Just a little page of notes on the PC-8001. I have the Japanese model so that's what I'm going off of here. I am based in the USA.
You want a 32k ram model if you can find it or upgrade one. Most games will take advantage of it.
For operating the machine, use a Sega Genesis Model 1 video cable. It plugs right in, next to the RGB port and the outputting video signal will show black and white video just fine on any composite video display. I have had some extreme graininess when outputting to a cheapo capture card, but it displays crispy clear on a TV. A direct genesis model 1 to HDMI adapter may cause issues. Just use composite video and be done. Later on, I do want to explore getting some sort of RGB signal conerter, or a 15khz monitor for color display. PC-8xxx video cables to VGA cables are quite common and cheap on Yahoo Auctions (i got one!), but monitors that support the signal are not as easy to find, especially in the states (i am looking for one or a signal converter). To be clear, this means you'll only be able to test your programs in black and white using this setup. Luckily, 8001 emulation is pretty good, so you can totally just write/test color programs in an emulator like J-80 and be a happy camper. Using a TRS-80 cassette cable that I got, connect them to a Windows PC. The black cable goes into the microphone jack of the Windows PC, and the gray cable goes into the headphone jack of the Windows PC.
So I just found out about this little doo-dad. It's a signal converter that effectively acts like a tri-sync monitor. This should give us a color option with any old VGA monitor in theory. I have not tested this part yet though. I'll nab it and report back.
There's basically no english discussion about these games, so I'll get the ball rolling on that. I'm not the authority on any of this, so I will get things wrong. Just sharing some cool games.
I play most of these on an emulator since my machine doesn't have enough RAM and I don't have a PCG-8100 (graphics + sound upgrade board.. it's really, really rare and hard to find these days).
You'll notice there is a huge quality difference between the fun games and the playable games on this system. Either way, this list leans towards the fun and novelty side of it. All these games will be ((somewhat)) english friendly. Note, a lot of them have extreme flashing lights and colors. If you're sensitive to this, best steer clear of the action games.
If you're emulating, you will need a keyboard with a numpad.
| Title | Genre | where to find it | other notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fan Fun | Action(?) | The Final Weapon, but I've seen it elsewhere | You control a fan, and blow balls which fall from the top of the screen into respective holes on either side of the screen. Plays really well, but it gets difficult, fast. Big reccomend. |
| Various (filename VARIS) | horizontal SHMUP | PC-8001 GAME PACK 2 | AWSOME GAME. Playing it is fun, the graphics are really really nice, and the gameplay is should I say, varied?! One of my favorite action games currently. There is a sequel which I have not yet played. |
| Racing Sports Turbo (SKY) | Racing | PC-8001 GAME PACK disk 2 | Fun racing game where you race against the clock. It's fun to both look at and play (/pos). There is another game by Pony Canyon called "The Racer" and even though the gameplay is functionally the same, this game just perfects the game feel of it. |
| Super Pinball | pinball | The Final Weapon | I'm not a pinball game fiend but this one played a LOT better than I thought it would. It's fun to interact with, though I couldn't get the right flipper to activate when playing the emulator. The keyboard layout is kinda funky, so you might need real hardware. |
| Puckin Boy | it's pac man | The Final Weapon | There are a lot of versions of this under slightly different titles that all seemingly play the exact same. I'm quite sure that this is a type-in. It's a servicable pac man experience. The "WAKKA WAKKA" sounds a lot more like "YACHA YACHA".. which is entertaining. It is pac man. |
| Pio Pio | action | The Final Weapon | Think Door Door. Great looking, but collisions are a little too pixel perfect for my taste though, making the game really difficult. Play it anyway. |
| Penguin Game | action | The Final Weapon | It's Pengo! Tbh enough said. |
| Ice World 2 | action | PC 8001 GAME PACK | It's Penguin Game but better. Big reccomend. |
| DOCTOR | action | PC-8001 GAME PACK disk 2 | So like, it's a shooter thing where you navigate the interior of a human body, shoot things, get things. I don't understand it well but it's one of those games that are just fun to fuck around in. I absolutely want to learn this game though, since it seems like it has a lot going on. I like it!! |
| SNAKE WORLD | action | PC-8001 GAME PACK disk 4 | Might be the same developer as DOCTOR. Shoot snakes, enjoy life. Very fun game. |
