darkwitchclaire

claire

@darkwitchclaire

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gdri
@gdri

The SPS entry is finally done. SPS is a company that most people know for their arcade ports on the X68000 (most people who know SPS, that is).

I learned a few things writing this: SPS went bankrupt, SPS's president passed away, and M2 acquired the rights to SPS's back catalog, all in the year 2021. I feel like these things were not widely publicized at the time.

I recommend looking at the Japanese Wikipedia article on SPS because it's a lot more thorough than the GDRI entry. Unfortunately, it doesn't cite many sources, so I couldn't include a lot of the information.

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in reply to @gdri's post:

fm-sundae
@fm-sundae

Thank you so much for researching this company! 🙇🏻‍♂️ I attempted to research SPS's game output and ties to Sharp earlier this year in preparation for the Zuiki X68000 Z to poor results. SPS seems to have been somewhat secretive in regards to their operation, which obviously isn't uncommon for a porting house. That being said, did you find any leads as to why SPS favored Sharp's platforms in particular?

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gdri
@gdri

From the Wikipedia article (DeepL translation): "Formerly a division of Konno Sheet Metal Works, the company began receiving requests from Sharp to create applications through a magazine submission program. There was a time when the company used the name Micom House SPS. The name of the company is derived from 'Sharp Program Service' because of the many jobs Sharp gave them, although there is no capital relationship between the two companies."

Again, no sources cited.

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UnderpaidVillain
@UnderpaidVillain

I’m not sure if it’s worth including, but SPS is also responsible for a DOS equivalent that was used with various games on the PC-9801 called MEGDOS.

There’s even less information floating around on MEGDOS than there is on SPS, so I don’t know how fundamentally different it is from other versions of DOS. My favorite theory I found from a Japanese poster is that it was used in an Ah! Megami-sama game and that made them think it was Megami DOS.

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gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

Zerodiv occasionally touts their Fukushima office (which is their only remaining office, iirc) as being the current home of a lot of former SPS staff, and while they're not lying, they tend not to specify that the majority of them are all post-X68000-era and therefore didn't work on anything particularly prestigious or relevant to Zerodiv's current purview of STG ports.

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