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Hello guys, finally sitting down to write this post that I promised. I'm sure everyone here has some familiarity with the DOS era of computers, and early Windows. Maybe even with early Macs, before Apple became the bland white overpriced evil corporation that it is today. Maybe even with the Amiga or the Commodore 64! But today, I want to talk about the Japanese side of things, with the Sharp x68000 computer. (I won't talk much about the PC-9800 for now as I know even less about it!)
Often called the "Japanese Amiga", the X68000 is named after the CPU it used, the 10MHz Motorola 68000, and in it's initial version back in 1987 had a staggering 1MB of RAM. The final model, the 68030, upgraded to a 25MHz CPU and had 4MB of built in RAM. Very comparable to our venerable European friend. And, similarly, it left a legacy of oldschool programs, games, media and a homebrewing scene that is still active to this day. Although different from the Amiga-born demoscene, the x68k has birthed many a classic game, or game developing career of young enthusiasts who independently publish their works, known coloquially as "doujinshi" (yes that same word. it's for all sorts of indie published media).
While too early and not powerful enough to run DOOM (yet, people are trying) the x68000 was used to program and publish many good late 80's games, like Final Fight, Garou and a classic that is probably the most well known game of the platform: Castlevania Akumajou Dracula, known as Rondo of Blood on our side of the planet. The computer also had very arcade accurate ports of some other games, such as Street Fighter 2!
As it concerns me, I found out about this wonderful machine when I was getting into shmups, and found out about Cho Ren Sha 68k, a wonderfully well made indie game, that is under active development and is free to download to this day. The original dev maintains both the old 68000 version and a Windows port. It is a very good and influential early danmaku (bullet hell) shmup, which inspires other indie games still, like one of my favorites, Graze Counter GM.
Now, onto the videos. I have for you today, some explaining each subject I have talked about here, some of the games specifically, and how to emulate it in a very quick and easy manner! There is also a decent RetroArch core, if you rather go that way. Our Repo here doesn't yet have x68000 games, but they are very easily found on the Internet Archive, individually or in bulk. You know what to do.
Often called the "Japanese Amiga", the X68000 is named after the CPU it used, the 10MHz Motorola 68000, and in it's initial version back in 1987 had a staggering 1MB of RAM. The final model, the 68030, upgraded to a 25MHz CPU and had 4MB of built in RAM. Very comparable to our venerable European friend. And, similarly, it left a legacy of oldschool programs, games, media and a homebrewing scene that is still active to this day. Although different from the Amiga-born demoscene, the x68k has birthed many a classic game, or game developing career of young enthusiasts who independently publish their works, known coloquially as "doujinshi" (yes that same word. it's for all sorts of indie published media).
While too early and not powerful enough to run DOOM (yet, people are trying) the x68000 was used to program and publish many good late 80's games, like Final Fight, Garou and a classic that is probably the most well known game of the platform: Castlevania Akumajou Dracula, known as Rondo of Blood on our side of the planet. The computer also had very arcade accurate ports of some other games, such as Street Fighter 2!
As it concerns me, I found out about this wonderful machine when I was getting into shmups, and found out about Cho Ren Sha 68k, a wonderfully well made indie game, that is under active development and is free to download to this day. The original dev maintains both the old 68000 version and a Windows port. It is a very good and influential early danmaku (bullet hell) shmup, which inspires other indie games still, like one of my favorites, Graze Counter GM.
Now, onto the videos. I have for you today, some explaining each subject I have talked about here, some of the games specifically, and how to emulate it in a very quick and easy manner! There is also a decent RetroArch core, if you rather go that way. Our Repo here doesn't yet have x68000 games, but they are very easily found on the Internet Archive, individually or in bulk. You know what to do.
