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Personally I don't like very much Speccy or C64 graphics and sound, nor the playability or brilliant ideas: never seen a game like Payload for others than MSX.

Never liked Amiga's look and feel nor seen any truly original game on it.

Shadow of the Beast? *yawn*

Might just be me.

[EDIT: Meaning, in no way it's misplaced nostalgia but probably just a matter of taste. ]

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Msx 2 indeed should have been the standard

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I think that if the MSX2 standard would have been released 1983 with some machines available for a decent price, things would look very different. But the MSX2 was unfortunately released too late.

Ok, let´s suppose that japanese manufacturers´ have scrapped ideas about make computer standard using dear old TMS-9928, but instead they would had planned and published MSX in early 1983, and used V9938 etc instead.
That means that they had needed to use very expensive parts, Commodore 64 was expensive in 1983, and now we are talking much more better (and more expensive) parts than what were used in Commodore 64.

But what that all means? It means, that MSX is not anymore like old time´s Citroën 2CV or Wolkswagen Beetle which can be purchased by almost every average Joe and his wife, but more like highly expensive luxury car, which only few can afford.
Higher price could mean higher profits per machine, but it also can hurt sales and if the sales are poor just because same high price, manufacturer cannot make much profit or probably manufacturers are forced to drop price all the time and eventually may start to loss too much money.
Of course they can (and must) drop the price dramatically and then try to sell more machines, but it can still cause big losses as they may have to sell highly expensive machine much cheaper than production costs are.

One thing which I haven´t seen mentioned earlier in conversations like this, is that there already were "cheap range" MSX-1 like rivals in Japan, like SEGA SC-3000 etc. Have you ever thought that if MSX-1 was like MSX2 in 1983, that may have boosted sales of SEGA SC-3000 and other cheap range computers, remember that those computers had good graphic chips too (good for their time)
Now imagine that MSX manufacturers have just published highly expensive luxury computer standard called MSX in Japan. Have you ever thought why several MSX-1s had just 8 Kilobytes of memory? Because manufacturers needed to have less expensive machines, to make MSX-1 available to wider audience. Imagine that most of japanese average Yamamotos and their wives cannot purchase highly expensive luxurious MSX, but they still want to get computer.

What they will do? They start to look at cheaper SEGAs and other cheaper japanese computers and buy one, instead of very expensive MSX. Think that most of the buyers around the world are average people, with average or less average salary. Of course some people would have bought expensive MSX, but it´s likely, that highly priced 1983 computer probably has poorer sales than much more cheaper (but good) computer like SEGA. There were some early eighties computers which had very advanced graphical chips for their time, but they suffered poor sales because of high price tag.

Ok, what happens if MSX sales are not too good? MSX manufacturers start to have ideas of scrapping their unprofitable computer divisions and eventually do so. That may lead to future where there are no Sony Playstations, no Toshiba lap-tops etc....

That means, that MSX manufacturers decide NOT to sell MSXs outside Japan to prevent bankcrupty in fear of even higher money losses.

So, without fierce competition, Maybe SEGA had made it good and conquered whole Japan with their SC-3000 and maybe SEGA may had started to produce SMCs (SEGA Master Computer) along SMSs. And european shops are selling all kind of SEGAs for different purposes!

Maybe the nowadays situation could be that we all here in SRC forum (SEGA Resource Center forum) could be wondered about why some freaks bother to import obsolete and totally unknown MSX computers from Japan, people may get fascinated about MSXs 9938 chip, but most of people will think why bother, as we already have SC-3000 and SMS?

So, maybe it was just good thing that MSX standard was not started using MSX2 technology.

This was just my opinion.

Maybe the future may have been different if MSX standard had begun with MSX2 technology, can´t be sure. But anyway that "MSX2 MSX" would had been somewhat late from crowded european computer markets in early 1985.... Late and expensive. Thought "expensive" may depend of in which country machine is sold. I know that in eighties Finland computers were much more expensive than in eighties UK.

I'm not sure how much more expensive the V9938 is. A full blown MSX2 would be quite pricey in 1983, but just replacing the video chip (still keep 16kB VRAM) would maybe have been feasible. The advantage then would be a fully working screen 4 at least.

But for me it doesn't matter much, since my favorite screen mode is screen 1

I should also say that I'm quite happy with MSX1 as it is, so I'm not at all complaining about its VDP or anything, but as with most things there are certainly things that could have been done differently.

And I don't think MSX1 gfx is bad in any way, just look at viejo's portfolio or MOAM, you couldn't have done that on C64 or Speccy.

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And I don't think MSX1 gfx is bad in any way, just look at viejo's portfolio or MOAM, you couldn't have done that on C64 or Speccy.

Thanks. Just wanted to add that some features used in MOAM are very hard to do on a non-pattern based screen mode like screen 5. ARTRAG did some test for porting the MOAM engine to MSX2 (screen5) but it was too slow.

So what I meant to say was that even an MSX1 is sometimes better/faster than msx2

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I'm not sure how much more expensive the V9938 is. A full blown MSX2 would be quite pricey in 1983, but just replacing the video chip (still keep 16kB VRAM) would maybe have been feasible. The advantage then would be a fully working screen 4 at least.

