Is the Sharp X68000 the absolute best retro system ever?

[Classicgamer]

Number 2 on my list of gaming hardware I always wanted (but never bought) is the Sharp x68000 (just under the PC Engine laptop). It looks like the best gaming machine ever released (relative to what others were available at the time).

Does anyone here own a working one? And if so, what is it like to play Capcom arcade games like SF2 CE, Final Fight and Strider? And how are the Neo Geo ports like Viewpoint and Fatal Fury? Are they really arcade perfect and how does games coming on 5 1/4" floppy discs effect them? Is there long loading times between rounds in SF2 etc? How does the experience compare to Groovymame on a crt monitor?

It's amazing to me that in 1987, while Sega were flogging the Master System, and three years before SNK released the AES, there was a home gaming computer capable of arcade perfect ports of premium arcades of the day...

It's even more amazing that someone decided not to release it outside Japan. If anything would have had broad appeal in America and Europe, it would be a machine capable of arcade perfection. Discussion of how Snes and Megadrive ports differed from the coin-op dominated video game review magazines back then. "Arcade perfect" was the holy grail of gaming. Even the best home PCs couldn't even get close.

[orange808]

Sure. You win.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I mean, is the library good? Sure. It's a home computer by definition and it's very easy to "emulate" on anything so throwing tons of money at old Japanese PC hardware seems kind of pointless but whatever floats your boat. The prices are outrageous now as old PC hardware went from junk to hobbyist bs and I say this as someone with several old specific PC towers.

Sure. You win.

[fernan1234]

It was precisely during the time that the Japanese economy was riding an unprecedented bubble, while the US and other major economies were most certainly not, so it makes sense that such a luxurious home computer was only viable as a product in Japan. It would have faired worse than the AES.

Now they are expensive as hell, a pain to restore and use, or modify for use with more modern interfaces and equipment, so it's really only for the fanatic. Japanese enthusiasts have developed excellent emulators for it, and at least one has been ported as a highly functional libretro core. There may be a Mister core in the works for it as well?

[Classicgamer]

They were always expensive as hell but time certainly hasn't helped much. I can't believe how much a broken one costs on ebay.

I forgot about the black Monday thing in 1987 but still, it was made until 1993 and, given it's $3000 price tag, I assume it was aimed at a more recession proof market. Recession or not there was plenty of rich people in America and Europe.

I'm not a collector of stuff. I only keep consoles that I still play on. I'm just curious about these because I have never actually seen one in the flesh. And, I am a huge fan of Capcom CPS1 games. That was the golden era for arcade gaming for me.

As there are people who still play C64 and Spectrum games, I was hoping there might be an X68000 owner here to tell us what they were like.

[Steamflogger Boss]

If any site out there has multiple sharp x68000 owners it's this one. Probably the Neo forum as well.

[DejahThoris]

Does anyone here own a working one? And if so, what is it like to play Capcom arcade games like SF2 CE, Final Fight and Strider? And how are the Neo Geo ports like Viewpoint and Fatal Fury? Are they really arcade perfect and how does games coming on 5 1/4" floppy discs effect them? Is there long loading times between rounds in SF2 etc? How does the experience compare to Groovymame on a crt monitor?

I have four working ones (slowly collecting one of each model). Not including the ones I restore and sell right here on this forum (and AP) as well.

You can look up play-throughs of SF2, FF, etc on YouTube and see what you think.

If any site out there has multiple sharp x68000 owners it's this one. Probably the Neo forum as well.

NFGGames has an entire x68k section that (for the size of the hobby) is pretty active. There are a lot of modern upgrades/replacements/reproductions of just about everything at this point.

[SuperDeadite]

Had an XVI for 6-7 years now. I would say it is certainly not the best retro system ever lol. It is a very good machine with lots of fun stuff to mess with, but I think the majority of people will tend to find the game library a bit limiting. It just didn't get the software support of a typical console. There is some amazing stuff for sure. but it is a system that requires a bit of research and planning before one should consider buying one. Personally I love MIDI, and the X68000 really excels at MIDI support.

