Dead of the Brain is an exceptional example of PC-98 preservation

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FAKKU has entered the video games space with an impressive conversion of a cult classic originating from obscure hardware.

Lucas White November 12, 2026 10:30 AM 1

One thing you don’t hear about often in the west is the PC-98 and its related platforms. There was a thriving scene for these early PC games in Japan, as things like visuals and animation, voice acting, music, and emergent new styles of play and storytelling all found new evolutionary stages. Some stuff came over but we missed out on things like adventure games and visual novels, and even classic traditional video games like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, largely due to timing. Weirdly enough, a hentai publisher has stepped up to fill in some of those historical gaps, bringing cult horror adventure game Dead of the Brain to major platforms for the first time.

FAKKU, which started as a sort of fan translation hub for hentai manga before going more legitimate, recently acquired the rights to many games from FairyTale, a PC game studio largely responsible for Eroge (Erotic Games, smut, whatever you wanna call it). FairyTale also dipped its toes into horror with Dead of the Brain, a zombie story inspired by the genre’s classics that’s a sort of visual novel-slash-point and click adventure-slash-arcadey action game hybrid. You could almost look at it like a primordial ancestor to Resident Evil, as it predates that game by several years and sports many similarities on a surface level. Dead of the Brain has built some notoriety over the years in sicko circles, as previous fan translation efforts (if you were dedicated enough to dive into PC-98 emulation, which even intimidated me) made it relatively available and images of its lo-fi digital gore intrigued horror aficionados across the niche internet.

Now Dead of the Brain is on Steam! And other platforms. There’s mild censorship on Steam, because Valve can’t be bothered to be consistent in how it moderates sexual content, but anyone who knows ball can tell you an external patch is available from the publisher to get around that. The demo was available as part of the October 2026 Steam Next Fest, and as of this writing is still available to try out before you buy. I had to jump on the chance of course, because of my intersecting interests in obscure gaming history, emulation, and cool genre work. I’d recommend dipping into the demo, because it’s the perfect way to decide if this kind of game, which is a bit rickety and odd to get used to, is something you’d get along with. But if you have the patience for truly old-school, point-and-click gameplay, and action that kind of resembles Dragon’s Lair (you know, the goofy FMV arcade game that was all about strict timing challenges), there’s a lot of schlocky fun to indulge yourself in with Dead of the Brain.

The emulation itself is really impressive. The wrapper looks nice, you get a whole ancient-ass PC-looking boot screen, and the mouse cursor and menu UI is all about making you feel like you’re uncovering ancient software from before your brain knew what a computer was. There’s a solid CRT filter that adds some curvature to the image and softens the raw pixels, and lots of interesting assistance tools to do things like highlight hitboxes. That sounds silly, but it’s genuinely helpful if you aren’t used to the kinds of things this game asks you to do, which haven’t really survived to our modern era of homogenous controls and design tropes. Also, you can toggle the soundtrack from the PC-98 original to other hardware versions, which is really cool. Stuff like that serves as a reminder of how quickly PC gaming hardware changed in small windows of time, and how software was ported and updated across machines. Nowadays we have “remasters” and “remakes,” but back then you’d just see new versions of the same game, but with significant changes due to evolving technology. It’s neat!

The game itself is goofy as hell, but a lot of fun if you’re willing to, well, turn your brain off a bit. The story kind of smashes the vibes of Return of the Living Dead and Back to the Future together, as your himbo main character is dragged into a zombie apocalypse scenario by a bumbling old scientist he knows, who just so happened to be conducting experiments on bringing dead things back to life in his garage. An unfortunate chain of events with a dead cat leads to a dead cop, which leads to a whole graveyard opening up. You and the doctor meet up with your girlfriend, then head to the local police station to try and get help. Everyone there is already donezo of course, and the demo ends after your first taste of… “combat.”

Lots of the gameplay will be similar if you’re familiar with SCUMM classics like Monkey Island or Sam and Max, albeit a bit older and less refined. You use a menu to investigate and interact with objects, reading flavor text and trying to find the right flags to progress. But occasionally a little digital timer on the side will start, and you’ll have a matter of seconds to deal with something like, for example, a zombie trying to eat your brains. If you don’t find the right things to click on in the right order, you’ll die and go back to your last save. This can be frustrating, even with the hitboxes turned on, because you’re also at the mercy of the game’s logic. Here’s a hint: sometimes you’ll need to click on the same thing multiple times. It’s annoying, but oftentimes your reward for winning is some wildly detailed, pixelated gore, which is perfect for the folks out there who appreciate the Tom Savini of it all.

This demo writeup has already gone on way too long, but I reckon that’s a testament to how cool a project like Dead of the Brain is in 2026. We have the full package here: an uncanny historical release from an unexpected publisher, excellent emulation, a strong localization, and some earnest, splattery cult horror. I’m absolutely picking up the full version, and suggest anyone into Romero-style zombie schlock (and particularly the also-rans) give the demo a shot.

Dead of the Brain is available now on PC. This article is based on a demo featured during the October 2026 Steam Next Fest.

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.

Lucas White Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.

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