Orange Lounge Radio

Welcome to this week's installment of Retro Rearview. This week, I thought I'd take a look at another one of the lesser known systems, although probably not as obscure as last week's entry. The Sharp X68000.

The X68000 was a home computer released by Hudson Soft in Japan, and had various versions (with upgraded RAM, processor, and HDD) released dating as far back as 1987. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that all the games managed to fit on a handful of 5.25" floppy discs!

I'm sure you're thinking, "5.25 floppies?! I bet that thing only runs like Oregon Trail and Number Munchers... maybe Space Invaders if you're lucky!!" Au contraire, I say, as the X68000 had a pretty solid library of games, including some (damn near perfect) arcade ports:

• After Burner (SEGA)
• Bomberman
• Bubble Bobble
• Castlevania (aka Akumajo Dracula in Japan, but this one did get a limited US release as 'Castlevania Chronicles' on PSX, which also featured a mode with updated visuals and SFX/music.)
• Detana! Twinbee
• Dragon Slayer
• Final Fight
• Galaga '88
• Ghosts 'n Goblins
• Gradius II
• Knights of Xentar (Which I read has some mature content)
• Lemmings
• Mr. Do
• The New Zealand Story
• Parodius Da!
• River City Ransom (Under its Japanese title, of course Downtown Nekketsu Kunio-Kun, a vastly improved version of the NES/Famicom original)
• Street Fighter II
• Strider
• Twinbee
• Ultima
• Valis II
• Xevious
• Ys 1&2

Another interesting bit of trivia, is that many of the arcade games released at the time (like Capcom's, for example) were all developed originally on the X68000 platform, which made pixel-perfect arcade adaptations possible! In fact, one of the many addons released for the X68000 was an adapter made by Capcom which allowed use of either SNES or Genesis controllers (Like say, the CPS Fighter stick which was released for both) which allowed for near-perfect arcade action at home!

Unfortunately, the X68000's last release was in 1993, while there had been one more updated version of it planned, for whatever reason it was cancelled and never released. Perhaps it had to do with the impending release of the Sony Playstation? The world.... may never know.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my look back at the Sharp X68000... certainly one of the most amazing computer systems ever released on either side of the world. Tune in next week for yet another look into the annals of history for another classic videogame system from years past.

There are a whole lot of Starcraft II updates in the first half of our show tonight... you will not believe what people are doing with some of the editors. It probably is nothing compared to a game meant for editing-- Littlebigplanet 2! Nintendo talks some big plans including online presence, a mystery reveal, and more anti-piracy measures... but how much of it do we believe? In part B, we talk about a barrage of fan films to hit the internet recently, as well as a pair of music games... one of them a Bemanish game, the other a game by Armin Van Buuren. All this plus George Romero and... the BABYMAKER. OLR is not just about the news, but it is about YOU-- after all, we are the show where EVERY gamer has a voice. Chatroom antics, live phone calls, twitter topics, e-mails and much more-- it all unfolds LIVE and is here now for you to download!

Due to legal reasons I can't make this song available for download.

I'd planned to take a break from the music game-related selections at least for a while, but after the show wrapped up on Sunday (tune in at 6 every night over at AllGames!) and before they pulled the plug, their last song was this sentimental favorite of the show's hosts and early listeners... thus I knew what my pick would be.

This song originally appeared in DDR SOLO BASS, before later appearing in the home release DDR Extra MIX on PSX. If I could use one word to describe this song, well... its 'bootylicious' .

Of course DDR SOLO 2000 was the highlight of our very first episode way back in 2002, and if you want to hear how that went down, don't forget to check out my 'blast from the past' highlight reel, OLR: Best Hits Volume 1!