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Tarin02543
Member
i play castlevania X68000 on my mister from time to time.
most x68000 ports already have their arcade originals running on mister
most x68000 ports already have their arcade originals running on mister
tylrdiablos
Member
$3,000 apparently : https://www.giantbomb.com/sharp-x68000/3045-95/
Which is something like $6,900 in today money.
I'd never heard of this thing! Interesting read.
cireza
Member
There are some great videos to watch about niche Japanese PCs, the X68000 being of course one of them.
I recommend checking this channel for PC-88 and PC-98 : https://www.youtube.com/@BasementBrothers
I recommend checking this channel for PC-88 and PC-98 : https://www.youtube.com/@BasementBrothers
It's kind of like the Japanese Commodore Amiga where they revised the main processor with a faster version, which some games will only work with.
lo zaffo
Member
I'm Italian and I never ever heard of Sharp X68000 until after I became a retro zombie, but now I listen to .mdx audio modules made for Sharp X68000 a lot.
For instance try and check Kamishimo Records | Groundzero Music Library .
For instance try and check Kamishimo Records | Groundzero Music Library .
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Isa
Member
Hell yeah! Nice to see someone with great taste! I love their videos, very genuine and gives a lot of neat information, and I like seeing the various version of specs handle things differently depending on the hardware, especially in sound options. From the incredible art and sound design, I'm in retro heaven having more people do videos on these retro systems, especially the stuff we never got.
Sega Lord X is pretty good too, I'll the video a watch later tonight.
cartman414
Member
Really?
Holammer
Member
This happened back in '97, so it's been awhile, but one of the early devs did not like the attention when the emu scene learned of this fantastic machine from the mysterious east and updated versions refused to start unless it found Japanese fonts and other files. The readme file mentioned foreign pirates.
This is so early we still had single arcade game emulators and MAME was still dew fresh. So pardon Grandpa for not remembering all the details.
RoboFu
One of the green rats
I like pc-88 because it’s like a bunch of devs got together and took a look at a ega dos pc with the only drawing ability was gdi and said “ alright let do this! Wooohoo!!“. Lol.
No scrolling hardware, most games scroll a full row column at a time like old dos games. Lots of flickering and jerky motion but still unlike early fps some devs were fully committed to putting everything behind it.
No scrolling hardware, most games scroll a full row column at a time like old dos games. Lots of flickering and jerky motion but still unlike early fps some devs were fully committed to putting everything behind it.
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cartman414
Member
Don't worry fellow old timer. I also vaguely remember everything, just not that part. IIRC a translator group did a patch or something, or there was a way to brute force through the thing.
SirTerry-T
Member
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existensmaximum
Member
Well, that certainly wasn't bad, right?
BlackTron
Member
Regional differences:
1. Japanese and American roles have been switched
2. If you fail to shoot down an enemy ship and it scrolls off the screen, a nuke goes off. Japanese gamers loved that their 1337 skills were sharpened while American plebs got a dumbed down game for losers.
3. This is a true story.
nkarafo
Member
It's crazy how powerful this thing was in 1987. At the time, regular PCs were not even in the gaming space, even 8bit home computers could outperform them.
The only other computer that could barely compete was the Amiga. But even that was like comparing the Neo-Geo to a Mega Drive. And despite that, the Amiga in 1987 was considered a "dream machine" and was still very expensive.
Since the Neo-Geo AES wasn't released before 1991, that means the x68000 was the most powerful gaming home system you could possibly get... for 4 long years. That record beats the Amiga 1000, which was the state of the art for only 2 years (before the x68000 was released).
Yeah sure, there was also the Acorn Archimedes, which was technically more advanced than both and it also got released in 1987. But that one wasn't really fine tuned for games, it was more like a cheap workstation.
The only other computer that could barely compete was the Amiga. But even that was like comparing the Neo-Geo to a Mega Drive. And despite that, the Amiga in 1987 was considered a "dream machine" and was still very expensive.
Since the Neo-Geo AES wasn't released before 1991, that means the x68000 was the most powerful gaming home system you could possibly get... for 4 long years. That record beats the Amiga 1000, which was the state of the art for only 2 years (before the x68000 was released).
Yeah sure, there was also the Acorn Archimedes, which was technically more advanced than both and it also got released in 1987. But that one wasn't really fine tuned for games, it was more like a cheap workstation.
nkarafo
Member
The CPU was the least important part in gaming systems, even then. A lot of systems share the same 68000 technology (with some variations in speed) but their overall capabilities are night and day. What matters is the graphics silicon that never gets mentioned in the retro scene.