As for the Capcom games, none of them are arcade perfect, but they are all excellent either way. Being a computer, the games will load as much data as they can into RAM. If you have enough RAM, even SSF2 will fully load into RAM on boot and no disks will be needed until you reboot. Even better of course is hard drive support. Bigger games pretty much all support hard drives.

These days, pretty much everyone just uses Compact Flash/SD Card adapters in place of an HDD, and just run almost everything off of that.
If you are an impulse buyer, I would recommend you stay away. It is very much a Ferrari, when it all works it's a beautiful thing. But, it will never be your daily driver, requires lots of tweaking, and will end up costing you a lot more then you think it will.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I was thinking of you when I saw this thread but couldn't remember your username deadite.

[Hoagtech]

It is a great system. I’ve owned the xvi for over a year and can’t stop playing its Gradius iterations.

I like to show off ChoShenRa but don’t really enjoy it playing it.

There is also a learning curve to learning which games run properly on 10mhz instead of turbo.

If your into fighting games. There was a huge home brew scene that uploaded there own sprites and character movements, and backdrops to make for some crazy fighting mixups before the custom fighting scene moved onto windows PC’s

I bought it originally to play it’s version of castlevania, but don’t expect a Rondo quality game as it is not even close to the PCE gem.

If you consider the cost of a Gradius PCB. The sharp becomes cheaper in comparison.

I started with emulation but it is laggy and playing on real hardware to me was more enjoyable.

I would recommend owning one for its fantastic Shmups although I seem to mostly play these 4 games:

Gradius
Gradius gofer
Nemesis Kai
Nemesis 94.

I do enjoy my MSX2+ more than the sharp x68000 because I feel the nemesis games were harder and better designed for the slower pace and even better the salamander is 2 player with the “economy” in tact.

Here are my most played games on msx2+

Nemesis
Nemesis 2
Gofer 2
Salamander.
Metal gear
Solid Snake
Space Manbow

As a bonus MSX scene has upgraded the Gradius games to feature smooth scrolling, extra audio and fixed the color pallet that occurred when playing msx on msx2 machines. I still prefer the chop though and nemesis 1 and 2 on cart along with q Bert and penguin adventure which gives you new spaceships and cheats on nemesis 2.
It is pure joy.

I’ll recommend the owning the sharp x68000 but don’t rule out the msx2+ As they are both home to Gradius masterpieces and weird retro gaming.

[Classicgamer]

Does anyone here own a working one? And if so, what is it like to play Capcom arcade games like SF2 CE, Final Fight and Strider? And how are the Neo Geo ports like Viewpoint and Fatal Fury? Are they really arcade perfect and how does games coming on 5 1/4" floppy discs effect them? Is there long loading times between rounds in SF2 etc? How does the experience compare to Groovymame on a crt monitor?

I have four working ones (slowly collecting one of each model). Not including the ones I restore and sell right here on this forum (and AP) as well.

You can look up play-throughs of SF2, FF, etc on YouTube and see what you think.

If any site out there has multiple sharp x68000 owners it's this one. Probably the Neo forum as well.

NFGGames has an entire x68k section that (for the size of the hobby) is pretty active. There are a lot of modern upgrades/replacements/reproductions of just about everything at this point.

I saw a few of them on YouTube. They were pretty good videos. The ones I saw all looked like impressive ports although you can never really tell until you play yourself.

What's missing from the SF2 CE port? If I understood the videos properly, Final Fight looked and played like the coin-op except for the limited number of sprites on-screen. I couldn't spot any differences in SF2 or Strider though.

It's funny. When I look at it's library, it doesn't seem limited to me. As a fan of arcades it looks to include everything I would have wanted at that time. I owned a Neo Geo Aes in the early 90's and that library felt very limited. The X68000 covered more genres and software developers.

In 1987 I had a Sega Master System and an Amiga. My friends had the Atari St and C64. I think you would have a hard time finding 100 games on any of those systems that could have matched the top 100 on the Sharp.

