Amiga was good but
2003-10-03 07:06:32 UTC
Some of you might be asking, wtf is a X68000? Well as the name implies, it
is a 68000-based machine. 10 Mhz!! the X60000 was a totally awesome
Japanese computer from Sharp. it played games that blew the original Amiga
500 out of the water. in terms of hardware sprites and scrolling, it KILLED
the original Amiga series. I mean all the Amigas that used the original or
enhanced chipset. basicly any Amiga from the 1980s.
X68000 was released in 1986, roughly a year after the first Amiga, but for
one year age difference, the performance difference was immense, in certain
areas. The X68000 could support 2 scrolling planes with 256 colors each, at
once. Plus at least 128 sprites. The Amiga could do 32-64 colors on-screen
without special tricks correct?
The X68000 had 65,536 total colors, compared to 4096 for the Amiga. The
X68000 was equal to or better than most arcade machines of 1986. The machine
had a few dozen arcade ports and many of those were literally 99% identical
to the original arcade games. They blew the living hell out of the same or
similar games that were converted, translated or adapted (often horribly) to
the Amiga.
In terms of software base, the Amiga ruled in Europe and America, but not in
Japan. High-powered machines like the X68000 and FM-Towns pretty much
dominated the land of the rising sun in the 80s and early 90s.
If you loved arcade-style games, or anything with lots of hardware
scrolling, sprites and tons of colors on screen (without any HAM tricks)
then you would have loved X68000.
Games like Final Fight, R-Type, Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone, SFII, Gradius,
Gradius II, Strider, Ghouls N Ghosts and dozens others were identical or
near-identical to their arcade counter parts. Even scaling-intensive games
like Sega's Space Harrier, ThunderBlade, AfterBurner II, and Super HangOn
were very respectively done on X68000. The arcade versions of those games
featured TWIN 68000s and state of the art video hardware. While X68000 could
*not* match this with its single 68000, it did a superb job compared to
other consumer hardware released in the 1980s. The X68000 did those games
probably something like 50-60% graphically, which is far better than the
15-30% of the Amiga or Megadrive/Genesis versions! Switching gears back to
simpler non-scaling games like Strider or Ghouls N Ghosts--playing a good
X68000 arcade port is like playing the arcade game with almost zero
noticable difference.
I would also make this comparison: In terms of quality of certain types of
games, the X68000 is to the Amiga what the NEO GEO is to the Genesis. That
is, 3~5 times more impressive. Another comparison I would make, is that the
difference in quality between X68000 and Amiga 500 games was probably
GREATER than the difference between Atari ST and Amiga 500 games.
Although admittedly, many Amiga arcade conversions were either ST ports or
horribly crippled because of poor developers and/or lack of resources. To
be fair to the Amiga, if the same high-quality Japanese developers who made
games for X68000 also made Amiga versions, the gulf would not be so
enourmous. Amiga 500 games like Shadow Of The Beast (and others) prove
that--that Amiga could (almost) do 16-bit arcade quality graphics. Still,
the X68000 was a more powerful machine in many areas. that is fact, not
opinion.
I wish there had been a television / console version of the X68000, like
the Commodore CDTV or CD-32.
Does anyone out there share a similar view on X68000, or could offer some
more detailed technical comparasions? I will reply to my own post later
with some hardware specs regardless. Even in 2003, the X68000 is incredibly
impressive to me, concidering it's almost as old as the first Amiga.
I'll leave you with some past comments people have made about the X68000 on
Amiga newsgroups and usenet in general.
http://tinyurl.com/pjqk
"There is a 68000 based machine in Japan from Sharp called the X68000,
which reminds me a lot of the Amiga. It is clearly superior in every
way to the PC, is great for games, has great features built-in, and is
also a relatively poor seller when compared to the PC. In many
respects, the X68000 blows the Amiga away. Like it has had dual
playfields with 256 colors each since day 1, and built in audio and
video digitizers."
http://tinyurl.com/pjqr
"Actually in term of video HW, back in the late 80's machine like the X68000
and FM towns crushed the amiga in terms of sprites, playfield support."
http://tinyurl.com/pjr2
"The X68000 OS lack exec but kick the amiga in the GFX area"
http://tinyurl.com/pjr9
"Like the X68000 for example!
That machine can overlay 2 256 color screen + 256 sprite +
text screen using 16 bit normal memory (3 4 years ago)..."
http://tinyurl.com/pjru
"X68000 > Amiga 500 > Atari 520 ST"
http://tinyurl.com/pjs6
"To anyone looking for 'new' idea... Look at the2 3 year old X68000.
