X68000 from a shmuppers POV (New Pictures)

[No_not_like_Quake]

^OIC, I never played Gradius 2 msx, so didn't know the differences beside the obvious uprades in the graphics and sound department, I'm assuming. You're right about the fan based one too, which I scored lower but honestly didn't play past stage 3... I just felt Nemesis '90 beat it in every way. It's still playable though and I'm interested in finding out the alterations between the two.

[Blue Lander]

Wow, I'm glad there's people here with X68000 experience to help me decide what games to get. Does anybody else here own an actual x68000, though? What I'd really like to know is how to find out how much RAM I have, and where I could buy more RAM if I only have 1 meg. I'd also like to know if I could use a SCSI-1 drive with the SASI controller. As I understand it, SCSI-1 is mostly backwards compatible but there are some SCSI commands SASI doesn't recognize and there may be issues with device selects.

[Zach Keene]

It's still playable though and I'm interested in finding out the alterations between the two.

This page opens with a list of differences, but it's in Japanese. Here're some of the listed ones I can read or Babelfish:

• Options - 90K allows a max of 4 (G2M only allowed a max of 2)
• Lasers (Up, Down, and regular) - no longer can be selected twice for additional power
• Shields - fly in from the front before attaching to your ship (like most of the arcade Gradius titles), instead of instantly appearing like in G2M
• Bosses - stages 2 and 5 in 90K have brand-new bosses; originally stage 5 had a faster version of the stage 4 boss and stage 2 had a slower version of the stage 3 boss.
• Core stages - flying into the core of a destroyed boss allows you to play a small mini-stage where you may be awarded a new weapon at the end. In G2M every boss had the same core stage; apparently the bosses each have their own in 90K.
• Omake stages - entrances to the bonus stages have apparently moved (and it seems the bonus stages themselves are new.)

There's no mention of some of G2M's more novel weapons like the Reflex Ring or Fireblaster (or even the more mundane Extend Laser or Back Beam), but I don't know if that's because they no longer exist in 90K or just haven't changed.

Wow, I'm glad there's people here with X68000 experience to help me decide what games to get. Does anybody else here own an actual x68000, though?

Sorry, the closest I have to direct X68000 experience is playing Castlevania Chronicles on the PS1. What little else I know about it is secondhand, and even that's pretty much limited to Nemesis '90 Kai.

(edited for readability and corrected a minor factual error)

[No_not_like_Quake]

Great list, thanks man.

There's no mention of some of G2M's more novel weapons like the Reflex Ring or Fireblaster, but I don't know if that's because they no longer exist in 90K or just haven't changed.

^They are in Nemesis '90.

[Blue Lander]

Phalanx screws up in the second stage on the emulator.....the ship is invisible when not in the water which is most of the screen, so it's unplayable. I can tell you what I thought of the first stage........it's exactly the same as the SNES version as far as I can tell, so you might not like it. On the possitive side, the music, which is different from the SNES version, is awesome as is the intro.

Hmm, maybe it picks up after the second level. Or maybe I just won't like this version either. I'll at least give it a try with an opened mind.

Speaking of differences, does anybody know the difference between X68000 Sol Feace and Sega CD Sol Feace? The Sega CD version was decent, but it struck me as a pretty mundane game.

[No_not_like_Quake]

OK I'll answer this. It is a much more intense, full shmup than both other versions. It doesn't have any slowdown and it's more challenging, and . It's great. Probably the best shmup on the system, out of what I played. I don't have the rom anymore, and iit's hard to find! Anyway, to me anyway, it's a sytem seller type game. It's that good.

[Cthulhu]

Wow, talk about a complete post. You rock man, you just rock

I've played a whole lot of X68K stuff in emulators, but I've never used the machine. I agree with most of what has been said - lots of great ports, very powerful system, etc.

I'll point out here, as the resident Undead Line fan (perhaps that little game's -only- fan ), that the X68k version of Undead Line is faaaaaantastic! It's like the MSX version, but it has extra levels, better graphics, and better music. Best version of Undead Line by far.

Were I a rich Japanese kid at the time of the system's release, I would've killed for one. But now... yeah, MAME really does eliminate a lot of the point of having one if all you really want to do is play the games. For collectors though, I'm sure it's well worth it. And it's worth having for Undead Line too

[Blue Lander]

I see! I'll put it close to the top of my "To buy" list, then. So far I want to get:

Sol-Feace
Castlevania
Thunderforce II
Cotton
R-Type
Nemesis '90 Kai
Salamander

I hear the Salamander port isn't that great, though. Anybody played it? Is there anything wrong with it?