[fernan1234]

Among old Japanese computers I'd say the PC-98 has a much more "interesting" library

[DejahThoris]

I feel like SuperDeadite nailed it in every respect. I love the x68000, but they are something you need to tinker with regularly, and will quarter and dollar you to death. It's also a bit of a pain finding a monitor that will support everything it can offer. I finally had an NEC Multisync II fall into my lap after maybe half a year of searching.

I've never played the SF or FF games, I'm not a fighting game guy. But I love Atomic Robo Kid, Gradius, Twinbee, etc. And MIDI just makes me a happier person (but there's another many hundred dollars spent in devices unless you get lucky), regardless of system.

@Hoagtech, I do not understand the love for the MSX2+. I got one last year (Panasonic FS-A1WSX) after deciding that I should check it out, and I just don't get it. Maybe I was born too late to appreciate it properly. As a little kid we had a 486 running DOS games, and an NES. Commander Keen was my jam. Anyway, I bought a Carnivore 2, and I struggle to find things that are worth playing. The shmups I have on other hardware, Metal Gear is nice, that one game where you play as a ghost is rad, but otherwise I just can't find a lot I enjoy. I'll check out Space Manbow off your list though.

PC-98 is still a mystery to me. I need someone to say "Buy this model here, and you'll have what you need.". So many models it makes my head spin.

[ShootTheCore]

+1 to everything Superdeadite said, but I’ll add a little more.

- The Capcom CPS1 games aren’t arcade exact - Final Fight, Strider and GnG have more sprite flicker and fewer onscreen enemies. However, they do have MIDI music in addition to chip tunes, so they are still very good adaptions overall.

- Most of the other arcade ports on X68k are arcade-exact, so it’s definitely a great machine for arcade gamers.

- If you take time to explore the library, there are good games from other genres besides arcade ports and shmups. There are good action RPGs, rail shooters, and platform hack-n- slash titles, along with some weird but fun homebrew.

- But it is a late 80s PC, which means its OS is like MS-DOS 3.0. You’ll want to be very comfortable using the command line.

- Any X68k you buy should be serviced ASAP with a new CMOS battery and new capacitors from top to bottom if it hasn’t been done already. Replacing the power supply entirely is usually a good idea as well. Don’t buy an X68k that doesn’t start up to at least the “Insert A Boot Floppy” screen-a dead rig is very difficult to troubleshoot and revive.

- Don’t bother with original game floppy discs - they’re slow, old and unreliable. You can get an image of much of the X68k games library on a bootable SD card and launch them all quickly off of it.

- An OSSC upscaler going into an HDTV or HDMI computer monitor is a good substitute for the original Sharp CRT monitor. As long as you use an adapter to adapt the X68k’s analog output into the VGA input on the OSSC, it’ll handle all of the computer’s display resolutions. Do NOT try to use SCART with an X68k-even though cables are out there, the voltages are wrong and you’ll likely damage both the X68k and the SCART device you’re plugging into.

- Look up the NFG Forums community, the X68k Facebook Club, and the X68k FAQ for support and a LOT of useful information. There’s a discussion thread for it in the Arcade Projects forum as well, and the user “rewrite” on there occasionally puts serviced rigs up for sale.

- Try it out under emulation first to make sure you have a good handle on the DOS commands.

- If you jump down the rabbit hole, it is indeed a really fun platform with a lot of quirky, fun games, but it WILL cost you more money than you expect for a working computer, keyboard, mouse, MIDI setup, memory upgrade, SD2SCSI adapter, display, etc. I budgeted $1000 when I jumped in two years ago and have spent more than twice that.

[SuperDeadite]

OP only asked about the X68000, but since it's been brought up, heres a little on the MSX. I own a Turbo-R, and really enjoy it. The homebrew scene for it is massive as well. Want to plug your MSX into the internet and stream ROMs on demand? All you need is GR8NET cart and you're done.

Game library is huge, videos honestly make the chop scroll appear worse then it is. Lots of exclusives from Konami and Compile.

