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Let's take a moment to celebrate the golden age of Japanese design

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
This confuses me. Why would anyone think this is a product that should be sold to the masses? Wouldnt the discs get fucked up, and quick too?

It was primarily intended to play smaller 8cm CDs (Think Gamecube-sized) but the center spindle was adjustable so you could also play standard-sized discs.

img_1
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
That reminds me of the tweet from NEC some weeks ago about the PC-9801 and other series going in a japanese museum.
CrqLN9HXgAEfzwY.jpg

Really interesting design.
When I think of cyberpunk, I always think first of the weird but cool japanese designs from the 70s to the 90s.

When I first saw that monitor I was like "you know I can totally understand if they made the screen that shape to display things similarly to the way we display information on a piece of paper". Especially since it is paired with a printer.
 

Kudo

Member
Really dig the red colour and look of that Sharp X1, if there was modern day computer case version of it I'd build small htpc in one of those.
 

petran79

Banned
It is hard to explain how damn innovative this was at the time when DOS boxes were still struggling with the MPC standard. While we are all too familiar with Sega, Sony and Nintendo, there are times when I wonder what could have been of PC gaming if Japan had dared to look outside its borders.

Fortunately I avoided that DOS era. Because I had the fortune to play games on this, though I never owned one.

Commodore_Amiga2000_System_1.jpg


It provided the perfect environment for computer games, something the Japanese machines were not ready for.

Lets compare the two best computers of that era: Sharp X68000 and Amiga 2000.

Amiga 2000 had much better value for money than a Sharp X68000.
Sharp had 2500$ launch price. Amiga 2000 had 1300$. With that same money you could add a video card and an accelerator card on the Amiga and you had a beast machine.

Sharp was sprite based since it was arcade focused. Hence why it was never exported to the West. Its focus was mainly arcade games, just like the PC Engine and Neo Geo.
As an arcade gaming machine Sharp was the best but it lacked as a general purpose gaming and computer.

Amiga was for general purpose since it had copper/blitter and was fully programmable.For that reason Amiga's gfx chipset was years ahead of the Sharp. One reason you hardly see games like 3d flight sim/racing or first person rpgs on Sharp, while Amiga had dozens (F18, Falcon, gunship, indy 500, lotus turbo challenge etc). Also parallax scrolling was added only to a few Sharp games because it was difficult to materialize, while on the Amiga it was free due to blitter.

It also did lack in sound featuring just FM Synthesis and 4-bit PCM.
Sharp's OS was an MS-DOS clone. Amiga's OS was light years ahead.

West would certainly benefit with the advent of Japanese computers, but things were already set in motion with the multimedia revolution of Commodore and Atari computers. Microsoft realized it and stole many ideas from them. But even at copying they suck...
 

djtiesto

is beloved, despite what anyone might say
Fortunately I avoided that DOS era. Because I had the fortune to play games on this, though I never owned one.

Commodore_Amiga2000_System_1.jpg


It provided the perfect environment for computer games, something the Japanese machines were not ready for.

Lets compare the two best computers of that era: Sharp X68000 and Amiga 2000.

Amiga 2000 had much better value for money than a Sharp X68000.
Sharp had 2500$ launch price. Amiga 2000 had 1300$. With that same money you could add a video card and an accelerator card on the Amiga and you had a beast machine.

Sharp was sprite based since it was arcade focused. Hence why it was never exported to the West. Its focus was mainly arcade games, just like the PC Engine and Neo Geo.
As an arcade gaming machine Sharp was the best but it lacked as a general purpose gaming and computer.

Amiga was for general purpose since it had copper/blitter and was fully programmable.For that reason Amiga's gfx chipset was years ahead of the Sharp. One reason you hardly see games like 3d flight sim/racing or first person rpgs on Sharp, while Amiga had dozens (F18, Falcon, gunship, indy 500, lotus turbo challenge etc). Also parallax scrolling was added only to a few Sharp games because it was difficult to materialize, while on the Amiga it was free due to blitter.

It also did lack in sound featuring just FM Synthesis and 4-bit PCM.
Sharp's OS was an MS-DOS clone. Amiga's OS was light years ahead.

West would certainly benefit with the advent of Japanese computers, but things were already set in motion with the multimedia revolution of Commodore and Atari computers. Microsoft realized it and stole many ideas from them. But even at copying they suck...

There's a Windows-esque OS you can get for the X68k, although HumanOS (the DOS clone programmed by Hudson) was the most commonly used.

I'd argue the FM synth capabilities (hooked into an MT-32) was better than the 4 channel MOD format and its low sample size and panning (though I do like MOD music too and actually tried my hand at making a track or two back in the day :p )
 
I love many of the posts here. The Sharp X1, the PC-Engine + original CD-ROM2, The FM-Towns, the X68000 (I would love to own one someday).

I've also always wanted a Sharp TV C1. The TV with a Famicom built-in. I remember seeing one abandoned on the side of a road once. Unfortunately, I was out cycling and it had been raining, so I had no practical way of getting it home, but I've been kicking myself ever since for not carrying it 30 miles in the rain.


I would also love a PC Engine LT.

 
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