Sharp X68000 Emulation Guide
Manufacturer: Sharp / Release Date: 1987-1993
First debuting in 1987, the Sharp initially had specs roughly comparable to a Sega Genesis and was meant to be an evolutionary step in making quality ports of popular arcade games available on home computers in Japan. But like the MSX and PC-9x lines before it, it wouldn't end up doing much outside of the country. New versions with better specs were gradually released until 1993, eventually improving the base model from 1 MB to 12 MB of RAM and adding support for SCSI hard drives of up to 160 MB. It is particularly known for coming packed with premium 8-channel sound hardware for the time.
Sharp X68000 Emulation Guide For PC
Recommended Emulators: XM6 TypeG, MAME
Minimum System Requirements: Basic Emulation
XM6 TypeG
If you poke around forums and such looking to get started with Sharp emulation, what you'll quickly find is that lots of people recommend the esteemed arcade emulator MAME. While it is true that MAME has quietly added robust Sharp support over the years, and is now maybe the most compatible overall source, I looked up how to boot games with it and at this point it looks like it's still a massive pain in the ass (requiring fussy command line stuff, not like the easy arcade interface).
My choice instead is XM6 Type G, or XM6G, for ease of use paired with high compatibility and good performance on any old potato. This emulator has been around for many years now, and the strike against it used to be that it was region-locked to Japanese installations of Windows, but that has changed in the last couple of years and now anyone can run the more recent versions.
It's a very straightforward install. After downloading and unpacking it the two necessary BIOS files, cgrom.dat and iplrom.dat, are just plopped into its main directory. Then you're ready to go.
The emulator is very straightforward to use, with menus available in English now, but it helps to have some knowledge of how the Sharp functioned. The system had two standard floppy drives, which are used simultaneously (a la the Amiga). Games usually have a "base" Disk 1 that stays in the first drive the entire time, and all the swapping is done on the second drive. The emulator has a helpful indicator at the bottom of the screen to show what disk is currently being read from, and it will flash to indicate what drive the current swap is being requested for.
Games can theoretically use any keyboard keys, and you might have to look up their individual controls. But if you're not sure check the A, S, Z and X buttons first, and Enter and Space are usually used to navigate menus. One important note here: the Sharp keyboard actually had a few more buttons than the standard PC keyboard, a "Yen" symbol button and five "extra function" (XF) buttons near the space bar. XM6, and I assume other emulators, doesn't automatically map these to keys but they are sometimes used by games. You can use the "software keyboard" function to test if they are necessary before mapping them to something.
MAME
From what I can tell, MAME requires fussy individualized command lines for each game that you may have to look up on the internet to get all the parameters right. That sounded like too much for me to deal with, and I'm happy with XMG personally so far.
If MAME develops into a more user-friendly form in the future I might revisit it, but it's worth mentioning as apparently it's the technical best emulator available right now for some games. But right now I can't even find a good comprehensive third-party guide that covers how it all works.
Retroarch
One last option is this well-regarded core plugin for the multi-emulator Retroarch
Peripherals: