: Dracula Hakushaku, Dead of the Brain, Dead of the Brain 2, Dengeki Nurse, Marine Philt, Necronomicon, Shinjuku Monogatari, Welcome to Pia Carrot!!, and two others I unfortunately cannot remember. They will be working with the fan translation group WINE for Dead of the Brain, Dead of the Brain 2, and Dengeki Nurse which is currently available to wishlist on Steam. No timeline was given for their release, however. Either way, it seems like a really big moment for the PC-98 community and for the general preservation of these games.

So I'm wanting to make accurate mock-ups of fake PC-98 game screenshots, and so I've been doing a lot of research into the machine's capabilities, however I've never had the best head for hardware. I understand that a PC-98 image could only support 16 colours at a time, however a lot of screenshots of actual games I'm seeing strongly appear to use up to 32 colours. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulty finding screenshots that aren't full of JPEG compression, so I can't be entirely certain just based on these screenshots. However, based on my best estimations , and the descriptions I'm seeing about how its video RAM having two "pages" that could be written to separately, am I correct in concluding that the PC-98 could essentially display two images (say, a background and a sprite), each with their own 16-colour palette?

Hello, this is sort of super specific so I appreciate that it might not be interesting. But being both new and dealing with two very vague guides has managed to invoke my wrath.

I stumbled upon a guide about Multi Paint System for PC98 on a neocities blog. I wanted to try it out and this blog mentions that you can load images onto it so I thought I’d do that. So I get as far as making an image into BMP format. But then to convert that into a MAG file they suggest a command line tool called MG and say “Just drag this program onto a disc image, then put the image you want to convert in the same folder” vague…

The MG tool also comes with an alternative guide to achieve the same objective but is equally vague.

I know it’s just MS paint for PC98 but I need to see this through. Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

I don't know how to swap them! I'm trying to play the fan translation of Giten Megami Tensei and the game comes in two files a boot fdi file and a game hdi file. And I'm not even sure what to do with them.
Whenever I insert one or the other i get a text prompt. No idea if I have to type a command to open the other file or insert the other disk somehow. I read something about creating m3u files but I must not have understood how to do it or if it doesn't work with this game.
FYI: I'm using the Retroarch version of NekoKai2
Any help would be appreciated.

A while ago I picked up a PC-98 CRT from a Facebook Marketplace post. No idea if it works. Decided I'd better get a PC-98 and some power adapters to try it out.

I looked on here and saw that the 9821Ae looked like a decent choice.

I guess the question is... What else do I need? All I really want to do is play some English translations of... Anything, but I love a bit of old hardware over an emulator.

Issues are

- it doesn't have a hard disk. Can I add one somehow (does it do IDE, can you use Compact Flash?)? I read somewhere that there were pre-made images you can get from somewhere?

- PC-98 Keyboard, is a mouse useful or not so much?

- Gotek disk drive replacements? What would be the best one to get?

- some sort of PC-98 to RGB or VGA cable in case my monitor doesn't work?

I'm open to suggestions!