Yes, I was talking about full blown MSX2. As I think, that most MSX2ers like to think that MSX2 should have been full blown MSX2 even in 1983. Or if you, MSX2 user who have at least MSX2 256Kb RAM, 256Kb VRAM etc, get kicked back to the 1983 Japan to live there (yes, to live there, as there are msx users only in Japan, what would you do with MSX2 in Europe, where no-one has such thing? I know, you could train your programming skills, but I mean there would be NO one who could buy software you had made and no one who could talk about your computer, as you were only one outside japan who has MSX2, and you cannot buy games or hardware, all is in Japan, and there is no www yet.... that´s why I suggested you should live in Japan to use your MSX2) would you be as happy if you buy still somewhat expensive MSX2 which has just 16Kb VRAM and all nice features are stripped off? That would be interesting machine, I know.

But I think, that probably manufacturers would had made several less expensive models, just like MSX-1 had RAM 8Kb, 16Kb, etc... as 64Kb was used in most japanese MSX2s, maybe there could have been MSX2 machine which had "just" 32Kb RAM. Keep in mind, that in 1983 32Kb was big memory. Thought I am not sure is 32Kb RAM enough for running MSX2 standard, but anyway, engineers gave many "interesting" technical solutions for many early micros, so, why not?

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And I don't think MSX1 gfx is bad in any way, just look at viejo's portfolio or MOAM, you couldn't have done that on C64 or Speccy.

There are other things an MSX can't and a C64 can, so it's not like because there is viejo or MOAM that everything is suddenly ideal then. Perhaps the old C64 games from the early 80's looked lame, the more modern stuff and the C64 demo scene certainly run circles around an MSX2 even.

The usual suspects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVPW40ygds4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipu3Wfh_wU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUuds9bXFnY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-mu2rAgK_w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qJNltIscI&feature=related

So, this runs on a system older than an MSX1. You may be able to 'port' certain effects to MSX1, but not without loss of quality and/or quantity (monochrome rather than color, less objects, less frames, more RAM requirements etc.)

MSX1 with a V9938, eh? I was curious about that, and I tried to build that "Frankenstein" MSX computer with OpenMSX.
I took a Philips VG-8020 and I putted in a V9938 with 128kb of VRAM: It's working with MSX1 games, and with some MSX2 games as well (probably because 64kb of RAM are not enough)

How much do you think it would be cost a MSX1 with 64kb of RAM and 128kb of VRAM ?

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There are other things an MSX can't and a C64 can

Absolutely, and thats what gives the C64 its character. I really enjoy the more modern C64 demos and thats one reason why I started making MSX1 demos again. From a demo point of view, I think one shortcoming with the MSX is that its hard to load from floppy while running some demo part. I guess the C64 has the same problem too, but its easier to write a custom floppy loader for C64 since its really only have one type of disk drive.
But I agree, there are some things that the C64 does really well, that simply can't be done on MSX. I doubt however that some of these effects would be doable on MSX2 either, because of bandwidth limitations.

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MSX1 with a V9938, eh? I was curious about that, and I tried to build that "Frankenstein" MSX computer with OpenMSX. I took a Philips VG-8020 and I putted in a V9938 with 128kb of VRAM: It's working with MSX1 games, and with some MSX2 games as well (probably because 64kb of RAM are not enough) How much do you think it would be cost a MSX1 with 64kb of RAM and 128kb of VRAM ?

It's not very strange, you can have a look at the Spectravideo SVI-738 and the Yamah CX-5M/128, they both have a V9938, but only 16kB VRAM. And MSX1 BIOS/BASIC of course. Not very Frankenstein, really Adding the VRAM is probably not too hard, as most of these machines are prepared to become MSX2. There are even extensive upgrade guides for the SVI-738 (in Scandinavia, many were converted, I think).

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There are other things an MSX can't and a C64 can, so it's not like because there is viejo or MOAM that everything is suddenly ideal then. Perhaps the old C64 games from the early 80's looked lame, the more modern stuff and the C64 demo scene certainly run circles around an MSX2 even. The usual suspects: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVPW40ygds4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipu3Wfh_wU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUuds9bXFnY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-mu2rAgK_w&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3qJNltIscI&feature=related So, this runs on a system older than an MSX1.

"In order to construct the VIC-II, Charpentier and Winterble made a market survey of current home computers and video games, listing up the current features, and what features they wanted to have in the VIC-II. The idea of adding sprites came from the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer and its TMS9918 graphics coprocessor. About 3/4 of the chip surface is used for the sprite functionality. The work on the VIC-II was completed in November 1981 while Robert Yannes was simultaneously working on the SID chip. Both chips, like the Commodore 64, were finished in time for the Consumer Electronics Show in the first weekend of January 1982."

At least MSX1´s TMS is older than Commodore 64´s VIC-II. Thought 6502 dates back to 1975.... and Z80 is one year younger.

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I doubt however that some of these effects would be doable on MSX2 either, because of bandwidth limitations.

Same here. Perhaps a G9k would be powerful enough for *some* effects. Fact remains that you want direct memory access for all these non-rect operations (mapped, whatever).

As an oldtime C64 demo coder that just got my first MSX a couple of months ago, I can safely say that the VDP (and most of all the bandwidth to it) really is what find the hardest to cope with.
At the moment I'm making a demo targeting MSX-1 class computers, but since I got an NMS8245 I might do a demo for MSX-2 as well later.
However, when talking about demo effects, MSX-2 is maybe even more of a challenge, sure you have some more powerful graphics modes, but trying to do fast effects through the slow VDP-interface will be tough. It will be fun to try though!

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nor seen any truly original game on it.

welllllll....I realy realy beg to differ here.