Japanese Computers

[Discoalucard]

The blog post about Japanese computer games went over pretty well, so here's a more expansive look at a number of them:

www.hardcoregaming101.net/JPNcomputers/Japanesecomputers.htm

[derboo]

Wow, I didn't know the PC98 was available already in 1982. That is incredible hardware for an "ordinary" 1982 home system... or was the standard upgraded in later years?

"Five games worth checking out" seems like a bit few, how about making it 10 or more? (I guess that number stems from retro gamer conventions?)

[ReyVGM]

"While Sega’s reporter purposefully blanked out the name mentioned, the fan community searched the X1 archives until they discovered Hover Attack"

Ahem... fan community = Kurt & ReyVGM

[Discoalucard]

And Frogcuda!

Fun times, they was.

[ReyVGM]

Froggy was looking for it too, but it wasn't until you asked me and I started digging around, that we found what it was.

Of course, the real hero is the one from Tokugawa forums that gave me the "impossible to find" rom in the first place

[kobushi]

First of all, thank you for researching and writing about early Japanese computers. Much of Japanese gaming was born on these systems, so it's great to see more information being published.

However, I'm disappointed with this article overall, and don't think it accurately portrays the history of the scene.

(1)
>>"Japan isolated herself and adopted non-compatible, domestically produced ranges."
>>"Japan’s 18-year-long computer bubble..."
>>"...the Japanese computer scene was mostly an isolated bubble..."

You're using loaded words like "isolated" and "bubble" to equate the Japanese computer scene with other aspects of Japanese history. In effect, and regardless of whether you intended to or not, you're painting the typical stereotype of Japan as the country of passive-aggressive, isolationist xenophobes who came to their senses once the bubble burst.

Isolation is not the right word to use. NEC long had close ties with Intel as a second source supplier, and manufactured many of Intel's 8086/8066 microprocessors. Japanese engineers even helped design some of Intel's hardware. Japan didn't isolate herself - Japan created computers with the video resolution and memory requirements to properly handle Japanese text, something that no Western-made computer would be capable of for almost 10 years. The fact that companies like NEC, Sharp, and Fujitsu decided not to export their computers to an alread-crowded Western market is just conservative business, not isolationism.

On the software side, I think you're underestimating things. A large number of Western games were ported to Japanese computer systems, with companies like Starcraft, Infinity, and Pony Canyon focusing almost exclusively on localizing English games. In particular, the Wizardry ports created a Japanese fanbase for 3D dungeon crawlers that still exists today, despite the subgenre being long dead in the West. Meanwhile, Western publishers like Acclaim, Broderbund, Electronic Arts, Microprose, and Sierra On-Line established their own Japanese divisions to publish a wide variety of titles. J-to-E localizations were more sparse, but there are some notable titles, like Nobunaga's Ambition, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, A-Train, and the Metal & Lace series, as well as a number of localized titles published by Sierra. C's Ware and Jast also published English versions of their games.

Also, what do you mean by "non-compatible"? Non-compatible with what? The 80s was a confusing battleground of different computing architectures all over the world. Japan is not at all unique in this respect. In the West, the IBM PC standard only emerged as the clear winner at the end of the 80s, after a long struggle against competition from Apple, Commodore, Atari, and scores of other minor players.



(2)
>>"And those you do find are hidden under incomprehensible text and alongside “eroge” (erotic games, or hentai)."
>>"In fact a lot of currently big companies, like Koei, once dabbled in pornographic games; they were young, they needed the money."
>>"Falcom kept its nose clean..."
>>"Technopolis was a slightly naughty magazine..."

Eroticism has been an integral part of the Japanese arts for hundreds and hundreds of years. Get over it.

I really don't like how you try to set up an artificial division between the "real games" and the "naughty stuff". The fact is that many of the very best Japanese PC games contain erotic content: check out Eve Burst Error, games by Leaf, YU-NO, the Rance series, the Youjuu Senki series, and the Dragon Knight series, for example. The presence of erotic content in no way diminishes their success as games, just as the presence of blood and guts does not diminish titles like Doom, Gears of War, and Mad World. You may not be able to enjoy certain games if you are disturbed by excessive sex and/or violence, but that's a personal issue, and not by itself a sufficient basis for judging a game.

Furthermore, publishing an erotic game is not some embarrassing, shameful thing for a Japanese company to do. There are many instances of originally erotic games being edited and released on consoles, to great success. Eve Burst Error spawned a whole series on PlayStation. More recently, games like Utawarerumono, Tears to Tiara, and Chaos Head Noah have been released on modern consoles. It should tell you something that these games sell well even though they were originally eroge, and even though the erotic scenes have been removed to comply with Sony's and Microsoft's content restrictions.

