Sharp X68000: The Arcade at Home

Sharp's 1987 workstation-class home computer was so powerful that Capcom used it as the reference platform for Street Fighter II. A machine ahead of its time — and still a joy to use.

The Sharp X68000 launched in Japan in March 1987 at ¥369,000 — roughly $2,500 at the time. It was not a budget machine. The dual Motorola 68000 CPUs, 1MB of RAM, and a custom graphics chip capable of 65,536 colours made it the most powerful home computer available anywhere in the world at launch.

Capcom's relationship with the X68000 is well documented. The machine was powerful enough to run near-perfect arcade ports, and Capcom used it internally as a development platform. The X68000 version of Street Fighter II is considered the definitive home version of the original game.

The tower form factor — unusual for a home computer — gave the X68000 a distinctive presence. The dual 5.25-inch floppy drives sat in a separate tower unit alongside the main system. Later models moved to 3.5-inch drives and added SCSI as standard.

Restoration challenges are significant. The internal battery leaks and corrodes the board if not replaced — this is the first thing to address on any X68000 acquisition. The SCSI terminator situation requires attention for external device use. And the power supply capacitors are universally in need of replacement on any machine of this age.

The X68000 community, though small, is dedicated. New software continues to be written, hardware expansions produced, and the machine's arcade library remains its strongest selling point for newcomers. If you want to understand what Japanese home computing looked like at its peak, this is the machine.