Okay, so last month (December of 2025), I saw a few screenshots of PC-98 games
and went wondering: “in comparison, why do Western home computer games of the
same era (the kind that you’d see on an Amiga or Atari ST) tend to be so
‘meh’-looking?”, in comparison to both console games of the same era and PC
games that would come out shortly after games like DOOM would prove the PC was
actually a viable mainstream gaming platform?".
Out of all PC games that have been around for decades, id Software’s DOOM is
probably one with the largest longevity. People still make new levels for it,
write new engines and modifications for it, and do speedruns for it under a
variety of conditions, with new records still being broken every now and then.
For almost every piece of hardware which can output graphics and run code,
there have been attempts to port or clone DOOM, with “It runs Doom” becoming a
popular internet meme.
As a kid, I didn’t have any 16-bit consoles, and at best, my experience with
them was restricted to playing them for a short while when hanging out with my
family’s old friends and their kids. Out of the games I got to experience that
way, I played Sonic 1 and 2, Columns, Tom & Jerry: Frantic Antics and
other games, but not any of the Streets of Rage games. Instead, the first time
I discovered this games was when I discovered emulators.
One of my big interests is things relating to riichi mahjong (リーチ麻雀): a
variant of the Chinese tabletop game “mahjong” invented in Japan. It’s a rather
complicated, but fun game where the players take turns picking and discarding
tiles (which function similar to cards in a game like poker) in order to build a
winning hand.
Occasionally I play the old multiplayer action-RPG “Phantasy Star
Online: Blue Burst”. On Windows, it works fine, but to make it work better on
Linux (via Lutris), some extra steps may be needed.