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On The X68000's Obscure Majesty

Posted by simoniker on from the catchy-name dept.

Thanks to NFG for its newly published in-depth feature on the Japanese X68000 computer/games system. The author explains: "The X68000 is an unheard-of gem from Japan. Released around the same time as the Amiga and Atari ST, it was leagues ahead of them both in terms of design and capability. Originally released in 1987 with a 10MHz 68000 CPU and 1MB RAM, the series finished six years later with a 25MHz 68030, 4MB RAM and a 80MB HD." The piece ends with a gallery of X68000 game screenshots, often near-perfect arcade conversions, as well as referencing the previously mentioned X68000 floppy disc game warnings.

3 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. wasnt MG originaly on that thing? by cyrax777 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IRC the Original Metal Gear was on this thing then ported to nintendo. yeah its its what im thinking of. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/data/7936.html

    1. Re:wasnt MG originaly on that thing? by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Seems like a lot of NES games were also on that system... Lots of shots of Castlevania on the screenshots page, as well as one that's unmistakeably River City Ransom. Also some shots of Image Fight; compare this to the crappy NES version that I played as a kid.

  2. Re:"leagues ahead" ??? by Malor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I sold Amigas from 1987-1989, and our store sold both kinds... I would often send people over to the ST side of the store, depending on their needs. That said, I didn't like the ST very much; I KNEW the Amiga was a lot better, and it really annoyed me when ST people would insist their obviously inferior machine was the best. :-)

    The ST was actually a very simple machine, in comparison to the Amiga. It was designed and assembled very quickly, and IMO, it showed. That simplicity gave the ST a big advantage early in its life, as NOBODY understood what the heck to do with a multitasking operating system at the time. (and the fact that the early AmigaOSes were pretty unstable didn't help much either :)).

    The ST's two main areas of advantage were MIDI and desktop publishing. DTP was a really big new idea at the time... being able to lay out a page, graphically, and then print out what you could see and have it look the same but be in high resolution (not just screen resolution) was a BIG DEAL. They actually coined the WYSIWYG acronym at the time... "what you see is what you get". This is kind of funny to me now, why WOULDN'T you get what you see? But at the time, it was a big step forward. Anytime someone asked me about DTP, I pointed them at an ST. The ST had a very nice monochrome, high-resolution screen... it was nicer than a Mac for a LOT less money, and there were emulators that let you run most Mac software.

    It also had a built-in MIDI controller, so for a long time I pushed musicians toward the ST also. I think there may still be some STs in production use for MIDI. And of course, the first true multiplayer games in the home were on the ST ... Midi Maze was HUGELY popular at our company parties. You could hook up to 16 STs together by daisy-chaining them with MIDI cables. Midi Maze was a very simple game, but a very addicting taste of what multiplayer Quake would someday be like.

    The sound was weak, though. I don't remember the details, but I think it was just a slightly-enhanced version of C64 sound. And the graphics were very simple; you had 320x200 in either 16 or 32 colors, 640x200 in 4 colors, or 640x400 in monochrome, and that was IT. Nothing else. The main CPU had to do all the work, there wasn't much of anything hidden away to take advantage of. This simplicity made it easy to program initially, but it meant the system didn't have much headroom.

    The Amiga, on the other hand, was probably the single largest advance ever taken by 'home' computers. The Mac's big deal was a GUI, which was important... but the Amiga offered 4096 colors, a sprite engine, video processing (with overscan capabilities), the ability to have several separate screens at different resolution and color depth showing on the same monitor at the same time, incredible graphic flexibility (anything from 320x200x1 color up to about 680x450x4096 with smoke coming out of the video chip :) ) four-channel stereo sound, multitasking, and VAST expandability, all at once. It was actually the logical offshoot of the Atari 8-bit processors. It was kind of amusing -- the Commodore Amiga was the grown-up Atari 8-bit, and the Atari ST was the grown-up Commodore 64.

    The Amiga was SO advanced, in fact, that nobody really knew what the heck to do with it for probably the first whole year... everyone was lost in the complexity, and of course, the 1.0 version of the operating system was really weak and crash-prone. But after that first year, things just kept improving and improving. Without a doubt, it was absolutely the most capable computer you could buy in overall terms for a number of years.

    If Commodore had had a bloody clue, and had treated their genius tech staff with the respect and awe they deserved, there would probably still be Amigas being made today (I mean, for real, not just a fringe offshoot), and if Apple had owned this technology, they would probably be where Microsoft is today. It was that s