Fabtastic system, unless you can't deal with 8-bit. Original games are insanely exprnsive though.

[Restart_Point]

I'd love to have one but it's totally not worth the price for the few shooters I would want it for, great as they are. It's one of the reasons I would get the MiSTer one day. is there a good core for it yet? X68000 is a perfect candidate for FPGA simulation!

I can't speak from experience but from what I have seen, it was not as powerful as the best 2D arcade games of the time, I always thought it was roughly as capable as a Mega Drive (which was also not quite as powerful as the best 2D arcade hardware of the late '80s), and although it was used to run arcade game development tools, that does not mean it's as powerful as the actual arcade hardware that the games ran on. Am I wrong about that?

[SuperDeadite]

I can't speak from experience as I've never owned one but from what I have seen, it was not as powerful as the best 2D arcade games of the time, I always thought it was roughly as capable as a Mega Drive (which was also not quite as powerful as the latest 2D arcade hardware of the late '80s), and although it was used to develop arcade games, that does not mean it's as powerful as the arcade hardware that ran them. Am I wrong about that?

Well that's kind of hard to quantify, as there was no arcade hardware standard. Arcade hardware was upgraded to match the needs of the game the dev's wanted to make. The X68000 of course doesn't have the abilities of the Sega Super Scaler boards, but that should be a given. The X68000's graphics chip is a totally custom design, and not used in any actual arcade boards.

Gradius II arcade used 2x 68000 cpus, while the X68K only has one, but the port is so good that I really should just sell my PCB.
X68K only has 1 ADPCM channel, so having multiple sounds effects at once requires software mixing which puts a big hit on the CPU, hence why a lot of the games will stop playing the drums when a sound effect is played. This can often be fixed on the more powerful machines such as XVI and up.

In the end though, the quality of a port doesn't reflect the hardware though. For me the worst port on X68000 is easily R-Type. There is no excuse for such a lazy effort by Irem. Full Throttle is also quite terrible, but nobody cares about that shit game lol.

As far as consoles go though: Mega Drive > X68000 > Neo Geo. But again each system has it's strengths. X68000 runs most games in 31khz at 512x512 resolution, where the other two are strictly 15khz low-res machines. Some X68000 games even switch between 15khz and 31khz on the fly to to have cleaner menus and text, but more traditional low-res sprites during gameplay. X68000 has no 3D hardware at all, but Geograph Seal is way better then any of the SuperFX chip 3D games on the SNES.

X68000 runs at 55hertz, meaning the scrolling doesn't look quite as smooth as the 60hertz Mega Drive, but Thunder Force II X68000 is so much prettier then Thunder Force II MD.

[Sirotaca]

In this age of (relatively) easy arcade emulation, I'm more interested in the X68000 for its capabilities as a computer. SX-Window was pretty neat for its time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_up7p6de5co

PC-98 is still a mystery to me. I need someone to say "Buy this model here, and you'll have what you need.". So many models it makes my head spin.

Buy an A-Mate, i.e. a PC-9821 A* model, or a Ce(2)/Cs2. Any of those will work great for the vast majority of DOS games including Touhou (it's possible you could see some minor slowdown on lunatic with a 486SX-25, but they're fine for the most part). Later models have less compatible graphics chipsets, and you want something with built-in OPNA sound because standalone cards are really expensive these days. Some really early games might run too fast on a 486 even with the CPU mode set to low, but those games typically also had PC-88 versions, so you can use P88SR (a PC-88 emulator for PC-98) and still have a reasonably authentic experience.

[Classicgamer]

You don't have to have seen an X68000 up close to know that it was head and shoulders above the Genesis and Snes, or that it was very close to the arcade PCBs of the time.

The meaningful benchmarks for performance in that Gen were number of colors on-screen at once, number of sprites, the ability to perform effects like sprite scaling and rotation, clock speed and the quality of the sound chips. Consoles like the Genesis were severely lacking in most of these aspects, particularly in color pallete which is why it's SF2 port looks worse than the Snes and PC engine versions and none of them were arcade-quality.

