Just before and after the first MSX Magazine appeared (december 2002), there were many discussions on the MSX revival on this forum. Some people feared that MSX Association would force many rules on the MSX community, others could not wait until the MSX Revival started in other countries than Japan only. Many ordered the MSX Magazines from Japan and enjoyed MSXPLAYer, other despised it as an inferior emulator. An MSX Manifest was written, a counter-manifest was shortly on-line.

Now, almost 1.5 year later... we have seen two MSX Magazines from ASCII containing MSX Association's MSXPLAYer and several games, including (on MSX Magazine 2) several European 'amateur' productions. There is a lot of MSX merchandize on sale, the MSX Game Reader and the 20th anniversary MSXPC were produced and many Japanese game publishers are joining Project EGG. This year will probably bring us MSX Magazine 3, who knows what other surprises MSX Association has in stock for us.

I think it's a good time to discuss the MSX Revival once again. How do you feel about it now? Did your opinion change, compared to what you initially thought of it? What are you afraid of, or looking forward to? What do you expect from MSX Association? Will the MSX Revival ever go out of Japan? What would you suggest, or like the MSX Revival to be? And how about the one chip MSX? ....

I feel still the same: I don't believe in a MSX revival. What I see is just a small opleving (please, help me with this one ) in the MSX world. Very interesting of course but as long as production number are not higher then 1000 I don't realy think its relevant.

So, my opinion didn't change.

Euhm: MSX Magazine 1 sold more than 50.000 copies. I have no sales figures on MSX Magazine 2, but looking at the attention it got in bookstores in Japan (I've seen it with my own eyes) I think it sold about equally well. MSX Game Reader sold close to 4.000 times. So, the production numers -are- higher than 1.000 Does that influence your opinion?

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I guess you stupefied him, snout

My feelings towards the MSX Revival haven't changed. There's more and more happening, and we've just only started

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I guess you stupefied him, snout

No, he didn't. I was typing nonsens so I removed it temporaly.

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There's more and more happening, and we've just only started

euhh.. ok Well.. this discussion is about _your opinions_ on the MSX Revival, so it can hardly be nonsense, can it? So once again: "I think it's a good time to discuss the MSX Revival once again. How do you feel about it now? Did your opinion change, compared to what you initially thought of it? What are you afraid of, or looking forward to? What do you expect from MSX Association? Will the MSX Revival ever go out of Japan? What would you suggest, or like the MSX Revival to be? And how about the one chip MSX? ...."

For a long time I believed in the MSX Revival, but I changed my opinion on it. I think that MSX Revival will not happen outside Japan. Yeah, I want to believe as well but ... note that there are some cellular phones much more powerful than a 'simple' MSXTurboR.

So, who could be interested in MSX nowadays? I think no others than nostalgic people could be potential buyers for a really outdated system such as MSX is.

What's with the 'will it happen'? I think the MSX Revival is already in progress. Even outside of Japan. Many people are working on great projects (both software and hardware) for MSX. We already have seen some commercial companies have decided to release MSX titles (again, as most of them are from mid 1980's anyway) using the EGG project. Right here there's a webshop with really nice software titles, both from the early days of MSX as more recent releases.

Well, I'm all for an MSX revival, but I would like to see even more happening. I guess we would all like to see another computer, but I guess that's not likely to happen. I for one would love to see a gameboy like device to which we can upload a few ROM files in order to play I may sound ridiculous to most of you, but it would certainly be possible to produce for a relatively low price. The technology is there... Hell, we can even have Z80 CPU's on a postage stamp... how hard can an MSXboy be?

But alas... I guess we'll all need to buy a GP32 to get closer to that dream...

Wonderful picture Jazzy (though a bit over-sized).

About your question, the translation for 'opleving' pretty much comes down to 'revival'... Actually, according to my dictionary that's the only translation for it (well, that and 'recovery' when related to economics). So, interesting that you don't consider it a 'revival', but do consider it an 'opleving' .

Anyways, my opinion... Uhm... Well, since I saw the one chip MSX prototype Sunrise has, and heard how cheap it was, I certainly got more confidence in it. The ideas Nishi explained really are quite realistic, in terms of feasibility. And he did it before... But, even if what we have now is all there is to the revival (which it is not) I'm already very happy with it.


~Grauw

Oooh! or a Konami or MicroCabin game... Would that be too much to ask for? I bet lots of people would buy it...

Sonic, what about Compile? Does that work for you?

In Marketing it is often said that the degree of satisfaction perceived is equal to the satisfaction given minus the expectations. I think that the main problem is the huge expectations of the whole MSX community. That's why some people are disapointed or deceived. That's my situation and my opinion: revival is not bad, but please note that the 'amateur scene' is moving much faster than the 'official scene' at the moment: new games, new translations, new ports, new conversions, hardware and software projects, new OS, etc.
All the official stuff is, until now, RETRO-stuff, to play the ancient games is modern computers. That's all. And lots of merchandising.

Oh, please, let it rain today.

I think that a lot of good can come out of an MSX revival. It seems that a lot of video game revivals have been happening lately. The Atari 2600 is getting a lot of attention in the US. There also seems to be a Famicom revival going on in Japan as well. I think the main reason people are starting to play these old systems again is simple. Games in the 80's and early 90's were more fun than the games of today. Game play was more important than graphics. I think people might be starting to realize this. I would love to see new games for new systems taking a queue from some of the older games.

A revival for completely nostalgic purposes would be a waste though. Hopefully the MSX will find new fans that are interested in the game play as opposed to the novelty value. I just discovered MSX about a year ago myself, and I spend a lot more time playing games on it then I do on my PS2 or PC.

Kevin