Playing with my new x68000 tonight....

i want one so badly!!

what a beauty she is

 

I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I don't own a X68000. I was at the European Vintage Computer Festival this year and I talked with a guy called oldbits. He had a X68000 and he told me that you can easily build a VGA adaptor. But I don't know anymore.

 

the 16-bit CPU, the graphics and sound capabilities of the X68000 are what should've also been in the SuperGrafx.

X68000 guts put into in a console would've made the perfect PC-Engine 2 ~ SuperGrafx. Only one major addition would've been needed to upgrade the X68000's 1987 spec into a Super Famicom killing SuperGrafx for 1989 or 1990, IMO: hardware scaling & rotation.

X68000 as it was, played 99% super-near-exact ports of many awesome sidescrolling and overhead 2D arcade games. Ghouls 'N Ghosts was of the same quality of the arcade years before the PS1 & Saturn versions came out.

Alien Syndrome on X68000 remains to this day, the only real true port of the System16 arcade game. all other home versions are much downgraded conversions (NES, SMS, Amiga, etc)
or uncool 3D remakes (PS2, Wii, PSP).



It also played very reasonable (though downgraded) conversions of Sega's Super-Scaler multi-68000 arcade games. while the X68000 versions of these
(Space Harrier, AfterBurner, Super HangOn, ThunderBlade) were by no means idential to the arcade, they were MUCH better than the PC-Engine or Megadrive/Genesis versions. SHO and TB were especially good conversions with some of the smoothest "software scaling" I've ever seen.

 

If you say they are so accurate I guess I must believe you. All I've ever seen is recorded emulation and emulation which leaves things to be desired from the few games I tried. The system certainly seems powerful from the processor and memory standpoint, but graphically it seems to be a bit lacking and the sound. They did indeed doom themselves by not updating those, ofcourse the plan from the get-go was kinda doomed anyway.

 

well, some arcade-to-X68000 games were highly accurate to the arcade. there were some sound differences here and there. don't forget that X68000 was released in 1987, earlier than the arcade boards that many of X68000 ports originated from. compared to Amiga, PC-Engine, Megadrive, SNES, the X68000 arcade games were much closer to the arcade. only thing that did a better job in that area was the NEO-GEO, which came out 3 years later and used the EXACT same hardware as its arcade counterpart. X68000 was not directly based on a particular arcade board, but it shared many of the same technologies used in arcade boards of the day (hardware spirte support, multi-layered background support, larger color pallete with a reasonable number on screen, plenty of RAM, larger amounts of ROM space than most 16-bit console carts, etc. Sure the X68000 was relatively obscure, but at least it had a viable life in Japan unlike the SuperGrafx, 32X, Jaguar.

 

Wow... this machine is pure class.

And the design looks like the type of machine an evil overlord would have in the late eighties.

350 for the machine and 28 games sounds like an awesome deal.

What games did you get?

 

Japan-games !!! i saw your auction. you have something very rare ! the external 3,5" custom floppy drive !!! could you PLEASE do big pictures of the pinouts and what's inside the switch box ??? that would help many people around ! (because when original 5,25 floppy drives die..nothing works more.. (except some hdd prior installation), the machine is just rubbish :/) and we need finding informations or tricks to play this machine (very hard to get replacement floppy drives...)


there was many hoax in the past. people said that only the sharp monitors were okay. if you have any multisync monitor/lcd, it will work. yes in this case only 31k games can start (and it needs a corect rewiring switch). (but i planned.. i bought a xrgb scaler and will make some wirings), or buy a tft tv with vga input (15k +31k). few games run on 24k.

 

Some games use extra sound hardware dont they? From what ive played some music can be really good, for example Castlevania lets you select from 3 sound modules on boot up and the top end version has class tunes. Im susprised there was no hardware scaling and rotation, if you check out Geograph Seal the 3d in that game is at least on par with Star Fox, and the music in it rox too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp1ObNdkvvw

 

That game looks pretty cool, the music is pretty nice too. Such a shame when decent games are lost on obsure platforms. :O

 

Here are some pics of the FDD:

http://www.japan-games.com/Wires1.jpg

http://www.japan-games.com/Wires2.jpg

http://www.japan-games.com/Wires3.jpg

http://www.japan-games.com/Wires4.jpg

http://www.japan-games.com/Wires5.jpg

My Canon is pretty bad at close-up shots. That's about as close as I can get it without it blurring...

 

Wow. Very, very nice indeed!

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tKRPqO-g154

footage of X68000 Super HangOn, AfterBurner (II) and Alien Syndrome.


notice Super HangOn looks awesome compared to the MegaDrive/Genesis version. nevermind the music/sound in this emulation, it;s bad, but when I've played it via WinX68k high-speed, it sounds fine.

while AfterBurner II is actually based on the MegaDrive/Genesis version
(or the MegaDrive/Genesis version is based on the X68000 version). in either case, the X68000 version is only slightly better, and nowhere near the twin-68000 "X Board" powered arcade version. but that's to be expected. even though X68000 was very powerful home hardware, on par with or better than -average- arcade games of the day, it wasn't as powerful as the -highend- arcade hardware such as the various Sega boards with super-scaler technology.... although Super HangOn arcade used super-scaler, it wasn't nearly as powerful as the X Board used in AfterBurner.

that said, another X Board game Thunder Blade (not shown) was translated to the X68000 with less of a downgrade than AfterBurner II. although that's not to say it was on par with the arcade -- I'd say about 50% technically, resulting in what looks like maybe 75% to the eye, which was incredibly good considering a.) the difference in power between X Board and X68000, b.) compared to all the other home translations & adaptions of Thunder Blade.

however Alien Syndrome looks like a carbon-copy of the System16 arcade game.

 

How is Cho Ren Sha?

 

Its really great for a bit but then you realise the game doesnt reeally change at all as you get further in.

 

Heh, I like running x68000 games on an emulator with a real MT-32 hooked up to my PC. It works quite well in the games that support it.
It's like a poor mans X68000!

 

Who has more info about the vga adapter?

I was badly outbidded... right now the auction goes over $450. Too much for me, sadly.:crying:

 

Japan-games, thanks for taking my request but for the pictures.. as is, that doesnt help people who could technically find answers. it would be efficient if you unscrewed the db25 and the db9, and do one more of the floppy 34pinouts black part, to see precisely what are the pinouts used !!

it's hope there ! let's hope we can make further conclusions in the future...

well me too, came high :/. yes some games take profit of Midi and so on sc55, mt32 (i own one ^^), but you need a Midi card... not very easy to get on Yja these times.. i finally won one few days ago, but totally unsure about the "junk" condition...

 

I can't make it past level 3 anyway.

 

Here are all the pics I have:

www.japan-games.com/x68000_Floppy.zip

Hopefully I got you most of what you were looking for. I'm also trying to contact the guy I bought it from. I'll let you know if anything turns up.

Thanks.

 

A weird and somehow morbid question:

Can anyone do any work on an X68000? I mean, like... does it have some sort of productivity suite, word processor, spreadsheet, or similar?