I'll point out here, as the resident Undead Line fan (perhaps that little game's -only- fan ), that the X68k version of Undead Line is faaaaaantastic! It's like the MSX version, but it has extra levels, better graphics, and better music. Best version of Undead Line by far.

Oh yeah, I heard about that one. I like Undead Line for the MSX 2, so I bet I'll love it on the X68000. I've never seen it for sale anywhere, though.

I'm glad people are finding my review useful. I was so excited about the x68000, but when I tried to talk about it with my gamer friends, none of them had ever heard of the it. Since there's so little info on the system, I figured I could give other prospective buyers the info I wish I had before I got one. Plus it'd give me a chance to learn more about the system myself.

[landshark]

I had never even heard of the system before - though I had a ton of disk images on one of my Rom-DVDs.

So I grabbed an emulator and gave a few of them a whirl.

I'm pretty sure the emulation isn't perfect or I don't have something setup because it was running sorta sluggish and the music was funny at points.

But the first game I played was Castlevania.

WOW!!!!! The music is GREAT. THe graphics are GREAT. I was totally suprised. I gave Gradius 2 a go too, looks just like the arcade. Nemesis '90 didn't work for me however. I'll have to toy with this some more as Castlevania looks to be an entirely new Castlevania.

I went through up to level 3 and while level was is similar to part 1's level 1 on the NES - it still has different enemies and the boss is different. Level 2 and 3 were completely different all together. Great find Blue Lander!

[Zach Keene]

Yes, the X68000 Akumajo Dracula game is unique to that system.

Well, until it was re-released for the PS1 in 2001 (as Akumajo Nendaiki aka Castlevania Chronicles.) Even got NA and PAL releases too.

Another shameless FAQ plug.

[Cthulhu]

The x68k version of Undead Line is actually called "Undead Line: Genjuuki" - and the kanji on the box are waaaay larger than the English words "Undead Line." I actually first encountered the game by downloading some mysterious shooter called "Genjuuki" and was then pleasntly surprised when it turned out to be a version of Undead Line I didn't know about


Btw, if you want to buy it anytime soon...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... otohosting

[No_not_like_Quake]

Last night I played Salamander x68k up to the third stage, just to see if it was any good. I enjoyed it and it seemed quite close to the arcade version, though it had some slowdown. All the gameplay seems intact, at least up to stage 3, and the slowdown isn't as bad as say, Gradius 3 on SNES. Overall it seems decent.

[Blue Lander]

Huh. NFG sales sells a bunch of X68000 games, and the only game they have anything negative to say about is Salamander. "Classic Konami game poorly ported by Sharp." I guess with a system like the X68000 where you expect arcade perfection, slowdown is inexcusable. Gradius has no slowdown in the first 4 levels. The PC Engine version got bogged down sometimes when you had 4 options, but not this one. Detana Twinbee has no slowdown, either. I think Sharp ported some early Konami games, but Konami handled the later ones themselves.

Speaking of Konami, check this out. I found it while searching Japanese web pages for X68000 stuff:


That's right, a Gradius towel. Damn the Japanese and all the cool stuff they get!!

[BrianC]

What amazed me about some X68000 games is that they actually included the alternate US versions of the game. Gradius II is a good example of this. The title of the game on the title screen even changes to Vulcan Venture when you set it to US mode. I expected the games to be arcade perfect or near arcade perfect, but I didn't expect them to be that close. It's not a shooter, but the X68000 Rygar is another game with US mode and it's one of the best ports of the game I have played, if not the best.

[Blue Lander]

Wow, they really do go all out with X68000 releases. You really get the feeling that these games were designed for hardcore fans of the series.

Here's the Twinbee postcard pictures I promised. To have mercy on our friends with slow dialup connections, I'll post them as links rather than putting the pictures in the thread.

First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
And if you're wondering what the back of the postcards look like,here you go.

[gameoverDude]

This site has some screenshots of X68000 Flying Shark:

http://home05.isao.net/h_ooya/HOME/flying.html

Looks arcade perfect to me.

It's not quite perfect. In the arcade those large green bases with 2 turrets in the first level can be broken open, then there are 4 tanks inside waiting to be destroyed.

