ReC98
rec98project.bsky.social
ReC98
@rec98project.bsky.social
https://rec98.nmlgc.net

The Touhou PC-98 Restoration Project. Decompiled 100% of TH01 to provably legit C++ code, remaining games in progress. Which mods or ports do *you* want to see?
Many thanks to this month's subscribers!

The next delivery will fully cover TH03's enemy, fireball, and explosion systems.
No netplay this year though, Shuusou Gyoku replays have shaped up to be too complicated. (It might also make sense to have TH03 replays before netplay.)
October 31, 2025 at 2:14 PM
While I'm working on TH03, let's design the replay format I'll use for Shuusou Gyoku and PC-98 Touhou! If there's anything you've ever wanted to see in a replay format, now's your chance to influence the design and feature set.

github.com/nmlgc/ssg/is...
October 21, 2025 at 8:03 PM
You know, the one in the first image. From ver0.86 rev96β5 on, you'll get the way more accurate glyphs in the second image instead.

(The third image shows an authentic font ROM by NEC for comparison.)
October 20, 2025 at 6:51 PM
Summary blog post (>2,300 words): rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-10...

Featuring:
• The most wholesome warning I've ever seen in a C compiler, courtesy of GCC
• Unexpectedly slow SDL code on Windows

Funded by Ember2528 and Root.
October 19, 2025 at 9:55 PM
🚚 Delivered the planned Shuusou Gyoku maintenance release. SDL 3 is now a hard dependency (even on Windows 98!), the SDL 2 code path is gone, and the Linux version now compiles with GCC ≥15.

No new features, but a few bugfixes and speedups surrounding screenshots and fonts.
October 19, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Summary blog post: rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-09-29

Ending this overly indulgent subproject with, among other things:
• Heap fragmentation everywhere
• An asynchronous fade effect
• Silly binary size micro-optimizations

Funded by [Anonymous] and Ember2528.
September 30, 2025 at 6:43 PM
Many thanks to this month's subscribers!

The current plan for the rest of the year:
1) Shuusou Gyoku maintenance (will quickly free up some budget)
2) TH03 RE
3) Better replays for Shuusou Gyoku
4) TH03 netplay (would be nice to get it done by the end of the year)
September 30, 2025 at 4:05 PM
🚚 Released the first version of the TH03 Anniversary Edition together with the first debloated builds of all five games! Primarily reduces lag in menus and cutscenes as a first step towards portability, but also comes with a single new feature.

Download: github.com/nmlgc/ReC98/...
September 30, 2025 at 2:22 AM
The end is near! >9,800 words, and probably the last big blog post for this year. I wanna code again!

Out within the next few hours…
September 29, 2025 at 10:41 PM
Summary blog post: rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-09...

This time with:
• More research into earlier Bluesky posts
• Special content for Peaceful Romancer enjoyers
• The 4th bug caused by C's integer promotion rules within 11 months

Funded by [Anonymous], Ember2528, Yanga, and Blue Bolt.
September 17, 2025 at 12:07 AM
🚚 Part 3 is out, bringing five disconnected and small decompilations and actually shifting the percentages on the front page for a change!

🐞 5 bugs
💣 3 landmines
🎺 2 quirks
🪨 24 pieces of bloat
September 17, 2025 at 12:07 AM
> Next post is about five small and disconnected RE tasks
> Try to write five short paragraphs with bullet points in the style of touhou-memories
> Still end up with over 2,000 words

Coming to you within the next few hours…
September 16, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Link: rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-09...

… OK, it does have two bits of very silly Touhou content in the end. That'll have to do until the next one.

Funded by [Anonymous], Ember2528, and Congrio.
September 11, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Part 2 of my 4-part 2025 PC-98 Touhou portability series is out!
This one is also our second deep dive into PC-98 blitting performance with two new benchmarks, and also looks at the two libraries that ZUN used to load PI images.

Not a lot of Touhou-specific content in this one.
September 11, 2025 at 2:51 AM
Second part is in proofreading. Over 9,300 words about PC-98 blitting and the .PI format, coming to you within the next few hours…
September 10, 2025 at 11:00 PM
📝 Wrote a post about the various strategies of porting PC-98 Touhou to modern platforms! Also clears up common misconceptions about the performance of the PC-98 originals.
This one is required reading for anyone who wants to see these games ported.

Link: rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-09...
September 6, 2025 at 3:48 AM
Trying something new this time! The next release touches on so many topics that one blog post would have been way too intense for everyone.

So I'm splitting it up into 4 posts, with each focusing on a different topic.

First part (~8,000 words) coming within the next few hours…
September 6, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Many thanks to this month's subscribers!

Code is done escalating, and now it's the blog post's turn. Got >13,000 words now and it's still missing lots of content… I'll be so relieved once I get to spend the rest of the year on TH03 and Shuusou Gyoku with no more distractions.
August 31, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Here's all the ZUN quirks, bugs, landmines, and bloat from previously RE'd code that I missed or got wrong in previous pushes and fixed for the upcoming ones.

Reverse-engineering is hard.
August 28, 2025 at 6:51 PM
This one was fixed in the 2014 English patch.
August 21, 2025 at 12:07 AM
The same screen appears correctly in Reimu B's Good Ending, which reveals this as a typo in a picture crossfading command.

The ",4" is supposed to be the second parameter, specifying how many frames to wait between each crossfading step.
August 21, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Here's a funny script bug in TH04's Good Ending for Reimu A that I just stumbled over.

",4魔理沙"?! 🎺

(Third-party clip from 2013 for proof: www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxUo6...)
August 21, 2025 at 12:07 AM
Summary blog post (1,031 words) and downloads:
rec98.nmlgc.net/blog/2025-08...

Found no actual case of such a desync in the wild so far, but the possibility is there.

Many, many thanks to Ripper Roo for reporting this one.
August 12, 2025 at 8:58 PM
⚠️ Another Shuusou Gyoku Extra Stage replay desync bug?
This time though, it's the actual catastrophic kind: An accidental fork of Marisa's gameplay that might invalidate replays recorded on any ReC98 build from the last 10 months, now that I've restored the original behavior.
August 12, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Many thanks to this month's subscribers!

384 commits across 10 pushes coming your way soon… (Hopefully)
July 31, 2025 at 4:39 PM