The world of Japan's PC-98 computer

Summary

You’ve probably wondered where these otherworldly pixel-art images seen across the web are coming from. The answer is the PC-98.Ubawareta Houkago – PC-98 (1995)Pastel cities trapped in a timeless future-past. Empty apartments drenched in nostalgia. Classic convertibles speeding into a low-res sunset. Femme fatales and mutated monsters doing battle. Deep, dark dungeons and glittering star ships floating in space.All captured in a eerie palette of 4096 colours and somehow, you’re sure, from some alternate 1980s world you can’t quite remember…The Style of ‘PC-98’Now beloved by legions of obsessive artists and collected by accounts like Noirlac, ITEM, and Densetsu.ch, this now-forgotten art style native to Japan is known, shorthand, as “PC-98”X-Girl PC-9801 (1994)With it’s unique style of colours and hand-made gradients, it has spawned an underground subculture of collectors and creators dedicated to keeping the unique PC-98 art form alive.Drawn painstakingly one pixel at a time, with a palette of 4096 possible colours, pushing the limits of these 80’s era machines memory, these early graphic artists and hackers alike have left an indelible mark on the world of digital art and internet culture, only to be forgotten in the passing of time.But what made this boring business computer from Japan so special?What is a ‘PC-98’ anyway?One of Japan’s earliest and most dominant computer makers, electronics giant NEC arrived early on the home computer market, pretty much obliterating domestic competitors like Hitatchi and Fujitsu and swallowing a whopping 60-70% of the market up from IBM by the mid 80s with their PC-88 / series of computers.The reason? The Japanese market needed hardware much more capable than the business built IBM PC, anemic early Macintosh computers or the home consoles of the era where it counted most: graphics.Then came the PC-9800. Using custom chips designed to deliver rich colour and complex Japanese characters, the NEC machines had 16x the video memory of...