AlammoFM

What is ADVS98?#

ADVS98 (Adventure System 98) is an engine for making adventure games and visual novels for the NEC PC-9801, the Japanese computer where most of those games lived from the mid-eighties to the late nineties.

You write the game on a modern computer — in the browser editor or any text editor — and get a floppy image that boots on a real PC-98 or in an emulator. It looks and sounds like a game from back then because it runs on the same machine those games did.

👉 Open ADVS98 on alammofm.com — editor, compiler and PC-98 emulator, all in the browser, nothing to install.

Two parts, one file#

• The tools — editor (p98ed), compiler (p98c) and disk tools. They run on Linux, Mac, Windows or a browser tab, and pack your script, PNGs and music into DATA.PAK.
• The engine — GAME.EXE, 16-bit C and assembly running under MS-DOS or FreeDOS(98) on the PC-98.

Text wrapping, 16-colour planar conversion and music compilation all happen before anything reaches the disk, so the old machine only does what it is good at.

What you can make#

• Visual novels — message window, speaker names, choices, variables, multiple endings. Backlog, skip, auto-read and eight save slots included.
• Command adventures in the style of YU-NO, DESIRE or Policenauts — framed picture, verb menus (Look, Take, Talk, Move), items, a bag and rooms.
• Point & click — the bus mouse works without a driver.
• Title-screen extras — Continue, sound test, CG gallery, credits.
• Two languages on one disk — Japanese plus English, Spanish, Catalan or French.

Specs#

• Graphics: 640x400, 16 colours out of 4096, 8 sprite slots, full-screen CGs, transitions (fade, curtain, blinds, dissolve, iris, checkerboard…) and effects (shake, flash, rain, snow, palette cycling).
• Text: PC-98 text plane — Shift-JIS kanji from the font ROM or 8x16 Latin.
• Sound: OPNA (YM2608) FM music via MML, or PMD .m tunes. Sound effects on their own channel.
• Target: PC-9801VX class machine (286 + 86 sound board), or any PC-98 emulator.

Draw the art too#

Pictures can be drawn with PC-98 Paint, the 16-colour pixel editor that ships as ADVS98’s Paint tab. See the instruction manual.