Sharp x68000 XVI Gradius II Intro

[Samoutuomas]

That is one damn sweet computer. No wonder it costs a ton nowadays, I'd pay good money for that. There's just something about these japanese gaming computers of late 80's, how they played almost perfect ports of arcade games, with fast and fluid controls. Konami MSX, NEC PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 (that was closer to a console though, but still, kicked NES's ass while still being an 8-bit machine at least partially).

[mruppel2]

How clever of Konami, put a background music while the game is being loaded from the floppy disk :)

[nym56789]

Wiah i had this in the late 80s and not my IBM ps/2 model 30...

[figaro589]

oh, wow! I've never even seen a pic of the 68K, but wow, it's beautiful!

[xan1242]

This machine was ahead of it's time.

[nutellajunkie]

I love looking at all these classic machines. The design for this is beautiful. I must say, I would use that case even today. Sure im an Amiga lover, however there is no denying that Sharp did something special with this. Had it been released else where, at its time, this would have been the winner!

[poopskinTheLiar]

(damnit, i need to stop hitting send by accident. damn mobile browsers...)

Anyway, While the Amiga was my favorite of the gaming-oriented computers sold in the US/UK at the time, i'm still surprised that Sharp never released the x68000 in the US. The quality of it's arcade ports would have given it a good edge over the competition...

[hayato1ful]

NERDS!



[ATARI800XLfan]

I am currently thinking of getting into classic computer, would a Sharp X68000 be a good option with someone on a budget or a Amiga. Does the sharp X6800 work on TV's or monitors only. How hard are they to find and the games.

[doritostheking]

@ATARI800XLfan Amiga all the way. Sharps need monitors and a good knowledge of Japanese. Not for the faint hearted at all.

[illDiology]

It's pretty awesome that these came with the YM2151 sound chip in them - light years ahead of the adlib garbage most american pcs came with.

[somahiru]

the boot music is just awesome... and... seriously, this machine was really powerful!

[bahathir]

Back in those days, I had Sharp X68000 XVI Compact ... (3.5" Floppy edition). Auto-eject floppy drive ! I installed 6MB RAM, and MC68881 co-processor, and YES, the best 16 bit Personal Workstation I ever had :), that time . :) Eventhough it had 16MHz MC68000 CPU, but it has graphic accelerator, similar to the modern GPU these days.

Gradius 2 is my favorite shooting game ever ! :)

[basshuter2007]

was a amazing pc played so many arcade titles

[RickRudesMustache]

if only we could go back to those days when games were made for real gamers.

[rapper1918]

Looks very modern

[nibelung34343]

I still got mine but it is white i have salamander street fighter 2 and mr do pack

[shorty1k]

oh man, that music kicks the crap out of that soundblaster shit I was rocking around that time.

[mariodivine]

X68k is very close to Arcade hardware but construction concept is the same like Atari/Amiga (custom chips idea).

Atari never win in battle with Amiga.

We must remember one thing... All this computers are big tresure now, we must preserve everything. This is history, this history still give us a lot of fun! Much more than new overclocked PC crap!

[gillianx68000]

awesome,all games works in XVI sharp x68000?i think old old games dont work"gemini wing,granada x etc etc???"

[hylianarmy0]

That computer looks a lot like modern ones.... Is it really from the 80's?

[michiyoyoshiku]

Yeah this was back when Japan was kicking our asses at everything

[Ryoga2K]

Is it possible to copy this floppies? or do they have some kind of copy protection? I would be scared to loose my games as Floppy disks are not very reliable... I would like to get one of this machines but that would be really something important to decide if I buy it or not.

[EricTucson]

Yep, you can copy them. How do you think gamers my age got our collection 20 years ago? ;)

[loomp]

@EricTucson The Sharp x68000 was a great gaming computer thanks to Konami making games for it and was a big upgrade in video and MIDI sound over the MSX and MSX2 with games like Akumajo Dracula (a reimagining of the 1st Castlevania) that was ported to Playstation and PS3 PSN as Castlevania Chronicles. Did your x68000 come with a controller? I hear it uses two buttons like MSX and MSX2 did, I never found a joystick for it or seen what one looks like and you don't show one in this video.

