Great retro Japanese Computer archive

[trivial]

The hardware was not overpriced in comparison to what my Apple ][+ setup cost when new. I cajoled my parents into getting me a 4-color, 7-pin dot matrix printer for 600 1985 dollars, for instance.

If I could have been playing these games at home instead of the NES, my head might have a sploded. Progressive scan, FFS. Might have saved me from going nearsighted at 17.

At least there's haven for the elderly. Great thread.

[320x240]

So explain to me again how X68000 games aren't "inbred?" Most of them are straight arcade ports (or play like doujin versions of the same), for chrissakes!

As you said earlier, they where Japanese inbreds, which meant that they at least had some ties to a thriving pop-culture. You're probably right about the poor quality though. Of course, I don't doubt that computer games had to create their own image in Japan too, but probably not to the extent that they had to in Europe.

(Regarding computer games and good design I will give the brits their due as there where a lot of nicely designed games by british developers. I have always liked that intricate, one color per char graphics that to me is esentially british. Starquake etc.)

[Necronom]

Regardless of relative technical performance and market conditions, the X68K looks like it would have been supremely badass to own back in the day. Can you imagine being the lucky Japanese kid who convinced his parents to buy him one, and thereafter had an arcade in his room?

Hehe, with game prices around 100 $ I'm not so sure about this. My guess is that the pirating Amiga kiddies of the 90s were a little bit more on the lucky side of things
And yeah, while I totally agree that those jp PCs "rocked" I'd say that the proportianality of price and performance is always relevant, especially in the end consumer market.
Playing the hell out of Uridium 2 on my old 500 again wondering where people might see the "inbred quality" in it...

[doctorx0079]

Holy shit, I make one little remark and it turns into a huge debate which is OFF-TOPIC.

Let me explain my original line of thinking.

The PC8801 was ahead of its time, and so was the MSX2 really. UNTIL the Amiga, BEFORE the Amiga, there was no PC in the West that could compare. The Amiga was the first Western PC I know of that could seriously compare. Of course I wasn't rich enough to have one.

IBM PCs meanwhile didn't have decent graphics until VGA came out.

[it290]

Yes, you can't make a comment about the Amiga without a bunch of zealots turning up..

I just want to address something here (a bit belatedly):

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Sharp X68000(1987): 10 mhz motorola 68000 cpu, 1mb ram

Amiga 600 (1992) 5 years later: 7 mhz motorola 68000 cpu, 1mb ram 

Umm, the A600 was a piece of shit when it was released, it was designed as the super-low-end model. I even have an issue of Amiga Power dissing it when it came out. Consider the A500, which was also released in 1987, which featured the same 7mhz 68000 and 512k RAM, or the A1000, released two years earlier, featuring -- you guessed it, the same 7mhz 68000 and 256k RAM. Both of these machines were expandable, BTW. Also, a 3mhz difference is not really going to mean squat when it comes to the 68000. A little less slowdown in certain cases, perhaps, but even a 14mhz 68020 doesn't make a world of difference speedwise (trust me, I had both, and used them daily for years).

Yes, the X68000 did have more powerful video hardware -- in some ways. The Amiga, despite its reputation as a games machine, was actually designed as a productivity machine for digital artists/musicians/videographers and as such it has some advanced video capabilities like the ability to use a genlock very easily, HAM mode, etc. These things were way ahead of their time in 1985.

well the X6800 was at 25mhz in 1993. And most importantly the Amiga games were designed for the A500 A600 not the top of the line A4000.

Are there a lot of X68000 games designed for the faster machines? I'm ignorant in this area, but there are certainly quite a few Amiga games that take advantage of faster processors (Frontier and all the FPS games spring to mind off the top of my head), and hundreds that are designed for at least an A1200 (68020 and AGA chipset).

[Ed Oscuro]

Are there a lot of X68000 games designed for the faster machines?

No, compatibility concerns dogged the X68000 to its end in 1995 (with the Red Zone, which I think still used 5.25" floppies). Most games use 1 MB RAM; 2 MB games are pretty rare and there's only a handful of contemporary releases that used more.

[Udderdude]

Holy shit, I make one little remark and it turns into a huge debate which is OFF-TOPIC.

Does not seem very off-topic to me .. everyone loves comparing stuff. ;P