Apparently in 1994 Sharp had a project of a 128-bit console but I have not managed to find information on the Internet. The console called Interprise appears in a couple of notes from two French magazines and looks like a Star Trek ship (!): Player One n° 41, April '94 Article of Joypad n° 30, April '94 Does anyone know anything about this console, is it a fake? Here appear several titles of some important companies: -Wild Road (Namco) (I did not find anything of this title) -Sim City 2003 (Maxis) (???) (a lost sequel before 3000?) -Street Fighter Vs Fatal Fury (Capcom / SNK in 1994?) -After Burner IV (Sega, why would Sega make an AB IV for Sharp?) -Spoon and Jam (Konami) (platform defined in the note as a "Virtua-Sonic") -The note also mentions Virgin. The note is strange .... SF Vs Fatal Fury? ... After Burner IV of Sega?... Does anyone know anything about this? At least there should be a note in some Japanese magazine.
If the so-called Sharp Enterprise was an April Fool's Day joke, then I'd say that it's a pretty convincing one.
The claimed hardware specs are absurd - so it has a "128 bit RISC" processor, a Pentium and six 68EC000s in it? A Capcom Vs SNK game in 1992? 1280x640 resolution in '92 - when the only commercially available HDTVs were the Japanese HiVision ones that used 1035i?
1994 article(with what appears to be a '95 release date), but still, it's absurd. Pentiums were very high end and still very new in 1994, adding astronomical cost to this console. As Tri stated above, why the hell would it need to support 1280x640? Why would you need your special 128bit processor as well as a Pentium(again, already high end) in a console? The Simcity 2003 picture, even for a mockup, is clearly not adhering to a 2 million poly a second budget. Speaking of which, 2 million polys a second in 1994? Damn this thing was ahead of its time!
@speedyink A console with that much to its specs would have been way too hard to program games for, too expensive to produce, and too expensive to buy, so this console is most likely made up by the French gaming magazines for an April Fool's joke. Plus, the last time that Sharp made video game consoles was with the Sharp Twin Famicom.
Yeah, the Model 3 could only render 1 million polygons/s - which came out in 1996 and cost $15,000. I doubt anyone would try to market a $15,000 or more game console to consumers.
mmm ... yes, the note is in April ... maybe it is a fake, the image of After Burner IV looks convincing (at least for me) but the Fatal Fury Vs Street Fighter is doubtful at least ...This was in a context in which Nintendo had announced the 64-bit Project Reality, NEC its 32-bit console, etc. ... let's see if I can find a note of the same period or a little later in a UK or Japanese magazine ...
Yup, it sure seems like they just made up a bunch of impressive shit up as a joke, trying to trick some naive kids. The obvious tell is the name, I mean come on, the Enterprise? Nothing like needless licensing costs to further jack up to cost so that you can shape the damn thing like a ship from Star Trek.
Well, it was definitely a joke from French magazines, the games shown do not correspond to the real ones: from what I could find "Wild Road" it seems to be Galaxian 3 from Arcade (Namco) and the image from After Burner IV is similar to the one of an Arcade of the time also of Namco.
Funny fact, even though SimCity 2003 was a joke, SimCity 4 was actually released in 2003. Anyone recognize which game the screen cap is from?
Probably a joke. Starship enterprise? I mean it looks just like it. I took one glance at the " console " and laughed.
