Japan's NEC PC-98 series of personal computers, popular in the 1980s and 1990s, were home to hundreds of adventure games and visual novels with absolutely impeccable pixel art. It was a whole vibe—sometimes cute, sometimes incredibly detailed with a very limited color palette, and very (very) often pornographic. Very few of these games were ever officially released in English—the whole pornographic thing probably being a big reason why—but better late than never, right?
A fan translation group named WINE has released five English translations for PC-98 games in the last three years, including a pair of horror adventures called Dead of the Brain and Dead of the Brain 2. And the first one is now getting an official release on Steam juuuust in time for Halloween, with enhancements like autosaves and "optional quality-of-life improvements such as hover hints and hit boxes."
I've played a chunk of Dead of the Brain 2, and can't fully recommend them—they're pretty basic and a bit tedious as adventure games, and in schlocky horror B-movie fashion love to throw in some sexual violence—but damn do I love how these games look. There are some gnarly death scenes that aren't spoiled by this trailer.
I've got to share a few screenshots of Dead of the Brain 2, which doesn't have a Steam page yet but has even moodier art than the first game:
It's rare for fan translations to get an official stamp of approval, but this release of Dead of the Brain is part of a deal between one of the most prolific PC-98 studios of the '90s, FairyTale, and (*sigh*) Fakku, a US-based manga publisher I'll let you Google yourself.
Fakku seemingly bought the publishing rights to FairyTale's entire catalog, potentially meaning dozens of PC-98 games coming to Steam in the future. Hopefully they'll all be translated by people, not AI, but partnering with WINE for Dead of the Brain is a promising first move. I'm at least looking forward to more people getting to appreciate this era of pixel art without having to go through the complex process of getting a PC-98 emulator up and running.
Anyway, if you use Bluesky, follow PC-98 Bot for more good pixels.
