Only a couple of years ago, MSX cartridges belonged only to a distant past. But now, thanks to the efforts of skilled people in the MSX community, the cartridge production has strongly increased.

The MSX Cartridge Shop is a new web page dedicated to new products on cartridge for MSX. One of the first products released by the MSX Cartridge Shop is Caos Begins. This game, developed by Hikaru Games, ranked the 1st place in the MSXdev'07 competition, as well as being selected as the game with best graphics, best music and most polished. The cartridge is presented into a 10x15x2cm, shrink wrapped, packaging together with 16 pages color manual and sold for €18 (excluding shipment). Orders can be placed online from the MSX Cartridge Shop itself. It was also announced in the Karoshi Forums that the game will be available in RetroMadrid, next saturday, at the ZST stand.

Other products, such as the Manuel Pazos' MegaFlashSCC, will be soon described in the MSX Cartridge Shop, but they are already available and can be bought online.

Relevant link: MSX Cartridge Shop

Lord Zett from Darkstone has just submitted his entry for the 25th Anniversary BASIC contest on Konamito: River, a game inspired by Activision's River Raid.

Just like the MEGA-Challenge, this contest runs until June 27th, the day we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the computer that has been keeping us busy for a while already. For this contest, you can win a Philips MSX computer, the game Caos Begins or a T-Shirt of the contest.

Relevant link: River

Good news for Sokoban fans, a new MSX1 game has just been finished: Boxboy. It will be demonstrated on MSXRio'08. This Sokoban-style game has 150 levels divided into 6 worlds and all this in just 32kb! A video of the game is online right here!

Relevant link: Boxboy

In anticipation to the MSX Fair Nijmegen 2008, Bitwise have announced that they again have a new Shockware title to release on the fair: Malaika, the smooth-scrolling platform game for MSX1 by Karoshi Corporation.

The game will go on sale on the MSX fair, January 19th 2008. In the meantime, you can place your orders here, they will be processed as of January 19th. Also new on the order form is Jungle Hunt. If you wish to obtain this game, simply fill in the order field, and Bitwise will get in contact with you. Unfortunately there's a limited stock per game, and it may take a while before the stock is renewed. To make sure you get your hands on one of their games, visit the MSX fair in Nijmegen.

Relevant link: Bitwise

Xavi_Gipe from Barcelona has finished his entry for Konamito's 25th Anniversary MSX-BASIC Contest: Micro Mind. This game, a Mastermind clone offers you to play 3 levels and up to 8 colors. This is the fourth finished game for this contest, no doubt there are more to come!

Relevant link: Micro Mind

Source: Karoshi

In march we reported about a beta version of M.A.Z.E., which was to become an entry for the 2KBOS contest. Daniel Vik and Vincent van Dam -a duo of highly active and surprising developers- have now finished this entry. Source code is included, as well as a game ROM and the relevant files you could copy to a disk. Have fun finding your way out!

Relevant link: M.A.Z.E.

Long time ago, on February 15th 2005 to be more precise, NYYRIKKI started a challenge in this thread of our active MSX Forum: the International Obfuscated MSX-BASIC Code Contest, a.k.a. the IOMBCC. Although not an official MRC challenge, 15 entries were submitted and added to this section of our MSX downloads corner.

One of the entries that really impressed was Rally X, a racing game coded by Daniel Vik. After its release, the two great minds of NYYRIKKI and dvik joined forces in order to create a final, even better version of the game. In the months that followed they added gas/brake controls, a rank-indicator and gear-shifting to the features of the game, that only consists out of 8 lines of obfuscated MSX-BASIC code. The final result was available in our forums for quite a while already, but can be downloaded from here now as well. For comparison, we have decided to keep the initial release online as well.

Relevant link: Rally-X (final version)

Zone by Jos'b is the first entry to the 2kB Open Source Contest on the Karoshi forums. The objective of the game is to switch off all green lights in each stage. The source code is, of course, available and very well documented, albeit in spanish...

Relevant link: 2kB Open Source Contest

Konamito's 25th anniversary MSX-BASIC challenge received its third entry. After Tronkotron, UnAz created Meteorito!!, a sideways scrolling shooter. A shower of meteorites threatens to destroy the old pine yard you inherited from your grandfather. Blast those meteorites to pieces and save the trees!

Relevant link: Konamito's 25th anniversary MSX-BASIC challenge

Source: MSX Posse

After the success of the shooter Manbow 2, people who weren't able to get their copy wondered whether they had really missed the boat. As of today, it's announced that a new batch will be released by Sunrise! Everyone who has pre-ordered the game Manbow 2 will be informed as soon as the new batch is ready. If you hadn't pre-ordered Manbow 2 yet, you'll still be able to do so by sending an email to sunrise.

Other Sunrise news concerns the MP3 player, the MSX cartridge developed by DD and Yobi, which plays back MP3 files. Currently SymAMP, the music player from SymbOS, is the most famous software that supports this cartridge already. An example can be seen here. A new batch of this cartridge is scheduled for the annual fair in Nijmegen, which is only 6 weeks from now! Meanwhile, you can still win one of the MP3 players from the first batch by winning the Scene Music Remake Challenge!

Relevant link: Sunrise