Tel me everything there is to know about the Sharp X68000
I have never even heard of this thing until recently, but now I am obsessed. Unfortunately, there is very little info on the internet about it.
I know it was released in Japan only and is fairly rare.
Can anyone give me the skinny? Is it a cool system? (the screenshots I've seen look very impressive). What games are available for it? Is there any chance of finding one of these? Has anyone here played one?
Thanks for any info!!
Well, it's famous for its near-perfect arcade conversions, and some other things I won't mention. Numerous emulators are available, but apparently they are rather difficult to work with, since they are all Japanese.
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Last edited by J'orfeaux; 04-01-2011 at 05:26 AM.
i
Porn/Hentai.
There I mentioned it.
It also has a killer version of Castlevania that was never released anywhere else...except relatively recently on the playstation. It had some incredible arcade and exclusive games.
Very cool computer that offered a somewhat amiga-like gui option.
There used to be a site I had dedicated to it....damn can't find it. Try looking for emulators for it. It should lead you to mucho info.
-Rob
The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!
Re: i
What version of Castlevania? I can also get it for the PSX? In the US?Originally Posted by rbudrick
I knew I'd seen a site about this somewhere before...
http://members.tripod.com/~faberp/sharpx68.htm
And here's some info about the Castlevania game.
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Last edited by J'orfeaux; 04-01-2011 at 05:26 AM.
hey, where's the Castlevania link?
what I don't friggin understand is that the computer was apparently manufactured for a decade and was very successful, but I have never seen one sold on ebay. WTF?
Er, click on the word "here".
I've heard people say that the game collecting business is not quite as big in Japan, and that shipping from Japan for large items is prohibitively expensive.
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Last edited by J'orfeaux; 04-01-2011 at 05:26 AM.
Castlevania Chronicles, I think I'm gonna pick this up next week when I get my paycheck. Man, the EB games near my house is a goldmine. They somehow have a whole crapload of new PSX games that have been out of print for ages. I saw multiple copies of this last time I was in there, but it was only $20 new when it was released so I'm sure you can find plenty of it on Ebay.
Yeah, I'm gonna grab it as well.
Edit: Oh yeah, while we're on the subject, I managed to take a decent picture of that Akumajo Dracula x68000:
http://home.attbi.com/~edoscuro/dual_adra2.jpg
Great to see that I got people thinking about this machine.
If you've got a ton of money, you can get one shipped from Japan or Hong Kong. I know somebody who got a shitty, beat up x68000 ACE HD (hard drive model) for about half a grand, but that was a few years ago and I think he bought it from somebody inside the U.S. I've seen FM Towns Marty PCs for sale ($299 + S&H); THAT is THE hentai machine of the early 1990s. The Hentai machine for the late 80s was the PC-98 based computer (as usual, those machines are most pointedly NOT IBM PS/2 compatible, though the early, pre-Windows Marty's vertical CD-ROM drive visible on the case is wicked cool). The x68000 really doesn't bring to mind hentai, but since it was popular there would of course be some.
The Sharp x68000 was by no means their first foray into the big world of computing. Starting with the PC-5000 (I had a chance to buy a perfect Sharp PC-7000 portable but I didn't *kicks self*) it made PCs pretty close to U.S. standards. Starting with the MZ series they broke away and made a machine with the Zilog Z80 in it (of NES fame, a well known architecture and a good choice at the time) continuing on through the X1 series. Then in 1987 they broke away from that old workhorse the Z80 and moved up to the Motorola 68000 (two years before SNK's little machine, I hasten to add). The series lasted until
Processor speed was pretty pathetic by American standards, but while we were googling DOOM on our 386 machines, they were applying a machine within a year or so behind (insert Moore's Law here: 18 months and processing speed is doubled) to 2D graphics. There was a Red Zone model from 1995 and maybe a few after that. I think it even has some ports of early Neo Geo games.