| OLION 80 | action | PC-8001 GAME PACK disk 4 | Beautiful 3d graphics in the title screen and intro. I don't know how to play it that well though. If you need an eyecatcher, this is the game to do that with. |
| The Dangerous Drive | action | PC-8001 Game Pack | Think Dinosaur game but you can shoot shit up. Parallax scrolling! It's like, extremely easy. Like really really easy. Like cookies with grandma teir difficulty. Play it! |
| Omotesando Adventure | text adventure | April 1982 issue of "Monthly ASCII" (or PC-8001 Game Pack disk 4) | One, if not the first text adventure games published in Japan. It's 100% in English. There's a fantastic article about it here. If you enjoy text adventure games, you need to play this one. |
| Monster & Ball (file name in katakana) | action | PC-8001 GAME PACK DISK 3 | Kinda complicated. You have a maze filled to the brim with monsters. You basically have to run into the monster of the color that the game wants you to, and then run into the white ball in the middle of the screen. I assume you need to fill the white balls in the center with the given color. There is a lot of RNG involved and you gotta avoid the violet monsters. It's very cute, but very difficult. I feel like the conept is very good though, and if it was remade on a more modern platform it would be quite fun. |
| EUROPE | simulator | PC-8001 GAME PACK (DISK 3) | It's a WW2 simulation game where you play as Germany and try to take over Europe + the USA. 100% in English. TBH it's a really in depth game that reminds me a lot of tabletop style wargames. Would not be suprised if it was an adaptation. Like, the amount of detail is super jarring compared to all the other games I've checked out on here. I'm not a war sim guy, a ww2 battle guy, or a nazi guy, but all of these guys would probably enjoy this. It's a curiosity tbh. If you get a game over, you get the message "Third Reich Will Never Built Again!".. i fucking hope so lmao |
| Check Point | action | PC-8001 GAME PACK (DISK 3) | Very intense maze chase game where a motherfucker is AFTER you. On verticals he's faster, but on horizontals he's slower. Turns are pixel perfect which again, makes it super hard to run away from the bastard. With a little polish it could be very good. |
| BOM BOM | action | I forgot.. I think Game pack Disk 5 | Another one of those maze chase games whose concepts are great, but suffer from the implamentation and hardware. It's kinda like a cross between pengo and pac man. You have things you can pick up, and you can push the terrain into monsters to kill and damage them. Play it!! |
| Piyo Piyo | action | PC-8001 Game Pack Disk 6 | Not to be confused with Pio Pio. This game is super cute. You jump in the air and get... balls hanging from the ceilings. If you wait too long they turn into hearts that will run around, but you still need to get them. There's a red guy that chases you, and another thing that also bounces around. Get all the balls or hearts to win. It's fun, it's cute, it's an arcade platformer. Not sure if it's based on anything, but this is another one of those games that I think I want to see redone with a flashier presentation. Ngl I could easily remake this. Will keep it in mind. |
For writing software, the process is very straightforward thanks to Bugfire2009's DumpListEditor. Don't speak Japanese? Easy! Just click the "language" button and switch to English. As it looks, this program has a TONNN of really cool features, but it seems especially feature rich when it comes to the PC-8001. With the PC-8001 selected from the dropdown, navigatwe to the Input Basic tab. Enter in the file name in the file name section, and boom you're ready to write your program. If you know any microsoft basic variants from the late 70s or early 80s, it's the same shit. Nearly no suprises. If you need some inspiration, dive into this reference sheet, this book, this other book, or this magazine, or PC-8001 Utilization Research. Hell, check out these modern tutorials by HAL Labs.
After writing and planning your program, type it all into a the input basic tab. Make sure to use '?' instead of the PRINT command. After this, you can export your program as a WAV file. Load up the WAV file in audacity and make sure the proper inputs and outputs are selected. Type CLOAD on your PC-8001. Turn your Windows PC volume all the way up and press play in audacity. Let the file play ALL THE WAY through and it should be loaded. Type RUN on your 8001 and there ya have it :D
Want your BASIC program to run faster? Go download Xevi's NBCL and extract the ZIP somewhere. Copy the file directory, and paste it into DumpListEditor. You'll see the NBCL file path when you're in BASIC mode. After pasting it in and clicking "generate", you'll notice your load command has changed. Your cassette is now formatted as a machine language program and will be loaded as such. It will also be faster!
