Do you have any news about possible homebrews for Sharp x68000?

[motorola73]

Since in the last 5 years the engineers have also perfected the Sharp x68k emulators for modern PCs, do you know if there are hombrewers in action around the world for X68000? For example, for other retro systems like Commodore, Atari, Sega etc. homebrewers and hackers are glorifying themselves and the missed 80's 90's coin op conversions are rapidly increasing, and not only these... For Sharp X68000 instead?

[neko68k]

A few people in the West that I know of, myself included, have written some things. Though I don't see much software dev even in the Japanese community. If I'm being honest I think the whole thing being in Japanese is off putting for a lot of people. It doesn't help that machines are kinda rare and very expensive.

[megatron-uk]

Yes, it's the language barrier - specifically system documentation - that's a real issue.

I've put some stuff together:

https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:x68_devtools

https://www.target-earth.net/wiki/doku.php?id=blog:x68_devcode

... and once you get going, it's quite a nice architecture to develop for; in some respects it's very PC-like, with unfettered access to a linear framebuffer, in others it's very arcade-like with seperate sprite, text and background planes, scroll registers etc.

The initial learning curve is very steep though, and I guess its that which puts a lot of people off.

[motorola73]

 
megatron-uk:
Thanks for the info. Beautiful documentation. In fact, the biggest problem is the Japanese language. However, for example, someone managed to translate part of the Human Hudson into English.

neko68k:
Thanks. Nice to know you took the time to write x68k software.
The problem of the cost of the machine is not a big problem, because using the emulator is as if you were using the real machine. But as long as there is life there is hope. In my opinion sooner or later the intelligent and curious computer archeology enthusiasts of this system will come out, they will make development software translated into English... and with the source codes of the capcom play 1 and 2 they will make missed arcade conversions (like Cadillacs and Dinosaurs), as Zeropeige did for Super Mario Bros. adapting the NES source codes for C=64 similarly. We just have to wait!