/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10081123]

Ahhhh, the sweet, soothing, sights of retro Japanese PC gaming on the PC-88.

[Anonymous No.10081264]

>>10081123
Why does nobody actually talk about the gameplay of PC-88/98 games at length? It's always just screenshots with no real in-depth discussion about the games themselves

[Anonymous No.10081278]

>>10081264
A combination of this being an English-speaking website, so 99% of people here can't speak Japanese, and the games not actually being very good.

[Anonymous No.10081302]

>>10081278
Good games get fan translations (hell, even SHMUPs get translations and it's the last genre that needs it for gameplay), so I think it's the latter

[Anonymous No.10081370]

>>10081123
It's like staring into the sun.

[Anonymous No.10081445]

>>10081264
because the games are ass unless you are a weeb trying really hard to gatekeep
just play MSX games

[Anonymous No.10081459]

>>10081264
because you just wanted to capture soul, if you tried to analyze soul it would stop being soul

[Anonymous No.10081527]

>>10081302
If you're hacking a game for translations, you can expect most systems to have documentation on how to modify the game. PC98 has relatively little explanation for how any of it works without digging into an obscure mess of Discords and forums. It's like how you can't find an actual hack/mod of any other computer like Commodore 64 or Speccy as there's no explanation of how to work the graphics anywhere. There once was a thread here with someone doing a graphics hack of Rusty back in February last year, and I had difficulty understanding what it was he was actually doing. I think he mentioned using some Japanese-only image program that was running through the emulator, so if anyone has graphics you need to translate, you may have to deal with shit like that.

[Anonymous No.10081560]

>>10081370
Whoa oh oh oh.

[Anonymous No.10081570]

>>10081264
Because they don't really play the games.

[Anonymous No.10081581]

>>10081527
If I remember right, Rusty used a popular image format handled by some drawing programs.
As for graphics, most companies have their own image format, using variants of RLE and/or LZSS. The code behind D.O./ZyX's images is pretty neat for example.
And when it comes to text, some games display it by calls to strings in the executable (most of Slayers is done this way) and others have elaborate scripting languages. So yeah, every engine/game is different and you can't have system-wide documentation aside from I/O ports and interrupts. Here's a great site for basic infos:
http://radioc.web.fc2.com/column/pc98bas/index_en.htm

In a way, it's not very different from regular PC game hacking.

[Anonymous No.10081810]

>>10081264
>It's always just screenshots with no real in-depth discussion
To be fair, that goes for 90% of /vr/, ever since its inception.
Still prefer just pics (it is an image board after all) over forced opinion wars or endless lists.
Fucking lists.

[Anonymous No.10081878]

>>10081264
>Why does nobody actually talk about the gameplay of PC-88/98 games at length?
Because there's very little of it. It's basically a glorified Atari 2600 with some porn games.

[Anonymous No.10082003]

I'm going to take a guess and say this probably looks less fucked up on the intended display.
I really hope so.

[Anonymous No.10082323]

>>10081264
this japanese guy plays PC-88/98/MSX games. he seems cool but i have no idea wtf he is saying, i throw his videos on in the background for ambiance.

https://youtube.com/@Handos-Game-Channel

[Anonymous No.10082336]

>>10081123
Was this game made in Chernobyl by any chance? Looks radioactive.

[Anonymous No.10082512]

>>10081878
You really don't like any? They make me feel like a kid in a candy store
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLggiR6EYao

[Anonymous No.10082524]

>>10081123
Games like this had to be financed by Big Glasses. I love stuff like this but I always have to adjust my display settings to make it not painful to play.

[Anonymous No.10082596]

>>10081445
are MSX games supposed to be any better? their specs are roughly equivalent to PC-88...

[Anonymous No.10082731]

>>10081123
Genesis version was better. :^)

[Anonymous No.10082772]

>>10082323
heh, he named his Wizardry party after old consoles
https://youtu.be/Von_jsOBChg?t=83
it could be cool if it wasn't for the language barrier

[Anonymous No.10082935]

>>10081264
No one knows japanese, combined with most of them being erotic VNs. Most of the people going on about them probably never played them or know which is which, just get screenshots off google and say "wow, nice art!". Only Yu-no gets some discussion.

[Anonymous No.10084332]

>>10081264
People aren't really into playing games that they can't read.
I occassionally play some, but what exactly am I supposed to discuss after having talked about the gameplay for a bit? I'll mention the story (if any) with the screenshots of course, but it's not like one of the 10 guys who can read Japanese will likely also play that game and want to discuss it with me.

[Anonymous No.10084339]

>>10084332
Why is no one translating these games when there's hundreds of fan translations on other platforms?

[Anonymous No.10084358]

>>10082596
It's all a meme. A glorified c64 but I'd argue c64 had a better library. Unless you're into anime porn graphic novel bullshit.

