I'm doing a panel on X68000... Need some good trivia!

[Pinwizkid]

Hi gang,

I'm going to be doing an hour long presentation on the X68000 in August at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. Although I've learned a metric "shit ton" about the X68000 in the last 8 months, I'd love to get this community's input as to certain topics or really interesting bits of trivia I can include in the presentation. Of course I'll be scouring the FAQ and what not, but I'm curious as to what you guys find most fascinating about the X68K and its history.

So far, my rough outline is:

- Explore the history of the X68000 and the different models
- Play some of the more popular (and unique) games for the system
- Show off some of the various peripherals (controllers, mouse/keyboard, Cyber Stick, expansion boards)
- Play a handful of X68000 chiptunes as well as demo the system's MIDI capabilities
- and finally explain some of the modern day advancements that make the X68000 more accessible (CF hard drive & emulators)

I'd like to include lots of interesting trivia, such as how Capcom used the system as a development station for CPS games, that sort of thing. I'll be sure to have a slide crediting anyone that has helped me with this system as well as anyone that contributes to this thread!

Looking forward to hearing some responses. Thanks!

-BB

[kamiboy]

It bears mentioning what an absolute beast of a system the X68000 was out of the box back in 1987. While I have not explored them myself the systems came with a slew of odd multimedia capabilities. I believe that they are equipped with TV input by default, and the graphics hardware has support for doing overlay of this via a graphical layer in software.

The early x68000 monitors were actually full flegded TV's in addition to being a tri-sync monitor. Mine has RF inputs, and you can change channels via a remote. And I believe you can control the TV portion of the monitor via software using a special cable connection.

The thing really was an over engineered monster.

The attention to detail in the cabinet design bears mentioning in a time where beige ugly, clunky boxes were standard in the world of computing. The design of the original twin tower models belong in a museum for industrial design. Really no one except maybe Steve Jobs era Apple put so much thought into design.

Disassembly of the X68000 XVI Compact requires the removal of only a sinle screw. The rest of the shell is all held together via plastic tabs. The way everything is designed to fit together is really a sight to behold.

Of course you have to mention the fact that things such as ATX like soft power and soft eject floppy drives were very advanced and futuristic features for hardware in 1987. Of course the X68000 was priced accordingly.

[akdme]

I've no info to help you re: the panel, but I am in NNJ - so please send me details on the event - would love to drop by!

[UD2]

Here's some fun trivia on the X68K, some of which came from a talk I gave a little while ago:

A barebones X68000 in 1987 cost roughly $6000 in today's money.

Capcom developed their CPS-1 arcade games on X68000s, and the two machines have very similar specs Hey, it's me from 7 years in the future. The X68000 and CPS1 hardware really don't look all that much alike and I really wish this misinformation would go away.

The design of the original X68K case is somewhat similar to Sharp's X1 twin, an X1 and a PC Engine in the same case. They even use the same style of volume knob and power button.

The game "Cotton" flashes the keyboard LEDs in sync with the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRNfP4JP-D4

[NFG]

The X68000 was hampered by Sharp's insistence on controlling the sales.  It was not sold through computer stores, but through Sharp's existing network of TV and home electronics dealers.  This hurt its visibility and sales greatly.  This could be why it didn't conquer the world.  But then, it was workstation-expensive, it's possible the price alone kept it from being a better seller.

[SuperDeadite]

The game "Cotton" flashes the keyboard LEDs in sync with the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRNfP4JP-D4

Even better, while everyone goes on and on and on about the silly keyboard lights, the game itself never gets the credit it deserves.  It is NOT a straight port of the arcade.  Places like Hardcore gaming 101, all say it's a straight port, but they are all wrong.  It has completely remixed stage layouts, tons of added parallax scrolling, completely new sprites for almost everything, completely exclusive boss fights, and the bosses that do return from the arcade all have new attacks making them very different fights.  It is a fantastic version of Cotton and all anyone ever notices are the silly keyboard lights.

I have full play through videos of the Arcade (I own the pcb), X68000, and PCE versions on my youtube channel.

Extra trivia:  For many many years, there were rumors floating around about PC games that supported the Roland U110 PCM expansion cards.  The truth is that they are not PC games, but actually X68000 games, namely Gemini Wing and Choujin.

Some games, like Sion II have completely different soundtracks depending on the module used.

For the OMG RARE!!! people, Be Rain is without a doubt, the hardest to find, most expensive game on the system that had an actual retail release.

These days lots of people bitch about DRM in games, but with the X68K, piracy was quite rampant, and some people went to extreme measures to protect their games.  Princess Maker was sold via mail order only, and each copy had the buyers' personal data programmed into it, to make pirated copies unplayable.   The later doujin devs continued this, despite being a doujin, Y2 has a copy protection scheme that has still not been broken, only original floppies play properly to this day.

The Windows XP DVD-ROM ports of Thunderstorm and Road Blaster actually include versions of the games programmed for X68030/60s.  On an 030 they run at a measly 7fps, while they will run at 14fps if you have an 060.

If you really dig into the machine, you can find lots of wacky and fun things to mess with, such as:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Add1kL696pw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k53n_gLeXQ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7j0iv2QYg

[kamiboy]

Despite the prohibitively high entry price the X68000 platform must have gone on to sell enough units to warrant the the huge library of arcade ports, and original games.

If you compare the size and quality of library for the major Japanese PC platforms of the era, and throw in their contemporary popularity via activity in their respective Yahoo auction sections, the MSX and PC88/98 are king of course, but the X68000 actually takes next place, with the FM Towns coming in last.

It is funny though that even with the heavy emphasis on gaming, what with launch models actually coming with a excellent port of Gradius, Sharp never actually manufactured an official X68000 gamepad.

Luckily , and unlike the proprietary mouse and keyboard which the system came bundled with, the controller port on the X68000 is the same used by many other Japanese PC's of the time. I believe the pinout was based on the Atari standard. So you could use any controller from the MSX, PC88, FM machines or even Sharp's own former 8bit PC platform, the X1, on the X68000.

[SuperDeadite]

Despite the prohibitively high entry price the X68000 platform must have gone on to sell enough units to warrant the the huge library of arcade ports, and original games.

If you compare the size and quality of library for the major Japanese PC platforms of the era, and throw in their contemporary popularity via activity in their respective Yahoo auction sections, the MSX and PC88/98 are king of course, but the X68000 actually takes next place, with the FM Towns coming in last.

It is funny though that even with the heavy emphasis on gaming, what with launch models actually coming with a excellent port of Gradius, Sharp never actually manufactured an official X68000 gamepad.

Luckily , and unlike the proprietary mouse and keyboard which the system came bundled with, the controller port on the X68000 is the same used by many other Japanese PC's of the time. I believe the pinout was based on the Atari standard. So you could use any controller from the MSX, PC88, FM machines or even Sharp's own former 8bit PC platform, the X1, on the X68000.

Actually Sharp sold their X1 pads as the official X68K pad.  They never bothered to update the graphics used on their overlays, but they were the official controller.

[kamiboy]

Interesting, I've always wondered about that.

[NFG]

Despite the prohibitively high entry price the X68000 platform must have gone on to sell enough units to warrant the the huge library of arcade ports, and original games.

If you compare the size and quality of library for the major Japanese PC platforms of the era, and throw in their contemporary popularity via activity in their respective Yahoo auction sections, the MSX and PC88/98 are king of course, but the X68000 actually takes next place, with the FM Towns coming in last.

I dunno, I see the same facts and reach a different conclusion.  First, it's pretty obviously a distant third place, if we're basing it on auction or software numbers.  Second, I see a library full of ports as proof of unpopularity.  There's a significant dearth of original software for the system.  If someone told me the system was popular with developers, who loved it and brought over all their favourite games despite a lack of buyers, I'd believe it.

As for the Towns, I can't think of any games that were on both systems that were better on the X68, can you?  The Towns was used much more in business applications, when I moved to Japan it was powering the book database and they had patron-facing terminals to use.

[kamiboy]

The Towns came out two years after the X68000, so it was technically a much more powerful system, giving it the edge, but I cannot think of too many games that exist on both systems. Then again, looking at the library of the FM Towns I struggle to find many titles of real interest. This is much easier done for the X68000. Ports or not, I am just surprised that the X68000 got any support at all from game developers for how small the user base must have been.

[NFG]

The only game that comes to mind is Viewpoint, which is far better on the FMT.  I thought there was another but I can't remember which it might have been.  =/

[SuperDeadite]

The other major one is Mahou Daisakusen.  If you turn on the animation-cuts, it's playable on an XVI though it gets a lot of slowdown.  On an 030 it's quite smooth.

The FM Towns version though is awful.  On a 386 it is absolutely unplayable.  If you have a 486, or even a Pentium Towns, it doesn't slowdown, but instead frameskips like crazy, bullets become invisible and therefore still unplayable.

Quite sure the Towns port was just a lazy port of the X68K version though, the redbook CD music is just the X68K's MIDI recorded as CD audio.

Another one was Illusion City, the X68K version is slow and choppy like the other versions, but on Towns it's a lot faster, still some chop, but far more enjoyable imo.

Towns also got the better version of ChaseHQ, but the X68K was a Takeru only release, so possibly a quick and dirty effort.

Super Street Fighter II is a fantastic port on an XVI.  However the Towns port is a sad joke, requires a 486, yet has completely static backgrounds and still gets a ton of slowdown, even the SNES/Genny ports play better.

Comparing the two systems though is a bit tricky.  The Towns got the better CPU, but the X68K has the superior graphics hardware.  Also TownsOS is a bit shit imo.  X68K has better FM, but the Towns had CD audio.  Very different machines really.

As for all the arcade ports, back in those days I remember how everyone was ''OMG Altered Beast on the Genny is such a great port!''  So with a system as powerful and expensive as the X68K, arcade ports was probably one of it's bigger selling points. 

In the early years of the machine, most of the ports were done directly by Sharp, though after a few years and the unit's popularity grew then the 3rd party devs took real interest in it.  For example all the early Konami ports, Gradius, Twinbee, Salamander were by licensed and ported by Sharp, while Ajax and after were ported and published directly by Konami.  Capcom also did their own ports on the system but they waited until 1993.

Another trivia.  Gradius was the pack-in game for the original model of the system to show off it's power.  However it was not included with the later models, and oddly was never sold separately.  Most people will tell you that it never had a manual, but this is false, the manual is actually a chapter in the original machine's user manual.  I can scan mine if anyone really wants to see it.

[RobIvy64]

This morphed into a chest beating session rather than useful information the OP can highlight for a 60 minute presentation

If he had 240 minutes, I could see this being helpful

[RobIvy64]

Some things I would touch on (expanding on a few of your bullets)


- Explore the history of the X68000 and the different models
   * I would certainly parallel the X68000 to some of the other comparable computers available in 1987, such as the Amiga. Maybe whip up a comparison chart to really illustrate just how powerful the X68000 was

- Play some of the more popular (and unique) games for the system
   *I would be sure to show a mixture of retail exclusives, arcade ports (older and newer, like Bosconian and Final Fight), and doujin games (maybe briefly touch on what that means, etc)

- Show off some of the various peripherals (controllers, mouse/keyboard, Cyber Stick, expansion boards)
   *You'll have your work cut out for you here. There are a lot of peripherals. It depends on how deep you want to go. I wouldn't dive into the really obscure stuff like 060 accelerators simply because this seems more like a 101 presentation.

- Play a handful of X68000 chiptunes as well as demo the system's MIDI capabilities
   
- and finally explain some of the modern day advancements that make the X68000 more accessible (CF hard drive & emulators)

[Pinwizkid]

Great stuff so far guys, really enjoying every bit of trivia I can absorb. I am interested in showing off how the system compared to other PCs of the time, and definitely want to say how much it cost back when it was new.

I'm curious about the huge amount of MDX files that are in the various archives... Where did all these come from? There seems to be thousands of tracks and not just from X68000 games. Was there an underground community of music enthusiasts that composed/converted music from other games to the X68000 just for fun?

Thanks for all the info so far!

[Pinwizkid]

I've no info to help you re: the panel, but I am in NNJ - so please send me details on the event - would love to drop by!

Here's the site for the event: http://expo.liretro.com/

Hope you can make it!

[NFG]

This morphed into a chest beating session rather than useful information the OP can highlight for a 60 minute presentation

Quite so, and it's my fault, sorry.  Still, maybe it's info he can use.  #unlikely

[kamiboy]

It is worth mentioning that Human68K, X68000's DOS like command prompt OS, and SX Window, the window based GUI, were both written by Hudson Soft.

Between partnering with NEC to create the PC Engine platform, and this, Huson Soft sure had their fingers in a lot of pies back in the late 80's.

[neko68k]

The MDX situation is a bit hazy. I can say with some certainty that some of them are based on reverse engineered arcade and megadrive music drivers. Some of them are based on cassette tape recordings of the games in-situ. There are are also some that are based on soundtrack cd's. It seems like it goes back a long way before the X68000. Many tunes were converted from other drivers like those used on the MZ (NRTDRV), Fujitsu FM7, and earlier X68000 drivers (I can't remember the name).

As far as I can tell, many of these were originally distributed on various single line local BBS(Rabbit's Staff, Yasty Serve) and on some larger services like PC-VAN and Nifty Serve. Seems like the Bosconian PDX is the most popular which is convenient because everyone would have it. Other songs that use their own samples were often distributed as the song along with a bunch of "uncooked" samples that are then processed on the users computer into a working PDX using various tools. This was done to save on size since 2400BPS isn't going to get you very far when you're downloading a 400k PDX file.

This is a great example from one of the greats, Veyrlen.
Night Striker Music Program for MDX+PCM8

[neko68k]

It may also be worth mentioning that there was a diskmag scene as well. The most well known of which is Dennou Club. Dennou Club published around 100 issues between 1988 and 1998 each containing many excellent articles, game patches, doujin game, artwork, music, fonts, and PCM system beep replacements. There is also the excellent print magazine Oh!X, which is a successor to Oh!MZ for the Sharp MZ line.

Oh!X

[edit]
Maybe also mention that it has a pretty excellent graphical shell, Ko-Windows and 030's can run full blown NetBSD.


Ko-Windows


NetBSD w/ Black Box WM

[SuperDeadite]

Another wacky one was Eternal World.  A 4-player doujin Final Fantasy clone.  Real time 4-player split screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZmDa4kH7tM