Sharp Advert - September 1984
From Your Computer
Don't worry. He's on your side
Sharp's MZ-700 was essentially a colour version of the venerable MZ-80K, which had been around since 1979. It was also the first Sharp micro to be launched without a built-in monitor, although it did retain the built-in cassette unit of its predecessor.
The machine's graphics - whilst primitive - provided a number of pre-defined shapes which were quite similar to Commodore's "PETSCII" characters as found on the PET and VIC-20 - right down to the set of playing-card suits.
The MZ-80K had been fairly successful, selling around 100,000 units[1]. The MZ-700 remained more-or-less compatible with it, and as such benefitted from the reasonable amount of software available, with the advert claiming around 130 titles.
Sources
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