(3)
The 5 games worth checking out are really lopsided, and aren't at all representative of the variety of games available on these systems. I understand that shooters and such require little Japanese knowledge, but there are many great adventure, RPG, and strategy titles also out there.

(4)
A couple other things:
- An article like this should really mention the PC-FX and FM Towns Marty, even if just briefly.
- I think the number 1 reason for the death of the PC-98 platform was Windows 95. Games for Windows 95 would run in Windows 95, regardless of the underlying hardware, which meant that NEC's proprietary hardware became irrelevant. The global boom in IBM PC clones led to cheap competition and very cheap parts, which NEC gradually introduced into its own machines until no trace of the original PC-98 architecture remained.
- The Japanese retrogaming scene doesn't always go the extremes of JPG steganography. A ton of stuff is available over the Japanese p2p networks. It's just not on the World Wide Web, hanging out there for everyone to see. In America, filesharers get a settlement letter in the mail. In Japan, THE POLICE COME TO ARREST YOU. The Japanese scene is much more cautious as a result.

I know I've criticized alot here, but I would really like to see a polished version of this article on the front page. It would be a great addition to HG101.

[kimimi]

Kobushi put it really well, so I'll just add that while I realise this was originally written for Retro Gamer, which obviously requires a here's-some-info-but-not-too-much-detail approach, it doesn't really sit well against the wonderfully in depth articles you'd expect to show up on here.

[roushimsx]

Jul 11, 2010 14:27:56 GMT -5 derboo said:

Wow, I didn't know the PC98 was available already in 1982. That is incredible hardware for an "ordinary" 1982 home system... or was the standard upgraded in later years?

Like the IBM-PC standard, it was upgraded over time. Started off with a slow 8086 CPU and by the end there (99/00?) was rockin' a pretty healthy CPU.

Lots of info!

I like how you can follow the progression of it slowly morphing into a standard PC over time. From the CPU moving to a standard 386 to the adoption of the 3.5" floppy disk standard and then to the more extreme adoption of the IDE bus, SIMM ram, and USB.

[Sketcz-1000]

It's been so long since I followed those threads, I had totally forgotten who it was that spent all that time digging. In which case nice work guys! I just recall that Kagiri Tatakai was put aside once the real inspiration was found, which encouraged me to write the KT article.
www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=10243717
www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?p=135820


-
@kurt: I'm going to talk with Kobushi about updating this article, so please hold off including on the front page when you update.



Thanks for the post Kobushi - my intention with the article originally had been to document this fascinating and not very well known section of gaming. Have any other print articles on the subject been written for games mags?

Obviously I've failed and this pains me. But in my defence it was written for a publication with a very specific (sometimes blinkered) audience, and a strict word limit. In my eagerness to make it more publicly available (RG only has about 6,000 readers, which always irked me), I coded it up without improving on it, besides including Fred Ford's email unedited. I should have expanded on things to make it clearer. My first draft, which I no longer have, was about 1000 words longer.

In contrast I spent over a week rewriting the fan-translation article and going back to my original sources. I should have done the same with this. I'm sorry if I let the side down with this, but I gave it to Kurt only with good intentions.


You've written so much valuable information in your post Kobushi, would you be happy for me to copy it into the article, rewriting some sections? You can share the byline with me.




To answer some points:

1a) I have absolutely no intention of painting the Japanese as "passive-aggressive, isolationist xenophobes who came to their senses once the bubble burst" - good god man, do you really think that's what I wanted to do? Quite the opposite. I like the fact that its computer scene was so separate from the western one, since it resulted in a lot of interesting, unique things. As an outsider it certainly appears as a bubble, despite there being obvious cross-over, and that's what makes it interesting for me. From the point when the PC98 could run Windows 95 I kind of lose interest in the historical aspect of it, because the era ends.

The UK/Europe also had a bubble, thanks to its Sinclair and Amstrad ranges, and afterwards the Amiga and Atari. America didn't seem to take to those too well - maybe I'm wrong. So technically all 3 major regions had their own distinct flavour - my interest was making people aware of Japan's.



1b) Non-compatible - by this I meant we had NEC, Sharp and Fujitsu, and their ranges were not compatible with each other. Perhaps akin to the UK scene, where Sinclair, Commodore and Atari weren't compatible to varying degrees (The Amstrad though could run ZX games - but now I'm confusing the issue). There's a whole range of computer models which can only run software intended specifically for them. Someone today who isn't au fait with older computers may take it for granted that really we only have Windows and Mac systems (and Linux?) now.

Would rewording make it clearer? I find it fascinating that the market innitially had so many diverging range of systems. Obviously lots of them died away (such as those by Tomy, Sord and Casio), but at one point everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. I really wanted to drive this home for people who didn't realise it.


