Sharp Advert - September 1984

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.