Is the Sharp X68000 the absolute best retro system ever?

[Classicgamer]

For those afraid of japanese: Die Bahnwelt, Star Cruiser, and Valis II have English translation patches.

Fantasy Zone, Xevious, Space Harrier, Dragon Spirit, and Castlevania can be played with stereoscopic 3D LCD shutter glasses. Dragon Spirit even supports true tate in both 15khz and 31khz. So you can play in tate and 3D. Quite awesome to experience.

Amazing. That machine really was ahead of it's time.

It's such a shame it had such a needlessly high price tag and poor marketing. In different hands, maybe Sharp could have become the dominant player in the video games world.

Are any other games 480p and did it ever use it's EGA mode?

[SuperDeadite]

480p is a misnomer as 31khz is typically 512x512 or 768x512 here. That doesnt mean all pixel space is used though. Most games run in 31khz, some run 15khz, and a few do support 24khz as well. A lot of the PC-98 ports, Fantasy Zone, and Marble Madness should be run in 24khz to be dot by dot accurate to the originals.

[fernan1234]

What I do for 24khz stuff is I put it in either a 480i or 480p screen so that it doesn't fill up the whole screen but remains "pixel" accurate.

[SuperDeadite]

That is exactly what the x68000 does lol. Fantasy Zone boots up in 31khz meaning there is a black border, essentially running in a window. Dropping it down to 24khz runs the game in full screen.

Another retail exclusive I just remembered is Midgarts, aka Midgarts Gold. On all other systems, Midgarts is an RPG series, on X68000, its a hori shmup... very strange one too. Breaks a lot of standard shmup "rules" and takes time to appreciate. Worth it though, truly bizzare journey and the final boss fight is kind of amazing.

[fernan1234]

Be Rain looks interesting. Is there a dump of it available? If not, maybe someone here can be the hero that helps preserve it.

[DejahThoris]

The Neo Geo definitely wins on ease of use though. I never had much patience for that Dos-like command line thing. C: // how the f**k do I make the game load//*\\ - why won't it recognize my command: // * run.

For just playing games off disk, you don't do anything except push the disk in. So equal ease of use.

[Classicgamer]

The Neo Geo definitely wins on ease of use though. I never had much patience for that Dos-like command line thing. C: // how the f**k do I make the game load//*\\ - why won't it recognize my command: // * run.

For just playing games off disk, you don't do anything except push the disk in. So equal ease of use.

That's good to know. It makes it seem far more accessible.

Although, it sounds like most people use them with SD cards now and, if I understood the Youtube videos, that does require some basic command line to access the game menu?

It's a small price to pay to avoid using 5 1/4" floppy discs. Those things were never that robust even when new. I can't imagine that time has done them any favors...

[Classicgamer]

480p is a misnomer as 31khz is typically 512x512 or 768x512 here. That doesnt mean all pixel space is used though. Most games run in 31khz, some run 15khz, and a few do support 24khz as well. A lot of the PC-98 ports, Fantasy Zone, and Marble Madness should be run in 24khz to be dot by dot accurate to the originals.

Am I right in thinking that all of the ports of 240p arcade games run in that same 240p on the X68000?

I've always been a little too particular about playing everything in the correct res (especially sprite based games). I bought a tri-sync arcade monitor because I couldn't live playing the handful of ega games in the wrong res.

I guess it's good that it doesn't scale ega games to fit when run in 480p. With an old crt monitor, you could probably have (analog) stretched the image to fit the screen.

[Hoagtech]

No command line knowledge is needed. It boots to your file directory on startup. You simply press arrow up and down and enter.

Each game has its files stored in the game folder. You just have to find the one that says Start! And press enter.

I am not sure if the directory is standard or front end but it’s very easy to navigate.

[DejahThoris]

Although, it sounds like most people use them with SD cards now and, if I understood the Youtube videos, that does require some basic command line to access the game menu?

It's a small price to pay to avoid using 5 1/4" floppy discs. Those things were never that robust even when new. I can't imagine that time has done them any favors...

No command line to get in the game menu. You do need to use the command line to change the "bios" options to look for a SCSI device on boot. But you only need to do that the first time, and then any time you change the sram battery every few years. And there's a letter by letter guide to doing it too.

You'd be surprised how incredibly well most of that hardware has kept over the years. Both the drives and the disks. I'm over 40 of those drives having gone through my hands now, and only one could I not get to read disks. Though I've had 3-4 I could not get to eject as they were either missing or had worn out mechanical bits *sigh*.

There are two front ends at this point that most people seem to use. One that's a little nicer but not controller-accessible, and one very very simple list that's navigatable by controller.

[Classicgamer]

Although, it sounds like most people use them with SD cards now and, if I understood the Youtube videos, that does require some basic command line to access the game menu?

It's a small price to pay to avoid using 5 1/4" floppy discs. Those things were never that robust even when new. I can't imagine that time has done them any favors...

No command line to get in the game menu. You do need to use the command line to change the "bios" options to look for a SCSI device on boot. But you only need to do that the first time, and then any time you change the sram battery every few years. And there's a letter by letter guide to doing it too.

You'd be surprised how incredibly well most of that hardware has kept over the years. Both the drives and the disks. I'm over 40 of those drives having gone through my hands now, and only one could I not get to read disks. Though I've had 3-4 I could not get to eject as they were either missing or had worn out mechanical bits *sigh*.

There are two front ends at this point that most people seem to use. One that's a little nicer but not controller-accessible, and one very very simple list that's navigatable by controller.

That's even better. It sounds considerably more user friendly than trying to use the Model 3 emulator.

[SuperDeadite]

Once again, most games run in 31khz, which would be closest to 480p, but the resolution is different. Some games support 15khz, some don't. Bonanza Bros supports both 15 and 31, but oddly enough no 24, even though the arcade was a 24khz game.