[EricTucson]

@loomp I don't think a controller was ever bundled with any of the PCs. I've had fully boxed versions and didn't see a controller included. You can use a variety of controllers like ones from the FM Towns, Sega, or the X-1.

[loomp]

@EricTucson Yes I kind of figured Sharp x68000 used the Atari 2600 universal controller connector used by companies like Sega with the Master System, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and ColecoVision also a few computers like the Commodore 64 had this input too. When the NES came out companies started making there own connectors what I want to know is how many controller buttons the x68000 uses and I think you had to buy a x68000 controller separately since it did not come in your x68000 box.

[atherrien95]

@Ryoga2K DON'T COPY THAT FLOPPY! :P

[Ryoga2K]

@atherrien95 Damn you now I'm going to have to hear bad rap for 10 minutes xD

[Full4mat]

Ahh!!! They were good times... Good games and good machines (exept awful block scrolling with MSX I and II). Good memories... Thank You for this clip x)

[kewlkill20]

wow this sucks hardcore

[kinmanyuen]

Very nice lookin for 87... slim design

[Lachlant1984]

I notice that the music started playing long before the game had actually completely loaded. What an amazing machine for its time.

[WatMcWatley]

Is that perhaps loading music?

[airraideagle]

X68000 was the absolute BEST 16-bit home computer for gaming. Better than IBM PCs, better than Mac, better than Atari ST, better than Amiga. The X68000 was host to many arcade ports that were either identical to the original arcade or very close.

[Commodorian]

What an awesome machine, if only it was marketed outside of Japan.

[ojideagu]

Thats because Capcom developed their games on these systems in the first place so it was easy to make home versions.

[storerestore]

I don't have much to say about the difference in operating systems, but for games, these machines were vastly superior to any of the contemporary Amiga models. The hardware is just light years ahead, and as for the actual games, they were usually more polished than Amiga games.

[xslowcorex]

the hardware was very simular about 2MHz apart in the speed department im convinced the high end amiga could handle outrun perfectly rather then the current clone made in amos basic heh and thats another thing that seperates them the amiga was based on wimp development although not as piss easy as windows so would need to know computers and not think you know about them before getting one heh but yeah way ahead of its time

[xslowcorex]

i think the games was better polished due to the developers being competent in the machines and being older then 7

[Jeknoid]

The BEST home computer! is a shadow for all retro computer systems. THE BEST!!

[TheDutchGhost]

Wow, that really looks like a neat home computer.

What a shame they were never released here.

Imagine how different the home computer business might have been if this was available next to the PC and the Amiga in the 80's/90's.

If it also had Metal Gear 1(MSX) and Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake I would have wanted one of these.

[Commodorian]

The world at the time was saturated with machines such as the Atari ST, Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga and the Acorn Archimedes. Sharp would not have been competitive enough, especially when it came to pricing the product in order to gain substantial market share. The existing manufacturers were already very well established and provided the public with machines that were very affordable.

[TheDutchGhost]

Yeah but a guy can still dream.

Its only years later that I have been able to play decent Arcade ports or roms after years of poor conversions.

[Commodorian]

Some conversions were good but most were crap. I remember how dissapointed I was when I saw the Amiga version of Street Fighter II.

[BiggMykexero]

my japanese friend had one damn thing is so beast!

[Xclibur2001]

What else can that machine do besides play video games???

I'm just curious since I learned a little bit about it by playing the Akumajo Dracula remake on the Playstation AKA Castlevania Chronicles????

[guyvf]

It was a general purpose computer as well, for word processing and computer graphics. Western computers didn't deal with Japanese well, or at all, but native Japanese systems like the PC-98, FM Towns, and the X68000 series did.

[juazha]

Man, I wanna one!

[DannySNTV]

What a beautiful machine.

It's looks like the arcade version !!!

Keep it in good condition ;-).

Sharp have made a really good job.

[bigshrimpn]

yeah but loading arcade-quality games into memory off of a 5.25 floppy is nothing short of a miracle.

[aj0049]

man that's sum long boot time there. i won't think harshly at all about my NeoGeo CD anymore :-P