16bit, but use 'multy bus'.With a text mode overlay with all the
diferent video mode up to 2 256 color dualplayfield (plus text mode
overlay) and another mode.
Plus a bank for 65535 colors sprites (alot of them!).So for any kind of
anymation a blitter is useless.
Or the video from the FM_Towns.With hardware posibilities like 360
degrea real time screen rotation on a 24 bitplane screen.
or real time zoom on its linkable sprites etc...
Both have CD suport for year.
The above is what I saw, and both machine are not that expansive (Check
LOGIN for latest price tag). The first is a 680x0 based machine (with
accelerator available) from Sharp.
The second is from Fujitsu, intel based machine :-(
FM_TOWNS 32bit machine, X68000 16bit. You dont have to go 32 bit to
have more power on amiga?! Put 2 set of custom chip in parrale:-)
Stephan"
http://tinyurl.com/pjsb
"You should have seen _my_ face when my friend showed me Strider running on
his
import Sharp X68000, up till then I thought that the Amiga version was the
shit. Well, the X68000 version was a friggin CLONE of the arcade version,
it
made the Amiga version look like a C64 game.
FYI. The X68000 was a machine released by Sharp in Japan and nowhere else,
it
used a 10Mhz 68000 and had hardware scaling (great for 3-d games), up to 16
planes of hardware scrolling (Shadow Of the Beast would have been a cakewalk
as
far as this machine was concerned), and 16-bit highcolor, came with 2 megs
(and
could be expanded up to 12) and was released in 1986, it was basicly an
arcade
machine with a keyboard, it was in fact far more powerfull than the arcade
boards that were around at the time of it's release.
Sharp must have been on drugs not to release that machine worlwide, it
would
have eaten the Amiga alive.
(sorry, I just had to mention this machine, it was a truely amazing
platform)"
http://tinyurl.com/pjt6
"Pac-Mania. There is a very good version of it on the Amiga
It is (near) arcade perfect, unlike the Amiga version. Same goes to
other X68000 games like Bubble Bobble."
http://tinyurl.com/pjrf
"The amiga HW was nice in the 80s... even then they was much cooler
GFX HW in other computer (X68000, FM-towns). Totaly crushed the
amiga in term of HW design.. that was before the A3000 was out."
is a 68000-based machine. 10 Mhz!! the X60000 was a totally awesome
Japanese computer from Sharp. it played games that blew the original Amiga
500 out of the water. in terms of hardware sprites and scrolling, it KILLED
the original Amiga series. I mean all the Amigas that used the original or
enhanced chipset. basicly any Amiga from the 1980s.
X68000 was released in 1986, roughly a year after the first Amiga, but for
one year age difference, the performance difference was immense, in certain
areas. The X68000 could support 2 scrolling planes with 256 colors each, at
once. Plus at least 128 sprites. The Amiga could do 32-64 colors on-screen
without special tricks correct?
The X68000 had 65,536 total colors, compared to 4096 for the Amiga. The
X68000 was equal to or better than most arcade machines of 1986. The machine
had a few dozen arcade ports and many of those were literally 99% identical
to the original arcade games. They blew the living hell out of the same or
similar games that were converted, translated or adapted (often horribly) to
the Amiga.
In terms of software base, the Amiga ruled in Europe and America, but not in
Japan. High-powered machines like the X68000 and FM-Towns pretty much
dominated the land of the rising sun in the 80s and early 90s.
If you loved arcade-style games, or anything with lots of hardware
scrolling, sprites and tons of colors on screen (without any HAM tricks)
then you would have loved X68000.
Games like Final Fight, R-Type, Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone, SFII, Gradius,
Gradius II, Strider, Ghouls N Ghosts and dozens others were identical or
near-identical to their arcade counter parts. Even scaling-intensive games
like Sega's Space Harrier, ThunderBlade, AfterBurner II, and Super HangOn
were very respectively done on X68000. The arcade versions of those games
featured TWIN 68000s and state of the art video hardware. While X68000 could
*not* match this with its single 68000, it did a superb job compared to
other consumer hardware released in the 1980s. The X68000 did those games
probably something like 50-60% graphically, which is far better than the
15-30% of the Amiga or Megadrive/Genesis versions! Switching gears back to
simpler non-scaling games like Strider or Ghouls N Ghosts--playing a good
X68000 arcade port is like playing the arcade game with almost zero
noticable difference.