2) I'm quite comfortable with any media which portrays eroticism. I live in France Kobushi, where adverts on bus-stops feature topless women. I also made a blog post on various h-games which I thought warranted examination (Sengoku Rance seemed interesting), and currently I'm playing EVE Burst Error, while just yesterday I downloaded the voice-based version of Knights of Xantor (Dragon Knight 3) with upgrade patch.

The RG readership though aren't nearly as liberally-minded, and I'm so used to people reacting hysterically (like xenophobically hysterical), and very negatively, that sub-conciously I adapted my writing to suit. I created the division because I don't think many RG readers would have paid attention otherwise - obviously it was wrong to keep this division when republishing. Since we're all rational and comfortable with eroticism in games here, I agree it warrants rewording and expansion.


3) The top 5 I intentionally kept as system-exclusives, one for each of the main systems (I've no interest in games ported to these computers, and only slight interest in games which originated on them if a superior port is available elsewhere). OK, I did include Tatsujin-Oh, though technically it was the only home port, and Rayxanber sucks, and the few other system-exclusives I found weren't great, or were very text heavy. I may have missed some, I do concede.

I also tried to keep them action focused unless a translation patch is available - Battle Gorilla has a high language barrier, and I don't think anyone tried it. I often play games in a foreign language, but it puts off others. I had a lot of recommendations for RPGs and strategy titles, but didn't use them.

Let's remove the need for a top anything, and just have as many short reviews as possible. If you or anyone else wants to write them, and provide a screenshot, we could feature 20 or 30 at the end.

4)- The PC-FX and FM Towns Marty were technically consoles, hence why I didn't mention them. Actually, I did mention the Marty, but it was cut for space - I should have put it back in.

- Absolutely spot on re Windows 95, I found several sources that talked about this (including the PDF) and people on Tokugawa said the Windows 95 thing heralded the end. I had talked about Windows 95 on the PC98, but ended up removing it, so this sentence lost some meaning:
"Convergence with the west started in the early 1990s, with manufacturers opting for Windows compatible hardware that could handle Japanese scripts [later models of PC98 even used Windows 95 as an operating system], and by 1996 the glorious era was over."

If you check the picture directory, you should find a PC98 photo with it running Windows.
www.hardcoregaming101.net/Japanesecomputers/hardware/PC98%20c.jpg

- I was going on what I was told - Tokugawa's forums were my primary resource, and steganography is an awesome concept, so I ran with it.


Good by point by Roushi regarding the PC98, I spoke with Danjuro on this a lot, and he explained how the system was upgraded over time - very early PC98 games look pretty hideous. I also find it interesting that despite only using 16 colours, newer PC98 games look incredible (Policenauts is quite beautiful).



Anyway, I spent a long time typing this up, and don't feel like altering the article now. But if Kurt puts it aside for a later update, I will add Kobushi's text and bring it up to scratch.

[murraythau]

Jul 12, 2010 6:40:03 GMT -5 Sketcz-1000 said:

The UK/Europe also had a bubble, thanks to its Sinclair and Amstrad ranges, and afterwards the Amiga and Atari. America didn't seem to take to those too well - maybe I'm wrong. So technically all 3 major regions had their own distinct flavour - my interest was making people aware of Japan's.

I think kobushi was making reference to the economic bubble Japan experienced during the 80s. It's an old argument about their supposed diffidence to the rest of the world around that time.

[Sketcz-1000]

EDIT:
You only joined 2 days ago?

Welcome to HG101!

---
OLD POST
I see - culturally I don't think I've been exposed to the 'old argument' as much as some of you, certainly not enough for it to have influenced my writing. Does the rest of the world stereotypically view the Japanese as Kobushi described? Passive-aggressive isolationists who come to their senses? My introduction to Japanese culture over the years has been a little warped at times. I had a vague understanding from films that the business world viewed Japan as a threat in the 1980s.

I'd said the bubble came about because of the language used, therefore implying it was easier/simpler/more logical to create their own ranges that could handle Japanese script by default, as opposed to trying to modify unsuitable western hardware currently on the market. In my mind it wasn't because of diffidence, though I see why the text implied this.

During the 1980s and 1990s, while the rest of the world went with Apple, Atari, Commodore, IBM and Sinclair for its computers, Japan isolated herself and adopted non-compatible, domestically produced ranges. This was partly due to difficulties with converting Western computers to handle the Japanese language, and it resulted in a fascinating, unique evolutionary bubble with some amazing hardware and games, very little of which would leave Japan.

I stand by my view that it created an evolutionary bubble though - irrespective of the reasons, the domestically produced hardware did result in some fascinating things which we in the west weren't able to get access to, I'd say, until our computers could emulate their older stuff.

Besides Tokugawa, my primary source was this PDF:
www.hardcoregaming101.net/Japanesecomputers/PAC-111.PDF

And Winnie's book on game hardware. I couldn't find many other sources for information in English (mostly on obfuscated outdated websites).

