/vr/ - Retro Games

The X68000 was naturally adopted at Technosoft. The company was at the cutting edge of technology in the 80s and Thunder Force II was originally exclusive to Sharp’s computer. Developing that game implied to get several X68000 which have later been used to create Mega Drive and arcade games. The development tools used by Technosoft were all created internally and ran on X68000. Two editors were used in parallel during the development of Thunder Force IV: one for the logos and in-game illustrations, the other for the sprites and backgrounds.
Depending on the game, Konami and Taito designed their 2D graphics either on X68000 or on PC-98 in the early 90s. Both systems could run their respective graphic editor -Konami PIGS and Taito Animator.
Taito’s graphic editor was later ported to Windows. It had one major drawback though: you couldn’t visualize an animation cycle and had to manually scroll each from to simulate the animation. It’s unclear whether this issue was eventually patched or not.
A few last words on Taito: a former graphic designer mentioned the exercice submited to the newcomers, saying that they were asked to draw marbles in a given time period.

Dempa Micomsoft, a company known for its accessories and conversions of arcade games on X68000 and Mega Drive, also produced its own graphic editor on Sharp’s computer: Object Editor. This mouse-controlled software, programmed by a developer called Tonbe, was used during the production of the X68000 version of Ys.