I would also make this comparison: In terms of quality of certain types of
games, the X68000 is to the Amiga what the NEO GEO is to the Genesis. That
is, 3~5 times more impressive. Another comparison I would make, is that the
difference in quality between X68000 and Amiga 500 games was probably
GREATER than the difference between Atari ST and Amiga 500 games.
Although admittedly, many Amiga arcade conversions were either ST ports or
horribly crippled because of poor developers and/or lack of resources. To
be fair to the Amiga, if the same high-quality Japanese developers who made
games for X68000 also made Amiga versions, the gulf would not be so
enourmous. Amiga 500 games like Shadow Of The Beast (and others) prove
that--that Amiga could (almost) do 16-bit arcade quality graphics. Still,
the X68000 was a more powerful machine in many areas. that is fact, not
opinion.
I wish there had been a television / console version of the X68000, like
the Commodore CDTV or CD-32.
Does anyone out there share a similar view on X68000, or could offer some
more detailed technical comparasions? I will reply to my own post later
with some hardware specs regardless. Even in 2003, the X68000 is incredibly
impressive to me, concidering it's almost as old as the first Amiga.
I'll leave you with some past comments people have made about the X68000 on
Amiga newsgroups and usenet in general.
http://tinyurl.com/pjqk
"There is a 68000 based machine in Japan from Sharp called the X68000,
which reminds me a lot of the Amiga. It is clearly superior in every
way to the PC, is great for games, has great features built-in, and is
also a relatively poor seller when compared to the PC. In many
respects, the X68000 blows the Amiga away. Like it has had dual
playfields with 256 colors each since day 1, and built in audio and
video digitizers."
http://tinyurl.com/pjqr
"Actually in term of video HW, back in the late 80's machine like the X68000
and FM towns crushed the amiga in terms of sprites, playfield support."
http://tinyurl.com/pjr2
"The X68000 OS lack exec but kick the amiga in the GFX area"
http://tinyurl.com/pjr9
"Like the X68000 for example!
That machine can overlay 2 256 color screen + 256 sprite +
text screen using 16 bit normal memory (3 4 years ago)..."
http://tinyurl.com/pjru
"X68000 > Amiga 500 > Atari 520 ST"
http://tinyurl.com/pjs6
"To anyone looking for 'new' idea... Look at the2 3 year old X68000.
16bit, but use 'multy bus'.With a text mode overlay with all the
diferent video mode up to 2 256 color dualplayfield (plus text mode
overlay) and another mode.
Plus a bank for 65535 colors sprites (alot of them!).So for any kind of
anymation a blitter is useless.
Or the video from the FM_Towns.With hardware posibilities like 360
degrea real time screen rotation on a 24 bitplane screen.
or real time zoom on its linkable sprites etc...
Both have CD suport for year.
The above is what I saw, and both machine are not that expansive (Check
LOGIN for latest price tag). The first is a 680x0 based machine (with
accelerator available) from Sharp.
The second is from Fujitsu, intel based machine :-(
FM_TOWNS 32bit machine, X68000 16bit. You dont have to go 32 bit to
have more power on amiga?! Put 2 set of custom chip in parrale:-)
Stephan"
http://tinyurl.com/pjsb
"You should have seen _my_ face when my friend showed me Strider running on
his
import Sharp X68000, up till then I thought that the Amiga version was the
shit. Well, the X68000 version was a friggin CLONE of the arcade version,
it
made the Amiga version look like a C64 game.
FYI. The X68000 was a machine released by Sharp in Japan and nowhere else,
it
used a 10Mhz 68000 and had hardware scaling (great for 3-d games), up to 16
planes of hardware scrolling (Shadow Of the Beast would have been a cakewalk
as
far as this machine was concerned), and 16-bit highcolor, came with 2 megs
(and
could be expanded up to 12) and was released in 1986, it was basicly an
arcade
machine with a keyboard, it was in fact far more powerfull than the arcade
boards that were around at the time of it's release.
Sharp must have been on drugs not to release that machine worlwide, it
would
have eaten the Amiga alive.
(sorry, I just had to mention this machine, it was a truely amazing
platform)"
http://tinyurl.com/pjt6
"Pac-Mania. There is a very good version of it on the Amiga
(I think it runs on Fellow/UAE)."
"There is an even better conversion of it for the X68000.It is (near) arcade perfect, unlike the Amiga version. Same goes to
other X68000 games like Bubble Bobble."
http://tinyurl.com/pjrf
"The amiga HW was nice in the 80s... even then they was much cooler
GFX HW in other computer (X68000, FM-towns). Totaly crushed the
amiga in term of HW design.. that was before the A3000 was out."