Yeah that's about it. PC-8001s are very easy to get a hold of if you know where to look, and pretty neat little machines. 80 column color mode also looks really pretty from what I can gather on videos. Don't forget to do all your testing and other scholarly activities on a PC-8001 emulator, they make things a helluva lot easier.
Bro this computer is from 1979. learn assembler! the books i mentioned have a lot of info on how to do it. Although the text is not in english, all the programming languages associated with this machine are in English. As long as you have some Z80 manual and some sort of Japanse-English OCR translator open, you should be able to out everything the tutorials are teaching with some trial and error (says the guy that analyzed one program).
Fuck you! Once a I identify a C Compiler that works with this machine, I'll probably rewrite this article since C code is a lot neater and more maintainable than BASIC. I'd rather switch to C if I could help it anyway.
Update: The GOAT of retro computer programming Inufuto runs a Youtube channel called Retro PC. This is most likely the greatest youtube channel ever made. They write simple games for retro computers, and PORT THEM TO EVERY OTHER RETRO COMPUTER! It's simply incredible. All the while I'm spinning my wheels trying to pick a proper engine/dev environmnet, Inufuto is just churning them out. Very inspiring work. But that ain't even the main attraction, see Inufuto releases many of these games on their website, many of which are source availible! Ohoho, some of them are in C! What compiler does Inufuto use? AHAHA! Our favorite developer Inufuto also maintains a compiler and assembler suite for all of these machines! What's the catch, you ask? Although games like Ascend, AntiAir, Cracky, Guntus, Hopman and Yewdow all have their C source availible, all of these games are for the 32k 8001 models only. 32k of RAM is an UPGRADE that people could do to their machines. Not an uncommon one, but an upgrade that I DON'T HAVEEEEE !!! TLDR, I can't make cool games and mods to Inufuto's games since my brain is too small to bring 16k support to Cate80. It's also too small to bring 16k 8001 support to Z88DK (which supports the 8801 AND the 6001, but not the 8001 strangely). From what I can gather, public support for the 8001 quickly dropped off when the peoples began to switch over to the more powerful kanji-having 8801 and the funner, sillier 6001. I'd gladly do testing for anybody that needs it though. If you want some intern level assistance with an 8001 C compiler please hit me up on my discord @yudosai.
Super shout out to Bugfire2009, Xevi, and Inufuto!!! Go check out their work, they were super instumental to understanding this system.
Oh, and if anyone has a PCG 8001, I'm ON MY HANDS AND KNEES PLEASE PLEAS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I'll do anything for that machine (if it works).
In short, basic is slow. I know this is the sacred wizdom of the 80s, but I saught out to figure this out for myself.
I wrote this program in J80 emulator and tested it on real hardware. It doesn't use color or anything, but it's a neat way to show how the GET and PUt stuff works. If you try to start rendering a ton of sprites everywhere, it till become pretty obvious that's it's too damn slow. Even if you try to compile this through NBCL, you'll see that it's really isn't that much faster. It makes a lot more sense why games are written directly in assembler and machine code, or at least in some part so. I simply can't match such performance from a simple BASIC program. But maybe I don't need performance?
I just picked up this book on writing adventure games in BASIC. I think that this is probably the most realisc type of game I could make shy of a board game. Either way, I also found and referenced an english reference manual for N80 basic. It's pretty well written and is your ideal companion for PC80 programming.
July 4 2024 at like 6PM: I did a lot of reading and testing over the past few weeks, and I wanted to add some more things to this list. If there's any test you'd like me to do with this machine, please let me know. You can contact me on discord at @yudosai. Please say you found my name through my website though, or else I'll probably ignore the request.
May 15 2024 at like 1AM: Alright I'm off to my graduation ceremony. I'll update this when i have more relevant information.
May 15 2024 at like 6PM: Alright goofy goobers the graduation ceremony is over. We ate hella food and now i'm both dense and sleepy. Updating with more info about cate + formatting.
May 17 2024 at like 11PM: Got hit with the sickness beam this week and it totally ruined my plans!! Grahhh... Anyway I found a little converter box that costs way way way less than I thouight it was going to be. Probably the only convinent option for Americans short of just getting a Tri-Sync or original PC-8001 monitor.