Some of you have probably seen or heard of this, but I’ve never seen it posted, so I thought I’d share.

It’s a controller for Sharp’s X68000 home-computer. I found it in this auction along with a game for which it was apparently designed (or maybe vice versa).

It even has A and B buttons, and they’re in roughly the same positions as on the VB! I could totally see something like this in a lab at Nintendo being used as a very early prototype VB controller (although they probably would have just grafted a couple of buttons onto an SFC pad. That’s what I would do, anyway…)

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Hey, that’s cool, haven’t seen that one before. That would be nice to have in the collection!

Cool find! Never even heard of the console/system before.

That’s pretty cool. I’ve been using an X68000 emulator, but I’d love to get a real one.

What game(s) are you playing, SuperMew?

I tried out that “Libble Rabble” game that was being sold with the pad, and it takes some serious reflexes and 5th-dimensional brain gymnastics!

It’s sorta like Qix, except there’s no place to hide from the baddies, and there are twice as many things that can get killed (and about 20 times as many things to do the killing)! You also have to be able to associate “red thing” with “left hand” and “blue thing” with “right hand”, even when the blue thing is to the left of the red thing! It seems to be an arcade port, since it asks for coins. As an arcade game, it has to be the king of all quarter-eaters!

With some improved controls (possibly dual analog sticks or mice/trackballs), and a less steep learning curve, it might actually be a fun game.

One of my favorites on the X68000 is Bomber Man by System Soft. It’s basically Bomber Man with good sounding music and vibrant colors. I haven’t tried out Libble Rabble, but I like Qix so it sounds like it’s worth a try.

Wow, that’s neat, if somewhat impractical. I guess shoulder buttons weren’t really a thing back then; they would have made more sense than the B and A in the middle since that would allow you to use both D-pads and both buttons all at the same time.

Turns out this controller was also used for the X68000 port of Crazy Climber (that link has the schematic of the pad).

Heres a N64 one I just finished up! I definitely prefer it over those damned C Buttons.

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