According to uncle Google, Capcom used the Sharp X68000 as a development machine for CPS1 arcades and that the CPS1 board was based on it. For Final Fight, they just added a modular upgrade to increase the number of sprites on-screen from 4 to 8 which is apparently the only difference in the home X68000 port.

I can't think of any arcade boards from the late 80's that were noticeably superior to CPS1 so I think it's broadly accurate to say the X68000 matched the power of the arcades. It was able to deliver perfect or close to perfect ports of popular Capcom, Taito, Sega and Neo Geo games.

[Classicgamer]

I feel like SuperDeadite nailed it in every respect. I love the x68000, but they are something you need to tinker with regularly, and will quarter and dollar you to death. It's also a bit of a pain finding a monitor that will support everything it can offer. I finally had an NEC Multisync II fall into my lap after maybe half a year of searching.

I've never played the SF or FF games, I'm not a fighting game guy. But I love Atomic Robo Kid, Gradius, Twinbee, etc. And MIDI just makes me a happier person (but there's another many hundred dollars spent in devices unless you get lucky), regardless of system.

@Hoagtech, I do not understand the love for the MSX2+. I got one last year (Panasonic FS-A1WSX) after deciding that I should check it out, and I just don't get it. Maybe I was born too late to appreciate it properly. As a little kid we had a 486 running DOS games, and an NES. Commander Keen was my jam. Anyway, I bought a Carnivore 2, and I struggle to find things that are worth playing. The shmups I have on other hardware, Metal Gear is nice, that one game where you play as a ghost is rad, but otherwise I just can't find a lot I enjoy. I'll check out Space Manbow off your list though.

PC-98 is still a mystery to me. I need someone to say "Buy this model here, and you'll have what you need.". So many models it makes my head spin.

What kind of RGB signal does it put out that would damage a scart TV? Is it like the higher voltage cga and ega jamma pcb's?

My tri-sync crt arcade monitors have a 75ohm / 1k switch for when you go from cga and EGA PCB's to .7v consumer level rgb and VGA arcade boards to prevent excess or insufficient brightness. So far, that's covered all bases in terms of analog RGB and TTL so I assume I would be fine for a X68000?

I've seen (on Youtube) an X68000 running on an regular Nec multi-sync 15khz capable lcd pc monitor so it can't be too far out side of regular RGB signal levels.

The X68000 specs state it is capable of CGA, EGA and VGA resolutions as well as some higher ones. Do any of it's games take advantage of it's EGA and VGA output? I couldn't spot any of the well known sprite based ega arcade games like Paperboy and Narc in the game list.

[fernan1234]

The problem wouldn't be with RGB per se but with the SCART standard, and I'm guessing that consumer TVs with SCART inputs do not tolerate stuff that deviates from the SCART specifications.

[Classicgamer]

The problem wouldn't be with RGB per se but with the SCART standard, and I'm guessing that consumer TVs with SCART inputs do not tolerate stuff that deviates from the SCART specifications.

There are no scart specifications or standards. Scart is just a plug type like DB15 or BNC connectors. It can be wired for any analog signal. A lot of scart ports on TV's aren't even wired for RGB.

Old consoles with RGB output via scart cables usually sync on composite video but most of the RGB scart capable TV's I owned when living in Europe could also accept RGBS at consumer .7v levels. There is no reason why RGBS or RGB sync on composite video would break a display from being fed using a scart plug.

It is technically possible to overload a consumer display by feeding it a 3-5v rgb signal from a CGA arcade PCB (which is why Superguns are used) but it would probably not happen immediately. You would just get an excessively bright image with enough time to turn it off before any damage.

If a scart display broke when an RGB console was turned on, it is most likely a coincidence and it would have broken regardless.

I can't speak for upscalers as I don't use them. Somebody else might know better if an OSSC or Framemeister can handle a 3-5v rgb signal from a PCB directly without going through a supergun. Or if a X68000 even uses a higher voltage RGB signal (than the .7v found on consumer devices).

[fernan1234]

There are no scart specifications or standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

Literally the first sentence. The specs are also detailed there.

[nmalinoski]

There are no scart specifications or standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

Literally the first sentence. The specs are also detailed there.

Last sentence in the intro:

The official standard for SCART is CENELEC document number EN 50049-1. SCART is sometimes referred to as the IEC 933-1 standard.

Here's a doc for EN 50049-1, and here's one that seems to have more straightfoward information regarding the physical characteristics of the cables.

[Hoagtech]

There are no scart specifications or standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

Literally the first sentence. The specs are also detailed there.

Classic gamer is right. The standard is the shape and the number of pins on the connectors very similar to db15 being referred to as vga or svga but supporting a broad range of frequency and video output modes

[fernan1234]

Classic gamer is right. The standard is the shape and the number of pins on the connectors very similar to db15 being referred to as vga or svga but supporting a broad range of frequency and video output modes

I didn't say anything to the contrary.

[Classicgamer]

There are no scart specifications or standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

Literally the first sentence. The specs are also detailed there.

The "standard" is only for the size of the plug and the number pins. It's not for the signal in any way.

As I said, scart plugs can (and are) used for a variety of signals including composite video, svideo, rgbs, rgb sync on composite video and even component video occasionally. There is no standard for what signals a scart port should be able to accept like there are with HDMI.

I grew up in Europe using scart for everything. The lack of any sort of standard was a source of frustration. A large portion of Tv's with scart ports were not wired for RGB. For the ones that were, a lot would not work with a 60hz signal. You had to invest in a decent Sony or Toshiba to be safe.

I even had an RGB scart TV that was not set up to accept .7v consumer RGB. You could play arcade pcbs (with no supergun) but anything from a console came out too dark to see.

A scart port is no guarantee of compatibility with a specific device.

As a side note, the RGB scart plugs in Japan are wired differently to EU ones (in terms of the pin order). If using a Japanese scart cable, an adapter would be needed if used with EU rgb scart devices.

[zakk]

There are no scart specifications or standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCART

Literally the first sentence. The specs are also detailed there.

The "standard" is only for the size of the plug and the number pins. It's not for the signal in any way.

Except for the part where it specifies both impedance and signal levels for every signal pin.

Then again, you're the guy that told the producer of one of the best superguns on the market that he didn't know what a supergun was supposed to do, so I don't know what I'm expecting here.

[nmalinoski]

As a side note, the RGB scart plugs in Japan...

It's been said multiple times that "SCART" does not refer solely to the connector, and this is backed up by both Wikipedia and the documents that I linked, so I think it's a bit disingenuous and misleading to refer to JP-21 as SCART; I can only see it confusing those who don't already understand that they are two separate things.

[Austin]

I've wanted a X68000 as well for all of its arcade ports. I planned to drop a considerable chunk of change on one a couple of years ago, but inconveniently had other financial hurdles crop up and I put it on the back burner. Looking at it now it would be hard to justify for the price, so I'm definitely looking forward to a fully functioning MiSTer core to get my fix.

Having looked into its library, the games really do look fantastic. Some of the CPS1 ports I have seen however don't appear to be entirely flawless conversions so it's best to get that straight before taking the plunge. Final Fight for instance, the indoor area on stage 1 lacks the flashing lighting, the moving subway section lacks the passing trains in the background, and needless to say the three enemy limit is disappointing (the Sega CD version has a four enemy limit, still significantly less than the arcade game, but improved over the X68K version). That said, the ports still come far closer than anything else at the time and that's interesting to me.

Regarding the MSX talk, it's a different beast all together for obvious reasons. For people that like 8-bit stuff though I do think it's worth checking out. I have never owned actual hardware but emulated it frequently. Many of its arcade ports are a lot of fun, and I have a major soft spot for its Gradius/Nemesis games. The choppy screen scrolling takes some time to adjust to, but once you get used to it the games themselves are simply fun.