That said, games like Akumajo Dracula use the system's RAM as if it's a sort of volatile cartridge only: some machines had hard drives but most didn't and thus you had to assume the only time you'd want to load was at the beginning. Seeing as how you had standard five and a quarter drives (two usually, giving the machine a distinctive look) you didn't have much reason to try and make the game load in parts like a modern game. You pretty much could only fill up those disks with enough to eat up 2 MB of RAM anyways. Saving was also done via disk (that's why Akumajo Dracula comes with three disks, by the way).
Since the system was pretty darn primitive, with the OS giving nowhere near the sort of support Windows 95 did, you had to have the ability to change clock speed to run old software properly (sort of a hardware equivalent of those Slow-Down programs some people use to run old IBM compatible software). Processor speeds varied from 10 MHz with 1 to 10 MB of RAM with the original model to 10/16 MHz with 2 to 12 MB of RAM; the last machine in the series used the new x68030 with (hold your breath) 25MHz processing speed and 4 MB of memory minimum (total is still 12 though).
Old-Computers.com has a pretty good take on the Sharp x68000 series; I don't guarantee the information 100% as they sometimes get little details wrong but they're usually pretty close to being on the mark:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/...asp?st=1&c=310[/i]
cool. I want one.
Interesting stuff... but the NES used a MOS 6502, not a Z80. The Game Boy, among other things, was Z80-based.Still, I've never heard of these MZ machines before. Were they supposed to be MSX compatible?
By the way, there's a thread in the Emulation forum right now about the X68000. Apparently it has a nice version of River City Ransom!
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Last edited by J'orfeaux; 04-01-2011 at 05:26 AM.
Here's a link you can try: Japanese Computer Emulation Centre http://<a href="http://www.jcec.co.u...jcec.co.uk</a>
Rich
c
Richd,
That was the link I couldn't remember. Sweet.
-Rob
The moral is, don't **** with Uncle Tim when he's been drinking!
I know this: Joe won't host any of the games or emulators, no matter how much I bug him about it.
Seriously, though, the X68000 is a fantastic system. I wouldn't call it "primitive" at all... it was a far better game console than PCs were in 1987, and it even outperforms the Amiga with arcade conversions that are so accurate, you'd swear they were running from an emulator. It may be a little behind the times NOW, but it holds up well for a vintage system. On average, the games are better than most of what you'd find on the Genesis or Super NES.
I would recommend, well, nearly any arcade translation on the system. The Sprite Soft games are pretty good, too, although they're generally derivitives of more popular titles (ie Zugya is a pumped up Bosconian, while Xadlak is similar to R-Type or perhaps more accurately Sol-Feace on the Sega CD). Castlevania is a must, and the X68000 exclusive version of Gradius, called Gradius '90, is worth a look as well.
Stay away from the hentai titles, as they're in Japanese and consequently very difficult to understand and play.
You should be able to find a complete library of X68000 games on Emuchina. I'm pushing to have some of them hosted on Digital Press, but as I mentioned before, I haven't had much luck persuading Joe to do it.
JR
The Gameroom Blitz. Here. Go. Now.
http://grblitz.overclocked.org
Agh, you're right about the MOS 6502; somewhere along the line I got Z80 stuck in my head. Actually, I think it was the MSX series that used the Z80.
Oh, and on that River City Ransom remake, I wouldn't expect it to break any new ground. It's pretty much the same thing seen on other systems...from what I hear. I hope it's better, but it looks pretty uninspired to me.
Stay away from hentai titles, period. It doesn't matter what system they're on, they're ALL unimaginative and though there's some interesting material in there, I would rather spend my time with real women instead ;)
Odd, why would Joe not want to host X68000 stuff? I mean, I wouldn't bug him about it, if it were me, as I have only a passing interest in the system. It just seems odd to me, since it's been out of prduction at least as long as the SNES and is twenty times more obscure. He must have s good reason. Maybe Sharp has a histroy of being brutal to "pirates" (for lack of a better word).
Erm, unless I'm completely blind, EmuChina doesn't seem to have Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari for the X68000. (It's not even in the downloadable TOSEC database.) Is there another recommended site for X68000 downloads?
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Last edited by J'orfeaux; 04-01-2011 at 05:27 AM.
Heh, I used to have a site which worked, but a few months ago their x68K page disappeared. I'll look around some more.
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