Revival of the Amateur scene in Japan ?

Truly, there has been thousands and thousands of MSX Magazine sold (is there any official sale numbers for the second edition?), a few thousand Game Readers and some "official" companies seem to still have interest in the MSX so it shows there IS a userbase there, probably much larger than what remains here. The question is what the hell are they doing with it ? Are they simply playing old games and reading magazines ? It's hard to believe there isn't ANY other activities going on. Or are we focusing too much on what ASCII/MSX Association is doing (don't get me wrong, this is very interesting), to see other things in development ?

I agree with GuyveR. Ofcourse there are many amateur MSX developers in Japan as well, but because Japan is an isolated country and most Japanese don't speak any foreign language AND because there are enough MSX lovers left in Japan to provide your products with, there's simply no reason for Japanese MSX users to get their stuff outside Japan.

Although there are exceptions, though

wolf_ - we've been working on a jp interface for quite some time already. However, things are a bit tricky. Translating the news even seems impossible for the time being. However, a Japanese MRC is high on the wishlist

About the Japanese community: I think we also must keep in mind the situation of the Japanese MSX community is quite different from the situation elsewhere. In Europe, we had spent lots of money on a computer in the end of the 80s, and suddenly almost everything stopped. No more hardware, no more software unless it was expensive and in non-understandable Japanese... the MSXers in Europe were out in the cold and left on their own while in Japan Compile, ASCII, Microcabin, Konami, Panasonic, Sony and Sanyo were still actively supporting the system, releasing new Japan-only software and hardware.

A computer was still quite an investment back then, so just buying another one wasn't an option to most people. So in order to keep enjoying the MSX, the non-Japanese MSX communities had to start developing new hardware and software all by themselves. They were stimulated by (disk)magazines, fairs and competition. When MSX died in Japan, the internet was just about coming up, other computer systems weren't that pricey anymore and I'm sure there are far more reasons why the Japanese community is (and/or appears to be) less active (absolutely and relatively) compared to other groups of MSX users around the world. Rikusu mentioned some of them as well

However, lets not forget about Japanese amateur products like the MSX Game Reader ,the One Chip MSX1 (ESE-PLD), MegaSCSI, CompactFlash interface (yup, it's from Japan originally if I'm not mistaken), Pleasure Hearts, Kyokugen, NV Magazine, MSX Guncon and many other interesting developments.

www.msx.org of course!

(/ego mode) :P

(really, does the MSX-world -need- a definable center? Why can't it be EU, Japan AND South America?)

i donot have an impression of isolated parts of the world.
For me Europe is definately the center sofar because if I oversee the situation there is export to Japan from our side as it regards readymade products.
Yes , Rikusu there are thus execptions such as the cf interface that is even the main bought product by Japanese users. They have expressed in market share 25%. Re-inventing wheels I have seen only in Europe , the way of using flash memory in all kind of ways. Product shipment from Japan to Europe no, but they have given the permission to show the Ese-pld board, as said the cf is japanese idea( our execution) and the permission as well to make the gamereader of which to the design goes end of the week to the pcb manufacturer.

Just my eurocents