# NEC

> NEC, the Japanese electronics maker behind the PC Engine, the PC-FX and the PC-88 and PC-98 computers that dominated Japanese home computing.

Web page: https://emulationking.com/nec/
Page updated: 2026-09-28

NEC is a Japanese electronics and IT company founded in 1899. In the 1980s and 1990s it was Japan's leading personal computer maker: its PC-88 and PC-98 lines were the standard home and business computers in the country, and thousands of games were released for them, many never seen outside Japan.

With Hudson Soft, NEC also built the PC Engine, released in North America as the TurboGrafx-16. It was the first console with an optional CD-ROM drive and outsold the Famicom in Japan for a time. Its successor, the PC-FX, was a commercial failure and NEC left the console market soon after.

## Consoles

- [PC-FX](https://emulationking.com/nec/pcfx/index.md): The PC-FX is NEC's 32-bit CD-ROM console, released only in Japan in 1994. It focused on full motion video and anime games and sold poorly.
- [PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16](https://emulationking.com/nec/pcengine/index.md): The PC Engine, sold in North America as the TurboGrafx-16, is NEC and Hudson Soft's 1987 console and the first to offer a CD-ROM add-on.
- [PC-98](https://emulationking.com/nec/pc98/index.md): The PC-9800 series was NEC's line of Japanese personal computers from 1982 to 2003, home to many Japanese games, visual novels and the early Touhou games.
- [PC-88](https://emulationking.com/nec/pc88/index.md): The PC-8800 series was NEC's 8-bit home computer line, released in Japan in 1981 and a major platform for early Japanese computer games.