RAIDEN1
Member
Had Sharp released it in the West it would have likely wiped the floor with the Amiga and would have given Commodore something to sweat about rather than just going head-to-head with the Atari ST ....and so as it was the Amiga was king of the hill in terms of "gaming PCs" circa late 80's up until about 1993...
ReBurn
Gold Member
Not so. The reason graphics hardware was rarely mentioned back then, especially PC hardware from the 80's like this, because the graphics hardware didn't work like modern GPU's do. The chips themselves were rarely notable other than the number of things they did. Graphics hardware tended to work in service of the CPU and provided the capability to draw sprites, layer backgrounds, handle scrolling, etc. But the CPU actually coordinated it all and every chip had to do its job during the CPU cycle. Graphics hardware didn't start to become notable until video components started to provide upgradeable video co-processing capabilities, which led to actual GPU tech like we have today.
In regard to the X68000 the actual graphics silicon was mainly notable because it contained display components that were on par with what was In arcade machines at the time. It was one of the first, if not the first, device built to truly bring arcade quality gaming home.
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RAIDEN1
Member
And the next best thing to it was the release of the Neo Geo in 1990 albeit without the support of Capcom or Konami...The Neo Geo wasn't exactly cheap either but compared to the Sharp it most definitely was the more "affordable option"
cartman414
Member
Don't even try telling the Amiga faithful though haha.
cireza
Member
I disagree with this. A very good CPU will offer many possibilities that a weak CPU won't. The CPU moves around everything constantly. With a good CPU and good bandwidth, you can compensate for not a lot of RAM. And it also enables CPU intensive games, where visual content is calculated on the fly. MegaDrive being the best demonstration of this.
CuteFaceJay
Member
Fuck sakes might as well just get the Neo Geo safe money and have a just as good looking games.
RoboFu
One of the green rats
Nah, there was basically 3 cpus back then with different variants. A 6502 mos ,z80 and the Motorola 68000
The 6502 was in the Atari 2600, Atari 8bit pcs, nes, commodore, apple2, and pc engine.
The z80 was in a lot of sega consoles and arcade games like the master system, earlier sharp PCs , and Pac-Man
The Motorola 68000 was also in a lot of arcade boards, neogeo, and the sega genesis.
A lot of different boards with very different performance not because of the cpu but their ppus and ram.
Cool side note both the sega genesis and neogeo had both a 68000 and z80
Snes was basically a updated version of the 6502
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RAIDEN1
Member
Well I was an owner of an A500 once upon a time and fan of all things Commodore...it is only in recent years that I came across this Sharp machine which when I saw what it could do made me realise that the Amiga line wasn't quite cut above the rest as I used to think for many, many years....(the rest in as the other computers out there...I used to think the Genesis and SNES owners had it good with their graphically better games..) but the Sharp even blew those away
nkarafo
Member
Τhere were 8bit arcade games that the Amiga or Mega Drive could hardly handle.
And there were 16bit games the Saturn or PS1 could also hardly do, Neo-Geo stuff for instance.
Both the Amiga and Neo-Geo use the same CPU but they are like a whole generation appart. Sure there's a speed difference but surely it's not just that.
That alone show that the CPU is just one small piece of the puzzle. Maybe still important but not as much as being the only thing to measure for specs, like most people do. For me it says almost nothing.
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cireza
Member
Ok but you are changing your argument here. You said it was the least important thing, which I disagree with.
Like everything, it has to be balanced with the other specs to be as effective as possible.
You can find examples of consoles not running something because they are low on RAM, low on graphics capabilities... or to slow with their CPU.
Of course looking at only the CPU is dumb. Who even does this ? You have to look at the global picture.
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nkarafo
Member
That was the norm in the 90's console space. The Mega Drive even had the "16bit" label on it. Then you had the 32 bit consoles, you had the 32X which was "not really 32 bit, but slightly", the Neo-Geo which was "24 bit" because it being the same bits as the Mega Drive/SNES didn't really make sense and who can forget the 32 bit + 32 bit = 64 bit Atari Jaguar? Thankfully, the Nintendo 64 (bit) was a "real 64 bit" console this time, though still not that much better than the PS1, but still more 64 bit than the Jaguar.
Meanwhile, nobody knew anything about anything else on the motherboard.
Hence, my reaction post whenever i see someone crediting the CPU only when a fancy machine does fancy things. Especially something like the X68000 or the Neo-Geo that have much more fancy hardware in other areas, which is the reason why they are so much more powerful than other 68000 based machines in the first place.