[Anonymous No.10084374]

>>10081123
Like an oil painting, beautiful

[Anonymous No.10084382]

>>10084339
I have these feeling you're just trying backhandedly call it all shit, but I'll try say how I feel it is.
Simply because most people are more interested in those other platforms. Translations do happen, but the fanbase for any non-English is obviously small as proper resources to garner any interest are slim.
PC88 for example is more akin to early DOS gaming and very few people are even into that outside of people who grew up with it. I don't think many of the people who grew up with a PC88 browse this board (or even Japchan in general).
PC98 is fine, but suffers from the same issues other non-scroller PCs have which turn off the more casual retrogaymers as it leaves you with a select few genres it can do well (it does have a surprisingly large amount of action RPGs though).

Translation efforts mainly comes from interest or passion. Most people who learn the language just want to play games as weeb audiences are notoriously whiny. I have done a few, but they were on win32 ported versions or turned into ports to win32 as its easier for everyone involved (especially if it graphically looks largely identical), people in the English fanbase barely knows they exist and it has a wiki. Also translators don't have a tendency to know how to code, so you need to find a coder that is interested in helping you with the project, something that has far less resources available than the more accessible retrogaming platforms do as more people are passionate and have an interest in that due to not having to learn a language with a different alphabet system.

TLDR: too little interest, as the only English interest you'll see is people posting dumped porn CGs and for gloryhound translators that will result in 10 downloads.
Aside from that, the genres that do work are very enthusiast for what the average retrogamer actually enjoys, like with most other pre-late 90s Home PC system.

[Anonymous No.10084413]

Jesus it's like Oblivion's landscapes with that terrible bloom

[Anonymous No.10084504]

>>10081123
You have literally never had that feeling, you homo.
One opening of Ys and you guys turn full weeb what the fuck.

[Anonymous No.10084523]

We don't talk about PC-88 games because they are shit. You only see screenshots because they're terrible in motion. That's why most of the famous games are VNs. The PC-88 and PC-98 were not made with games in mind. They didn't have hardware for sprites or even a simple thing like screen scrolling. If you wanted to make a game with scrolling, you had to program the effect yourself, and 99.9% of the time, it was ass.

Do this as an exercise: look up the game Fray in Magical Adventure (Xak Gaiden) for as many consoles as you can on youtube. Notice something? The PC-98's version scrolling is horrible and slow.

[Anonymous No.10084531]

>>10084523
>If you wanted to make a game with scrolling, you had to program the effect yourself, and 99.9% of the time, it was ass.
That's true for PC gaming too.

[Anonymous No.10084851]

>>10084523
>we
>post that badly reiterates what other posters already said with added vitriol
>doesn't reply to anyone directly, but is clearly into a conversation that is being had
Still playing my speccy and jap speccy and I WILL mention them, sorry if this makes you mad.

[Anonymous No.10084895]

>>10081123
>haha 80s game graphics m i right fellow rebbitors?
This is par for a 1987 home computer and most American computer games didn't run in a high resolution like this.

[Anonymous No.10084980]

>>10084895
Are you retarded, anon? Super Hydlide came out in 1987, the same year that the Amiga came out, and absolutely raped the PC-88's resolution at a whopping 640×512, compared to the PC-88's, at the time archaic, 640×400.

[Anonymous No.10084983]

>>10084504
I guess anon is too dense to sense the sarcasm coming from OP's post.

[Anonymous No.10084991]

>>10084531
The Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum were both capable of scrolling, and they had a healthy amount of SCHMUP's that were done exceptionally well.

[Anonymous No.10085020]

>>10084358
msx is miles above a c64, dont be retarded

[Anonymous No.10085024]

>>10084382
>I have these feeling you're just trying backhandedly call it all shit, but I'll try say how I feel it is.

I'll play Devil's Avocado here and say that, since I also defend the C64 and ZX Spectrum libraries, which everyone uses the same argument against, saying that nobody knows about them because "they're all shit", that the PC-88's library is simply too niche for fan translations to be popular.

Fan translations on other consoles themselves are hard to come by, specifically for the NES and SNES.

THAT BEING SAID HOWEVER, the Japanese PC games in the 80's and 90's did no favors for convincing people of the capability of their computers, hence never expanding outside of their native demographic regions. Despite Japanese PC's at the time tending to have larger resolutions and more CPU power, they were extremely limited in their graphical capabilities, which led to slow-paced games, ultimately leading to the platforms being dominated by Visual Novels and puzzle games, which for the most part, were not good.

The MSX was the closest any of them got to breaking that mold and that was a Microsoft designed computer and became the premiere PC platform of the 90's in Japan, displacing all other Japanese computer systems, until they inevitably just adopted Windows.

[Anonymous No.10085029]

>>10085020
>MSX is miles above a C64
In tech, sure, but that's because it came out over a decade later. C64 still had a better library of games.

[Anonymous No.10085126]

>>10084991
Yeah the C64's video chip, the VIC-II, was made with sprites and scrolling in mind. Whereas the PC didn't have anything like that.

[Anonymous No.10085170]

>>10082596
MSX has lower resolution than PC-88, and has a sprite hardware. I think it couldn't even render Japanese text, it didn't have a high res mode.

