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PC-98
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The NEC PC-9801 (PC-98 for short) is a series of personal computers developed by NEC, equipped with 16 and 32-bit Intel x86 CPUs. While outwardly similar to IBM's PC and compatibles, including the use of DOS, it was for the most part a proprietary architecture. It succeeded NEC's Z80-based PC-88 series computers.
The first five Touhou Project games, described with the term "PC-98", were developed for this platform. They're distinguished from "the Windows games" (the 6th Touhou game onwards) for having been distributed by Amusement Makers. Upon his graduation, subsequent employment and the release of Mystic Square, ZUN paused development of Touhou Project games. At the time when the PC-98 games were released, the PC-9801 series of computers were on the decline, facing increasing competition from the aforementioned IBM PC and compatibles. Because of this, the games weren't considered as well known.
On 19 September 2002, ZUN ceased sales and support for the games. Except for Highly Responsive to Prayers, it's still possible to download the trial versions of the games[1], but compared to the Windows games the circulation of the full versions is very limited, and it's extremely difficult to obtain them. Only 200 to 300 copies of Lotus Land Story were sold during the time of its release,[2] with Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream selling fewer than half as many copies[3].
Games for this platform
- 東方靈異伝 ～ The Highly Responsive to Prayers (Amusement Makers/ZUN Soft 1996)
- 東方封魔録 ～ Story of Eastern Wonderland (Amusement Makers/ZUN Soft 1997)
- 東方夢時空 ～ Phantasmagoria of Dim.Dream (Amusement Makers/ZUN Soft 1997)
- 東方幻想郷 ～ Lotus Land Story (Amusement Makers/ZUN Soft 1998)
- 東方怪綺談 ～ Mystic Square (Amusement Makers/ZUN Soft 1998)
System Details
ZUN targeted the PC-9821 series for these games, which included Intel 386 or faster processors. Various expansion cards could be installed in PC-98 systems, including more capable video or audio cards, but only the base hardware is required for the Touhou games. Said base hardware includes dual µPD7220 video display processors, one each for text and graphics. In graphics mode, they can display sprites with four 16-color palettes selected from 4026 possible colors.
ZUN specifies a 486 at 66MHz as the bare minimum for play, but suggests that even then the games may have issues with slowdown.
As for sound hardware, the PC-9801VX and many subsequent models came default with the PC-9801-26k soundcard. This includes the Yamaha YM2203 OPN FM synthesizer, providing three 4-operator FM synthesis channels plus the three channels of the integrated YM2149 SSG unit. Users could replace this with the PC-9801-86 soundcard with the much more capable YM2608 OPNA chip, doubling the amount of FM channels and adding a few other features. As such, the PC-98 games include two versions of their in-game music, made for either the three or six FM channel hardware. All of the music was programmed in MML with M. Kajihara's Professional Music Driver (PMD), except for Highly Responsive to Prayers which used Mdrv2 for the music driver. Story of Eastern Wonderland also supports outputting to a MIDI device.
ZUN subsequently released arranged versions of many of the music themes from the PC-98 games in MIDI format onto his old website. ZUN has stated in Akyu's Untouched Score vol.3 that he loves FM music and would continue to create FM music in the modern world.
Overview on the Touhouverse
Terminology
"PC-98" as a term refers specifically to the five first games of the Touhou Project by the Western community. The Japanese community's equivalent usually is "Touhou old works" (東方旧作 Touhou kyuusaku) or more commonly "old works" (旧作 kyuusaku) for short; ZUN has used both the Japanese and English term. This terminology is supposed to distinguish the games from the modern Touhou series from Embodiment of Scarlet Devil onwards. The term is also used to reflect the FM Synthesis music, 16-bit colour graphics, basic stories and characters that only occur in these games.
Setting
Unlike the modern era of the Touhou Project, there haven't been many details on the location of the PC-98 series. Various sources suggest that the games are set in "an Eastern Country", with a statement in Highly Responsive to Prayers saying it's in a "strange world" and Mystic Square calling it the "Human World". There's various locations in the Eastern Country, such as Makai, the Human Village, the Fantasy World, Mugenkan and Reimaden. There's also the Hakurei Shrine at the east, being the prime location in the PC-98.
The place is inhabited with various humans and youkai, with demons living throughout said list of locations. There's known to be a young shrine maiden called Reimu Hakurei (博麗靈夢) who lives at the shrine with Genjii, having Marisa Kirisame visiting her at times and Mima being notable around the shrine for tormenting Reimu when bored.
Unlike the incidents that have happened in the Windows games, the incidents in the PC-98 mainly involve youkai destroying the Hakurei Shrine, with Reimu going out to find out why. Other characters who may also solve such incidents may have their own personal reasons rather than figuring out why the shrine was destroyed.
The story of the Touhou Project drastically changed when the Windows era started after the PC-98. Both share the same series name "Touhou Project", but it was never stated that the location setting in the PC-98 was "Gensokyo". ZUN stated that it was a "clean sweep" when Embodiment of Scarlet Devil started, which he states was where the current setting of the Touhou Project came together. Hence, no PC-98 character has ever appeared in a Windows era game except for Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Alice Margatroid and Yuuka Kazami. There's been no information about Mima and her relation with the Hakurei Shrine in the Windows era, but ZUN has mentioned in at least two interviews that Genjii is "probably living in the lake at the back of the shrine"[4][5]. In addition, there's no mention or use of the spell card rules in the PC-98.
Additional Information
- It has been shown in an interview that ZUN still owns a PC-98 computer, on which he played Highly Responsive to Prayers for the first time in years. He felt nostalgic.
- Since any software made for Windows 2000 or earlier can be run both on the IBM-compatible Windows 2000 and the PC-98 Windows 2000 without compatibility problems, technically all Touhou games up to at least Undefined Fantastic Object should be able to run on a PC-98 as long as the appropriate DirectX version is installed. However, since the last PC-98 system was released in 2000 (the PC-9821Ra43, which had a 433MHz Celeron, whereas the system requirements of the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil ask for a 500MHz Pentium) this is generally not viable in practice.
Fandom
- Because PC-98 computers are no longer sold, many fans use an emulator to play these games on modern PCs. The emulators most commonly used for the PC-98 games are Anex86, T98-Next, and Neko Project 21 (for the latter it's advised to use the unofficial fmgen builds that're linked from here instead).
- Many fans consider the PC-98 in general to be old or obsolete, to the extent that nowadays the PC-98 can give a bit of nostalgic feeling to some fans who strongly advocate the PC-98.
- PC-98 characters are commonly shown in fanworks with the modern Windows era characters as though the two canons are connected.
- There are FM Synthesis remixes of many of ZUN's creations that mimic the PC-98 style. One notable example is the album PC-98 Perfect Cherry Blossom. There's also artwork of modern Touhou characters drawn in the PC-98 style.