The Sharp X68000 is a Japanese personal computer released in 1987 and never sold outside Japan. Its vertical twin-tower case, nicknamed the "Manhattan Shape", became famous, as did its original keyboard and mouse. Under the hood, the architecture is close to the arcade boards of the time: a 68000, several hardware graphic planes, sprites and a Yamaha FM sound chip identical to those found in the arcades.
That kinship explains its reputation: the X68000 received arcade conversions of astonishing fidelity for a home computer, at a time when Western machines had to sacrifice half the game. Final Fight, Ghouls'n Ghosts, Strider or Gradius are nearly identical to the originals on it, and the machine served as a development tool for several Japanese publishers.
The X68000 also hosted exclusives that became cult classics, starting with Akumajō Dracula (1993), the Castlevania episode later re-released on PlayStation as Castlevania Chronicles. The range went on up to the X68030 before ending in the mid-1990s, the machine remaining a highly sought-after collector's item ever since.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro px68k | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Libretro PX68k is the only emulator for this system, and it is available on every board. Netplay is not available and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled.
A pad is mandatory on this system, and a keyboard is strongly recommended: many games show a configuration menu at startup, ask for a specific key to continue, or expect Human68k commands. A mouse is optional, useful for a few strategy titles and for SX-WINDOW.
Without its ROMs, the emulator cannot boot the machine. The first two files are mandatory; the other three correspond to later models of the range and are only useful if you want to emulate one of them.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
keropi/iplrom.dat |
X68000 IPL ROM — the boot program of the machine (mandatory) | 7fd4caabac1d9169e289f0f7bbf71d8e | Libretro PX68k |
keropi/cgrom.dat |
Character ROM — Japanese and Latin fonts (mandatory) | cb0a5cfcf7247a7eab74bb2716260269 | Libretro PX68k |
keropi/iplrom30.dat |
X68030 IPL ROM (optional) | f373003710ab4322642f527f567e020a | Libretro PX68k |
keropi/iplromco.dat |
X68000 Compact IPL ROM (optional) | cc78d4f4900f622bd6de1aed7f52592f | Libretro PX68k |
keropi/iplromxv.dat |
X68000 XVI IPL ROM (optional) | 0617321daa182c3f3d6f41fd02fb3275 | Libretro PX68k |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/keropi/
├── iplrom.dat
├── cgrom.dat
├── iplrom30.dat
├── iplromco.dat
└── iplromxv.dat
The folder really is named
keropi, notx68000: it is the historical name of the emulator PX68k derives from. File names are lowercase.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/x68000/
Supported extensions: .2hd .88d .cmd .d88 .dim .dup .hdf .hdm .img .m3u .xdf .zip .7z
A few pointers about these formats:
.dim, .xdf, .2hd, .hdm and .img are floppy disk images: these are the formats you will meet for nearly every game;.d88 and .88d are floppy images in the D88 format, inherited from NEC PC-88 computers;.hdf is a hard disk image, useful for games that install under Human68k;.zip and .7z archives run without being extracted.Most X68000 games span two floppies or more, the machine coming with two drives as standard. Do not launch the images one by one: create an .m3u file listing all the disks of the game in order, one per line, and launch that .m3u.
/recalbox/share/roms/x68000/
├── MyGame (Disk A).dim
├── MyGame (Disk B).dim
└── MyGame.m3u
Contents of MyGame.m3u:
MyGame (Disk A).dim
MyGame (Disk B).dim
The emulator then loads the images in the order of the list, and RetroArch's Disk menu (Eject disk → Disk index → Insert disk) lets you change floppy whenever the game asks for it. Without an .m3u, you would have to quit the game and launch the other image by hand.