Japanese PC gaming: quick links to useful websites

*Japanese PC gaming links!*

This pastebin's for anyone interested in uncovering more info on some of these obscure J-PC titles that have eluded Western documentation for whole decades. I can't say it's definitive, but the variety of links here should provide a useful gateway.

—Vendors—

•Amusement Center currently sells a diverse selection of Japanese PC games to Windows users through Project EGG (Engrossing Games Gallery), for which emulator launchers are provided to users in Japan and elsewhere. Some games already have English text, while others don't require that you know Japanese for the process of playing them. It's a subscription service only; you can use PayPal to use it internationally. EGG's always an option for those who wish to directly support the affiliated publishers putting these respective games out for sale. You should also check out EGG Music, which packages properly-mastered FM-synth and MIDI music from many J-PC games at a fair price. Links here:
http://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/
http://www.amusement-center.com/en/project/egg/
http://www.amusement-center.com/project/emusic/

•Nihon Falcom, that company we all love for making Ys and other J-PC-originating CRPGs, has an online store that sells retail products worldwide. This is useful for getting games with fan translations that haven't otherwise been brought overseas by XSEED (one example would be Xanadu Next!):
http://www.falcom.co.jp/mailorder/index.html

•Artdink, called the Maxis of Japan due to their simulation games, operates a digital-download store where you can buy many of their A-Train and Lunatic Dawn games: http://www.artdink.co.jp/eshop/index.html

•Kogado, well renowned for their variety of strategy and adventure games, runs the Omnishop, a mail-order and digital-download front for games by both Falcom and Kogado; be sure to grab a Power DoLLS mech model kit or legacy packs for Schwarzschild and The Mars Project: http://omnishop.kogado.com/

•Want sum free games? AliceSoft's (Dalk, Rance...okay, mostly Rance) put up their entire classic catalog as freeware at this depot: http://retropc.net/alice/menu.html

•System Soft Alpha sells through a large stable of retail and download sites, but they distribute trial copies of their games from their homepage: http://www.ss-alpha.co.jp/download/

—Emulation—

•The Neo Kobe pack, courtesy of users from the Tokugawa forums, contains all of the standard PC-98 emulators (Neko Project II and its forks, T98, XPNL (can be compiled for OSX), Anex86, &c.) + other emulators used to run images made for Sharp machines, Fujitsu machines, and earlier NEC machines: http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1161

•MSX emulation's pretty popular. Most recommend openMSX as a multi-platform emulator with reasonably good performance: http://openmsx.org/

—Databases—

•Refuge (formerly Mercenary Force) has the largest PC-98 database available, complete with correct-resoluton screenshots:
https://refuge.tokyo/pc9801/pc9801.html

•Generation MSX is, along with its Japanese sister site Tagoo (http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/), the definitive MSX/MSX2 games database, with lots of active updating and reader comments to help you in your search for interesting games from the platform:
http://www.generation-msx.nl/

•This link leads to a PC-88 database with lots of images and text you can read with Google Translate; just make sure to open frames as new tabs so you can copy URLs into Translate/let Chrome do the work for you:
http://refugee2005.sakura.ne.jp/library/frame1.htm

•The PC-8001 Excavation Corps. provides valuable info on more obscure 8-bit-era games released for the hobbyist machines: http://www.geocities.jp/upd780c1/n80/frame.html

•Searching for an elusive FM Towns game? Look no further than this comprehensive software list: http://www.geocities.jp/ahirudanna/towns_soft.html

•Sharp MZ-family games are a hard bunch to find, so here's a good source for anyone who comes across a funny-lookin' box or ROM: http://we-love-mz.sakura.ne.jp/wiki/?FrontPage

—Fan-pages—

•The Tokugawa Corp. forums are the definitive Japanese PC gaming resource, thanks without a doubt to the colorful users and archivists working to preserve J-PC gaming online for us to play:
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/phpBB3/index.php

•NFG's done a great site dedicated to the Sharp X68000, with plenty of hardware/hacking documentation and forum links:
http://nfggames.com/games/x68k/

•For those interested in GLODIA's back catalog of games, ranging from JRPGs to overhead scrolling action-shooters, try these two sites:
http://vaindream.com/GLODIA/
http://www.quarter-dev.info/

•Schwarzschild fans will get a kick out of Space of Schwarzschild, the fan-page built for a Comiket circle producing games-relate content. On the other end of the web lies Parsion, a labyrinthine tome fleshing out the series' lore:
http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~leyphath/sch/schwarzschild.html
http://www.cialphy.net/parsion/

•The Old Computer Gamer's Room has some very interesting articles that, though difficult to read through Google Translate, shed light on overlooked games like Poibos and the general history of Japanese PC gaming:
http://homepage2.nifty.com/furuiotoko/

•Sawachin's Room has some reviews you can read in Japanese or through machine emulation. Some of the games he talks about don't have documentation elsewhere, and he generously provides short LPs of some titles. The page-selection forms don't work properly, but you can get to specific review pages from the HTML source: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/sawachin/sawachin/pc/index.htm

•This Tumblr is a great depot of unadulterated J-PC pixel art...so dig in: http://fmtownsmarty.tumblr.com/

•ADVGAMER's a blog-roll dedicated to the classic Japanese adventure game, be it a Western-like affair or a well-respect visual novel: http://advgamer.blog.fc2.com/

•Nostalgia for Microcomputer Games documents some games released for the Sharp X1 and NEC PC-8001 8-bit computers, in addition to hosting some info on custom maicon hardware: http://w01.tp1.jp/~a571632211/micon/

•If you're looking for PC-6001-tan and her friends, then here's a site full of J-PC tans: http://www.geocities.jp/ayaori_tohno/

•Melancholy PC-GAMER's a slightly active homepage filled with documentation for Western and Japanese PC games. It has both reviews and guides, even for some of the most obscure big Japanese Windows-era releases. Don't forget to read the editorials he put up a decade ago: http://web.archive.org/web/20150117015609/http://homepage1.nifty.com/PC-GAMER/

•Whatever attracts gamers to the Sharp MZ machines, I can't tell in full, but here's two detailed fan-pages. The first's more of a portal with some info dumps, but the second has a good many reviews of older games accompanied by guides:
http://bgm.sub.jp/700USA/700.html
http://marus.ekakisan.net/omake/

—Music—

•The Hoot Archive hosts music files for games released on a variety of J-PC platforms, letting you jam out to these kickass melodies with the help of the Hoot player for Windows:
http://snesmusic.org/hoot/v2/

•Here's a database mostly based around J-PC game music, though it has plenty of translatable descriptions, screenshots, and excellent music extracts you ought to give a listen:
http://gyusyabu.ddo.jp/MP3/MP3.html

•In case you somehow can't use Hoot, ApolloJoe's recording library excerpts and uploading them to YouTube in playlist form:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5o1EJ-fiuhWQlW0Z345SBw

•Finally, MDX files can be played back on multi-platform applications like Audio Overload; here's NFG's MDX pack for those who want both original music and fan content to listen to: http://nfggames.com/X68000/Music/