Same goes for the three carriers you see at the start of stage 2- you can break them open in the arcade game, but not on X68000.

[Blue Lander]

Well, I finally got the disk copying program to work, and made copies of Nemesis '90. When I tried to load it on my X68000, it appeared to start working but then dropped me off at a command prompt with some error message in Japanese. I assume this means I don't have enough RAM to run the game. Nemesis 90 requires 2 megs of RAM and the original X68000 only came with 1 meg. I don't know where I'm going to find X68000 RAM, but I'll keep looking.

[BrianC]

Now that you got the disc copying program to work, did you try Cho-Ren-Sha 68k on the X68000? I know it's pretty much the same as the Windows 95 one, but it probably plays in better resloution, right?

[Blue Lander]

Do you know where I can download a disk image of it? I haven't found it anywhere.

edit: Never mind, I found it on the official web page. Duh!

[BrianC]

There's a .2HD file of it available here http://www2.tky.3web.ne.jp/%7Eyosshin/m ... nload.html . For some odd reason, the controlls didn't work right on the emulator I tried it on, but you might have better luck on the real thing.

[Blue Lander]

Hmm, the copy program is still being twitchy. After about 20 times I managed to copy the image to disk without errors, but the X68000 wouldn't recognize it at all. Most X68k games come in .hdm or .xdf formats, I may need a different utility to write a .2hd file.

[DarkWolf7]

You can convert it to a .xdf image with VFIC (Virtual Floppy Image Converter). Get it here -> http://nav.to/vfic/

[Blue Lander]

Ah, that utility did the trick. Thanks.

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally made a perfect copy of the game. I had to reboot several times, try multiple floppies, and replace the floppy drive (and they called me insane for keeping a stack of 5.25" floppy drives), but I finally got it to work.

But when I put it in the X68000, it drops me off to the command prompt after loading about half of the batch file. I assume that game needs more than 1 meg of RAM, too, or perhaps a faster CPU.

Oh, and I also played Salamander. It really isn't a very good port. The game's constantly slowing down. It's only a slight slowdown, but it's enough to make the scrolling and gameplay jumpy. It's not terrible, but it's inexcusable on the X68000. Especially when you compare it to the perfection of Parodius and Gradius, there's no reason this port shouldn't be perfect. Just a sloppy conversion job, I guess. It's the only X68000 game I've been dissapointed with.

[Dylan1CC]

Wow, they really do go all out with X68000 releases. You really get the feeling that these games were designed for hardcore fans of the series.

Here's the Twinbee postcard pictures I promised. To have mercy on our friends with slow dialup connections, I'll post them as links rather than putting the pictures in the thread.

First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Sixth
And if you're wondering what the back of the postcards look like,here you go.

Awesome, thanks Blue. Man, anime and manga art never fails to please. I just love the simple sci fi/fantasy/storybook look of the Twinbee series. Has anyone here ever watched the OVA?

[Blue Lander]

No prob The manual art is basically the same as the post cards. There's only one noteworthy picture in the manual that isn't on a post card, and I'll be sure to scan that one in once I have the chance.

Now that I can copy games, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of X68000 games need two megs of RAM. I'm attempting to find out if it's possible to upgrade the memory and where I can buy more RAM. So let this be a lesson to anybody who wants an X68000: MAKE SURE IT HAS TWO MEGS OF RAM!!! There are good games for the system that only use one meg, but games worth buying the system for like Rygar and Castlevania and Nemesis '90 all need two.

EDIT: After leafing through the manual and struggling through some poorly translated Japanese web pages, I discovered what I need is a CZ-6BE1 or CZ-6BE2, which give me one or two extra megs of ram respectively. Now I just need to find a source that will sell to a westerner.

I believe somebody asked earlier about River City Ransom or Downtown Nekketsu or whatever it's called. That one does work with one meg, so I was able to play it. It pretty much looks like the GBA version. The graphics are crisper than the NES game, but it essentially looks the same. It doesn't go out of it's way to utilize the extra power of the X68000. The only major upgrade I noticed was in the music and sound effects. Both are much better in the X68000 version. Another odd difference was that I had to wander around for a bit before I actually found somebody to beat up. I guess the game is structured a bit differently. The gameplay is intact, though. This one's just as fun to play as the NES one. But it doesn't really add much to the game. It's just a nicer version of the NES one.

R-Type also works. I'm not a huge R-Type fan, but I played the first level of the X68000 version and then played R-Type on the Playstation 1 for comparison. Overall, the X68000 version has a choppier feel to it. The scrolling seems a choppy, and many of the animations (such as explosions, flying missiles, etc) seem to be missing frames. The music is good, but it has a MIDI feel to it like most X68000 music does. Some sprites seem flatter, too, as if the pallette is smaller than the original version. It plays just like the original, though. There's no slowdown and the control is smooth even if the scrolling isn't. For the most part it looks like the original, but it's by no means an arcade perfect port. It's close, but you'll notice deficiencies. To be fair, on an RGB monitor you can scrutinize every pixel and every frame of animation. Perhaps on a composite TV the choppiness wouldn't be as apparent. It's not a particularly impressive port, but it's not that bad when you consider when it came out. I'd take X68000 R-Type over PC Engine R-Type any day.

[Blue Lander]

I just managed to find a disk image of Thunder Force II, and suprisingly it works with my 1 megabyte X68000. I intend to do a full-on comparison of the Genesis and X68000 versions of this game with screenshots and whatnot, but my initial impression is very favorable. Both games seem to play roughly the same, but it's hard to say for sure without testing them more. But the X68000 version does have an edge when it comes to graphics.

For one, it runs in 24Khz mode, meaning the screen has a higher resolution than a Genesis producing a 15Khz picture. So the image is much sharper with less visible scan lines, much like you're playing a VGA game. You probably wouldn't get a sense of this if you played both of them on emulators, though. The screen dimensions are different, too. On the X68000, the screen is taller than it is wide, and vice versa on the Genesis one. You can see the difference on the screenshot below.

Besides that, there's a bunch of minor enhancements to the graphics. While none of them are particularly impressive, when you add them all togeather you get a much nicer looking game than the Genesis version. They might look mostly the same at first glance, but the more you play the more nice little graphical flourishes you notice. The biggest difference I noticed was an added layer of backgrounds. As you can see below, the difference between the two versions is quite stark.



Wow! Genesis on the left and X68000 on the right, of course. This is roughly the same patch of area in each game. Those structures beneath the water in the X68000 scrolls on a seperate plane, so you get a nice parallax effect.

As far as features go, the X68000 version has some niceties the Genesis version doesn't. There's a simple intro where it shows a planet getting blown up or something, with some dialog in Japanese. And if you leave the X68000 version sitting for long enough, it'll go into demo mode and show the game being played. The Genesis version just sits at the introduction screen. Finally, the X68000 has some configuration options. You can choose which level you want to start on, the difficulty level, how many lives you get, and activate automatic shooting. You can also play music, sound and voice samples from the game.

[Blue Lander]

Heh, lookie what I got in the mail today

I've bolded the games that are shmups, or at least have shmup levels.

X68000:
Gradius 2 Gofer
Parodius Da!
Ajax
Image Fight
Phalanx
Thunder Blade
Knight Arms (hard to classify. Some levels are 3D Afterburner style, others are like a horizontal shmup but without forced scrolling. Does that qualify as a shmup?)
After Burner
Technos Dodgeball
Some Tennis game
Overdrive (racing)
Populous II
Metal Sight (3D afterburner style game)

PC-8801:
Star Trader (Horizontal shmup with RPG elements)
Luxor (has vertical shmup levels and 3D afterburner style levels)
De-Ja (Some sort of Elf porno RPG)
some mahjong game
Sorcerian (RPG)
Sorcerian Scenario 1

MSX 2:
Wanderers from Ys
Last Armageddon (RPG)


You don't even want to know what shipping was on all this stuff. I'll probably end up selling most of the non-shmups. I'll also write mini-reviews of the shmups once I've played them a bit, and post them here.

[captain ahar]

where do you find all that cool stuff?

[Blue Lander]

From Yahoo Auctions Japan.

One thing to keep in mind, though: Japanese computer games can weight quite a bit, since they come with so many extras. Wanderers from Ys comes with a hardcovered manual, Afterburner comes with an Afterburner mouse pad, Sorcerian has a big huge ass manual, etc. All that weight can add up to some formidable shipping charges!

[kemical]

Cool stuff
man, japanese computers have the best designs.. I was just looking at a random picture of an x68k XVI or something (black case) and i was like wow that looks cool, thinking it was from the past couple years.. turns out its from 1991 or something..

would make a good pc case mod project if I could find a broken system.