>>10085020
MSX is TI-99/4A, Colecovision, and SG-1000 tier. Slow scrolling, a hard limit of 4 sprites per scanline, and really slow CPU access to the VRAM. C64's sprite hardware is way faster than that, and the whole 64K RAM was visible to the CPU during half cycles iirc. That's why you could make self modifying tile codes on the C64 but not the MSX. MSX2 is better, but it came out in 1985, way too late and too expensive.

>>10085029
Are you thinking of the MSX Turbo R?

[Anonymous No.10085179]

>>10085024
Honestly, the issue was more with it being a largely native design meaning that and hardware accelerator that would come in the 90s basically never really happened to catch on. The few companies whose older games I play and who generally posted their thoughts or other mundane happenings (which is always great, like little time capsule diaries) basically all switched over to Windows OSes by the mids 90 and fully switched over to just Windows support after the newest iteration of their interpreter engine (which existed to allow for massive porting to all the other home pcs to begin with) and just killed any other support.
There's still plenty of non-scrolling TRPGs and strategy games as well as some interesting ideas for RPGs in the mass of RPG shlock that any system had. VNs are definitely a majority of the games, but keep in mind that most of them are ADV/VN hybrids as VNs themselves were still developing. Not that the ADV genre is anything to be glad about in the early 90s.
Frankly I don't see the huge issue of the stuttery scrolling in RPGs, the larger screen real estate and better graphical capabilities for the most part offset this greatly. It's just action games where it really had issues (and early arcade type games for the 88 of course). The Japanese aren't very good coders either, so your chances of a Commander Keen happening were unlikely at best.

>>10085170
MSXs had kana (the simple scribble alphabets) support (and other regional alphabets if bought there), any kanji had to be tile based though I heard some games replaced the kana alphabet with their own "font" when loading their game so to speak so they could technically do that. Not very useful for kanji as that'd be too little options, but they used it for HUD symbols.

[Anonymous No.10085184]

>>10081264
a ton of games are buggy laggy pieces of garbage that only have worth as CG sets and music rips
"damn this puzzle game is janky as shit, I guess this emulator just sucks ass or something"
>look up footage captured from real hardware on youtube/nnd
>it's exactly the same
there are good (or at least interesting) games though, its fun going through all the turbo shitty unwieldy SRPGs

[Anonymous No.10085190]

>>10085179
>Not that the ADV genre is anything to be glad about in the early 90s.

Adventure gaming was at its peak in the early 90's, and is an underrated genre nowadays. The world could do with more games centered around exploration and puzzle solving rather than SHOOT or SLASH.

[Anonymous No.10085701]

>>10081264
because most of them are shit. from the translated ones, I'd say the best one is the Farland Story series and it's a Langrisser clone, there isn't much to say about it.

[Anonymous No.10085738]

>>10085701
99% of anything is shit. People discuss utterly unknown garbage here all the time, genuinely the only difference is that they can understand what they play and that it is easily accessible. That's all there is to it.

[Anonymous No.10085742]

>>10085738
well yeah, only like 50 of them are translated and that's including shitty machine translations

[Anonymous No.10085750]

>>10085742
You don't even have to bother with people making shitty machine translations if you don't know Japanese, you can hook up your own shitty translator, but that isn't that accessible for the average person so it hasn't resulted in much change.

[Anonymous No.10086036]

>>10084339
Most of it is porn with not much else interesting unless you really know japanese. Many don't play them, just look at nice nude anime chicks and scenery in screenshots.

[Anonymous No.10086045]

>>10084980
Oh blow my balls. Amiga next to never used that resolution for games.

[Anonymous No.10086052]

Ah yes, a crypto THE AMIGA GUYS. THE AMIGA. PLEASE CARE ABOUT THE AMIGA thread. No. We won't.

[Anonymous No.10086307]

>>10086045
Not that guy, but high res mode was usually used for strategy games, since it's quite unnecessary otherwise.

>>10086052
I think that's a sensible response to a misinformed post.

[Anonymous No.10086524]

>>10085170
I was talking about the library, specswise it's true it's not that impressive

[Anonymous No.10086552]

>>10086524
Most of the good games came out on the MSX2. The MSX1 got awful speccy ports and simple arcade games. It didn't have enough RAM to compete with C64's library.

[Anonymous No.10087428]

>>10085126
There's also something magical about ZX Spectrum's display controller. The color attribute is awful, but the fillrate is blazing fast.

[Anonymous No.10088359]

>>10087428
>There's also something magical about ZX Spectrum's display controller. The color attribute is awful, but the fillrate is blazing fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n7qtErhF-A

[Anonymous No.10089814]

PC-88 games are in a 640x200 resolution, not 640x400 like the PC-98. This screenshot should have scan lines and emulators deal with this.

[Anonymous No.10089823]

>where the FUCK are the SCANLINES you apocryphal spewing FAKES

[Anonymous No.10091326]

If you emulate, unless you use a decent low-res filter, you'll have PC-88/X1/FM-7 games display like crap.

Left is raw, right is filtered.

[Anonymous No.10091810]

>>10091326
Holy shit. That's pretty good.