I had a Commodore 64, but my best friend (we were 10 yo) got an MSX. I still remember how he repeated the sales pitch that "it was far superior to the Commodore 64". It's the first time I remember questioning a computer salesman pitch. But it was just the start of a long career helping friends to defuse all their bullshit.
Heh, I was so proud of my Amiga which was the best thing here in europe at the time, I had a buddy over who's parents were from Japan and tried to impress him with the quality of the graphics and sound, he was like 'yeah it's ok but my machine is much better'.
I remember scoffing at his statement saying something like 'dude, only the arcades are better than this', he then invited me to his place where he had a Sharp X68000, I remember being totally stunned.
This was a home computer with arcade perfect ports, he showed me ghouls'n ghosts, gradius, space harrier, r-type, they looked (and to my ears sounded) exactly like their arcade counterparts, it was apparently never sold outside of Japan.
It's probably one of the most beautiful computers ever made IMHO. Also the perfectly square screen with square pixels, incredible sound hardware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLJhPvI-H9A
It's kind of like the Lamborghini Countach of the computer world. Iconic and timeless.
Not only were they arcade perfect ports, many arcade games coming from Japan used the Sharp as a dev environment...so they pretty much were the arcade games.
Ah, I didn't know this, makes sense though as they were 'perfect' (as far as my memory goes).
Typically the arcade to Amiga conversions were ranging from so-so to downright awful (with some notable exceptions like Pang which as I recall was very faithful), so I was amazed at seeing him loading up these arcade perfect versions on his X68000.
Ah yes, my response was more in the context of me having the same inaccurate sales pitch as that of your friend, but I realize that my 'best thing at the time' came out wrong as I was referring to the time at which I was proud of my Amiga :)