RAIDEN1
Member
Games looked a lot better on the N64 at the time than what was on the Saturn and PSX, those 2 wouldn't have been able to handle Wave Race with its awesome water effects.
nkarafo
Member
Sure, the N64 had some advantages over the PS1 and Saturn but it also had some regressions. It was more powerful overall, especially if custom microcodes were used, but it wasn't the big "32bit to 64bit" generational leap many people were expecting. Thankfully though, after the N64 the "bit wars" ended.
cartman414
Member
One argument often used against the X68000, especially by Amiga fans, is the comparatively small library of games. Especially in this thread from over a decade ago:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/amig...s-which-was-the-better-gaming-machine.465508/
As much as I liked the Amiga for what it was, it showed its age, though not through its fault entirely. Limited color gradients that feel 8-bit and European game design that places more value on tech than balance, the SID arpeggio fetish carrying over from C64, among other things, soured it for me.
I agree it's the games, but many Amiga examples from the midpoint of its life could also be found on the PC in roughly just as strong form.
European game developers were technically skilled and pushed the Amiga. But it would have been interesting to see what the Japanese developers could have accomplished on the Amiga. I know the 512k memory was very limiting with many North American games requiring 1meg, which makes sense for primarily PC developers. Current day fan projects that use more megs of ram are pretty impressive. The New Final Fight remake for example, or Castlevania.
As an aside, it's almost a bit unfair to compare Capcom CPS1 games to other titles, since it was the development system. It would have been interesting to see Capcom port their own titles on the Amiga. Considering European developers were rarely given assets or code for arcade conversions, they did pretty well. Not sure on the budget and resources between Japan and Europe at the time as well.
The size of the library was never an issue for me personally, it's the quality or what you prefer for games. But if you want Capcom and Konami type games, pretty solid machine. Amiga for original games. Poor ST.
Futaleufu
Member
PC had 3D games, simulators, strategy and adventure games.
Nobody was buying PCs to play sidescrollers on them.
Tarin02543
Member
This is 1987, no internet and your friend says his dad during a business trip saw a 3000 $ monster computer that is 20 times more powerful than the NES which was released one year earlier.
RAIDEN1
Member
That was the problem with Commodore/Amiga, if it had a stronger presence in the US of A and Japan who knows we may have got better ports than we did...I think its fair to say out of all things Capcom that were ported to the Conmodore machines, only Final Fight was handled relatively well, we all know how Streetfighter 2 and Super Streetfighter 2 were like on the Commodore...massive disappointments...(blame it on the developers I know...)
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Dirk Benedict
Member
FTFY
cartman414
Member
Yeah, true.
As for the X68000, it would have been really sweet if we had seen the same level of effort for Konami games we saw for MSX. Even more enhanced ports (i. e. Nemesis 2) would have been mouth watering. I know they were handled in house by Sharp themselves, but still.
(I would be all for some demoscene ports/remakes/etc. coming from the new X68000 Z.)
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cartman414
Member
All true.
There's a level of copium going on with Amigans though. Had there been less lowest common denominator (A500) targeted development, the Amiga could have been greater. I look forward to the "remaster" of Black Tiger.
lmimmfn
Member
Lots of anti Amiga sentiment in this thread. Yes the x68000 was way better but who the hell(teenagers perspective) had 3 grand to spend on this vs ~£400 for an Amiga 500.
It's not just about technology but it's about price performance.
On top of that the Amiga was a computer(more favourable in europe), I spent only maybe 1/3rd of my time gaming on my Amiga 500, the rest was DPaint, and 3D rendering with Imagine with some other time on DTP, Wirdprocessing and creating vector clip art.
I realise the x68000 was also a computer but there's no English DTP/3D modeling and design/Wordprocessing/DTP software for it.
I would have absolutely loved on back in the day but realistically unless my family was a potential future candidate for NTV cribs it wasn't going to happen.
It's not just about technology but it's about price performance.
On top of that the Amiga was a computer(more favourable in europe), I spent only maybe 1/3rd of my time gaming on my Amiga 500, the rest was DPaint, and 3D rendering with Imagine with some other time on DTP, Wirdprocessing and creating vector clip art.
I realise the x68000 was also a computer but there's no English DTP/3D modeling and design/Wordprocessing/DTP software for it.
I would have absolutely loved on back in the day but realistically unless my family was a potential future candidate for NTV cribs it wasn't going to happen.
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