#pc88

When thinking about the history of video games, many people of a certain age conjure to mind a beginning marked by the boom that Nintendo's NES (known in Japan as the Famicom) brought to the world. Fewer people will be overly familiar with Atari's platforms or their competitors, and fewer still will likely have heard about the infamous crash of the American video game industry in 1983 beyond being able to regurgitate myths of Howard Scott Warshaw's adaptation of E.T. the Extraterrestrial (1983) bearing supposed direct responsibility.

This pop history approach becoming so normalized to people is frustrating but understandable because it's all around us. Being inundated with countless YouTubers and streamers professing a love for retro games has inadvertently created a narrative that video game history is a straight line through mainstream smash hit consoles and this couldn't be further from the truth - there is a whole world before and around the NES that has gone largely unexplored, particularly in the west, and odds are if you've spent much time on Tumblr you're probably passingly familiar with the subject of this spotlight.

Japan has finally begun to more widely adopt PC gaming (in part due to the phenomenon that is vtubing), with an absolute explosion in market share in the past decade. What you might not know is that Japan actually has a pretty rich history of PC gaming that really blossomed in the 80s and 90s with several hardware manufacturers such as NEC and ASCII offering options that would give the world some early looks at teams and individuals that would come to define the medium going forward.

One such game changer (no pun intended) is Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear debuting in 1987 with its definitive version on MSX PCs and getting an incredible sequel that puts the NES-exclusive Snake's Revenge to shame, and another Kojima title would go on to define the NEC PC98 in popular consciousness with classic sexy adventure Policenauts easily being the most memorable title which would subsequently be ported and updated several times for home consoles such as the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation.

You may be familiar with the PC98 as screenshots from its many games are popular around Tumblr, most often featuring gloriously mid-late 90s anime girls rendered in stunning pixel art that feels like it exists somewhere out of time as things isolated from their origin as video game screenshots. Having been on Tumblr for over a decade (and the internet at large for even longer), it's my observation that the rediscovery of and appreciation for this retro anime aesthetic (and its later PC98 permutation) was really born here on Tumblr before spreading to other platforms to the point that you've probably seen at least one shot cross your dashboard before. But for this spotlight we're going even further back to the predecessor of the PC98, the PC88.

NEC's PC88 was released in the early 80s and most models featured a whopping 62 KB of RAM (in comparison to the NES's 2 KB) and many later models featured Yamaha sound chips which resulted in games often being visually and aurally significantly more impressive than you would see in home consoles at the time, in some cases lightyears ahead of the NES particularly in regards to music which is a pretty great thing for the sake of this spotlight. The games themselves were also quite varied in content from everything to the kawaii and comedic to erotic and even plenty of horror, with many standout games more accurately reflecting wider Japanese pop culture of the era than what you'd see on the comparatively sterile NES.

This wild west, edgy punk rock software library that goes part and parcel with Japan's nascent PC gaming scene is one of the coolest elements of going back to explore it. You never really know what you're in for, and you might be surprised (or even disgusted) with some of the unique experiences the platform has to offer. Many of these games (and those on the successor PC98) are completely untranslated and Japanese comprehension helps their enjoyment greatly and while often simple enough to enjoy without it that aspect has certainly contributed to their enigma in the west.

There are a lot of factors that have made PC88 and PC98 fandom and emulation not as glamorous as that of home consoles and some of that is due to limitations of the hardware in how it handles scrolling screens, with a noticeable chug as games scroll. Another factor is the compounding nature of its flaws and obscurity meaning emulators themselves are in Japanese and a bit tricky to figure out how to handle, old PCs infamously lacking a lot of user friendly features we take for granted today.

One such surprise is Telenet Music Box, a collection of then-prominent publisher Telenet Japan's biggest games' music. It's barely even a game and more a piece of software fit for a museum, with minimal activity limited to browsing game albums (a total of 13), choosing songs to listen to and creating custom playlists. Each of the 13 game albums is showcased with beautiful splash art and accompanied by a tracker for the keyboard as well as titles for each song and a timer for the length of songs.

Included in the mix is an impressive slate of Telenet Japan's games that showcase the depth and variety of the PC88's library such as Mugen Senshi Valis and even an early alternate manifestation of Shin Megami Tensei as a top-down dungeon crawler reminiscent of Gauntlet. Each of Telenet Music Box's 13 albums have their standout tracks, with some from Luxor and Final Zone being among our favorites.

Telenet Music Box is not a wholly unique concept and several other similar games were released for the platform (as well as the PC98), but it is an exceptionally clever one who's usefulness is perhaps all the more apparent now almost 40 years removed from its release, serving as a fantastic introductory course to a little understood part of video game history. It's a fantastic time capsule and with plenty to offer listeners of its roughly 3 hour runtime well beyond its value as virtual archaeology worth excavating.

Perhaps its most valuable asset is its ability to highlight the true nature of history. History is not a static thing with a start and an end but rather a living breathing thing that touches our everyday lives. Rare is it that anything begins or ends from nothing, with things instead in a constant state of evolution even when rising from the ashes of something else. One particular example of this is in Wolf Team's Final Zone (which features hilarious commentary in its opening scene that I'm not sure how made it past management - do look it up if you can) and Mugen Senshi Valis, the latter of which having been extremely popular in its time, spawning tons of ports and several sequels, with the team behind it eventually morphing into Namco's Tales Studio, responsible for some of the most beloved JRPGs of all time such as Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Vesperia.

While PC88 emulation can be frustrating to work out or find files for, an unforeseen strength of Telenet Music Box's concept of 'game as an album' is how much easier its discoverability is in recent years compared to the more traditional video games it shares a platform with, being far more easy to interface with and experience than the games it itself chronicles, and it can be found on YouTube in its entirety for your listening pleasure alongside plenty of other PC88 soundtracks. I invite you to dip your toes into this little-known scene and hope you come out of it with appreciation for the wide world of games outside what may be familiar to you, and maybe even some new favorite tracks.

A gem hidden among the stones, Telenet Music Box is undoubtedly stardust.