Anyway, regardless of all that, I think Kobushi very eloquently described the situation in para 5, which with his blessing I'm going to lift wholesale.

[kobushi]

>> I have absolutely no intention of painting the Japanese as "passive-aggressive, isolationist xenophobes who came to their senses once the bubble burst" - good god man, do you really think that's what I wanted to do?

No, of course not. I know you're a good guy
But when you write "Japan isolated herself", people will immediately think of sakoku, and when you write "bubble", people will immediately think of the economic bubble. That's what I mean when I say these are loaded words - they give the impression that the early Japanese computers were a xenophobic aberration, which is obviously not what you're trying to say.

1b) I see what you're trying to say about the compatibility, but the article says:
>>"Japan isolated herself and adopted non-compatible, domestically produced ranges."
In context, this sounds like the Japanese computers were non-compatible with Western computers (which is true, but they're also non-compatible with each other).
Maybe this could be written as: "a number of Japanese companies produced their own computer ranges, each with its own proprietary architecture."

2) I shouldn't have been so harsh in my criticism, but the article just seems really dismissive of eroge. I was surprised by this, because I enjoyed your excellent blog post about Princess Maker 2 the other day. Obviously there are many crap games whose only purpose is to serve up pixelated nakedness, but there are also some really good games that also happen to deal with erotic themes. I think it would be a shame if those were ignored.

4) I mention the PC-FX and the Marty because they were fascinating attempts to bridge the gap between the computer market and the console market. They were also spectacular failures, which contributed to the demise of their parent systems.

And a couple more comments on Win95:
First of all, the release of Windows 95 was huge in Japan. I mean, HUGE. DOS/V had been an acceptable fix, and it certainly helped IBM PC compatibles gain traction in Japan, but Win95 was the first operating system that provided seamless support of both English and Japanese software. In Japan, several different editions of Windows 95 were released: one for IBM compatibles and one for PC-98 machines, as well as other minor editions for the Epson PC-98 clones, the FM Towns, and Fujitsu's business-oriented FMR-280. Meanwhile, the Japanese edition of Windows 98 contained installation files for both IBM PCs and PC-98s, so the same CD will work in both systems.

According to Wikipedia, the IBM and PC-98 editions of Windows 95 sold in roughly equal numbers at launch. IBM compatibles had gained a lot of traction since DOS/V was introduced in 1990, but the PC-98 was still a major force in the Japanese market. In fact, Microsoft officially supported PC-98 computers all the way up through Windows 2000, long after the FM Towns and X68000 had faded into history.



Anyway, I hope this article is expanded in the future, because it's a great topic. Feel free to copy any information you wish. If you have any questions, you can PM me here or start a topic at Tokugawa.

[Sketcz-1000]

Jul 12, 2010 8:32:05 GMT -5 kobushi said:

Anyway, I hope this article is expanded in the future

Forget the future, I hope to expand/revise it before it gets front-paged.

If you or anyone wants to expand the recommended games section, do say so, otherwise I will try to put a few things together.

Thanks for all the help - I thought "proprietary architecture" was a particularly eloquent way of putting things.

[Ryu the Grappler]

And Winnie's book on game hardware. I couldn't find many other sources for information in English (mostly on obfuscated outdated websites).

Aside from everything that was pointed out by kobushi, I think if you want to properly research a foreign gaming market (or any sort of foreign sub-culture), you should try to put greater emphasis on finding sources in the native language as much as possible since you can only do so much with secondhand sources. Perhaps find a translator who can help you with this stuff.

Although, to be fair, finding official data for older Japanese computer games can be a bit of a hassle. Very few developers are still in business and even fewer don't bother to include a database of their older works online.

[derboo]

Jul 12, 2010 8:32:05 GMT -5 kobushi said:

2) I shouldn't have been so harsh in my criticism, but the article just seems really dismissive of eroge. I was surprised by this, because I enjoyed your excellent blog post about Princess Maker 2 the other day. Obviously there are many crap games whose only purpose is to serve up pixelated nakedness, but there are also some really good games that also happen to deal with erotic themes. I think it would be a shame if those were ignored.

"The West" is even catching up in that regard. The most acclaimed WRPGs these days (read: Bioware RPGs) tend to contain sex scenes as well. Or take the God of War series and Dante's Inferno.

Jul 12, 2010 12:20:10 GMT -5 Ryu the Grappler said:

Aside from everything that was pointed out by kobushi, I think if you want to properly research a foreign gaming market (or any sort of foreign sub-culture), you should try to put greater emphasis on finding sources in the native language as much as possible since you can only do so much with secondhand sources. Perhaps find a translator who can help you with this stuff.

I did that for the Korean article, and I have to say, trying to "properly" research the market as a whole means opening a can of worms you'd not be able to close anytime soon. And that was Korea, whose gaming market used to be a hundred times smaller than the Japanese back then.