Who influenced your MSX life

• MSX Computer Magazine/Wammes - Not sure whether I should combine these two or not, but during the MCM years it was rarely ever mentioned who wrote an article. I've read these mags a lot, sometimes I can still come up with certain lines of text, word for word, from some articles or editorials. These are part of my own vocabulary now. Sometimes I quote MCM bits and expressions in the texts I write at my work. No-one will notice, it's just a gimmick I know of.
• A Czech friend, haven't talked to him for years, who's been this eternal C64 nag to me on IRC, and basically claiming that most MSX demo coders are lame asses. Either way, it was the drop in the bucket that caused me to design those 4-motion demos Sphere and Wings. And basically those, but especially Sphere, brought focus to the concept of designed/scripted demos with scenes, rather than scroll 'n logo demos. Not quite sure whether, some 15 years later, anyone still makes demos like that, apart from a few entries during PC demo parties, from people who tend to be strangers to our scene.
• Micro Cabin - Just to show that more is possible than just Moonblaster. Snares changed from a feeble *plick* to a mighty *doofff* overnight. Some MC sounds are in MJTT. But in general MC motivated me to hide the obvious choices for chips, and try things from the WTF-bag o' things.
• The PC demo scene, obviously, as I was/am (not sure) part of it. I don't think I ever saw a PC scroll 'n logo demo during my years. So, those were the demos to look at regarding style, and to fantasise about how to reduce those effects to the MSX paradigm.
• Others: film and music. I usually get more ideas and concepts from those than from MSX entities. That's why this list ends now. For coders I can imagine that many other coders were important influencers, as back in those years, the collective of coders usually got hold of each other's ideas (e.g. the discovery and applications of the screensplit, full h/v scrolling, creative colour cycles 'n such). Alas, my influencers were usually non-MSX.

'No Konami' you say? They're certainly on top of their game, but they didn't really influence me. Had there been a 100% Konami-compatible tracker back then, with PSG-support 'n such, it might have been different. Back then there was SCC-Musixx, and perhaps one or two tools I never even saw. MB clearly has won the race from all others.

1. In first place on the list, this is not a person, this is the first game I saw on MSX:
The Kings Valley, in which I was struck by speed, smooth animation, sprites and colors. Looking at her, I immediately fell in love with this computer.

2. My friend Nikolai (aka Megil), who brought me to school number 38 in my city, where I met a company of people, just like I was hit by MSX. And this place became my second home. I was 9 years old then.

3. Alexander Gerasimenko (aka Aleksandrych). He was our spiritual mentor until the very last days of his life, until he died suddenly. Rest in peace, my second father. ; (

4. Here I would like to mention a few of my friends who have expanded my knowledge of Basic language, and due to the constant competition with which, my skills have grow greatly:
Pavel Eitner (known as Borman), Dmitry Sumka (aka Hacker and later - Demon), Eugene Nosulich (aka Johnik). Ofc here more friends than three, but this guys the best!

5. My friend - Alexander Ryazanov (aka AlexR), creator of X-Format for MSX. Program was first disk formatter on MSX, with abilityes of reformatting disks without destroying information and let using interleave sector numbering, for speedup disk access. This guy also create many game loaders, and many network loaders on MSX.

6. Igor Bocharov is the creator of the ND-System, and one of the authors of a good book on programming and MSX architecture. Who is present on this forum these days, and who doesn’t agree to remake his system to run under MSX-DOS2, or open the source for the community.

7. My good friend Alexei Zaiko (aka Phantom_Lord666). He was a low-level programmer, he knew VDP programming well and knew z80 ASM well. He did not have time to finish his magnificent shell for MSX-DOS ZDOS. At an early age left this world. ; (

8. Marat Fayzullin - creator of first MSX emulator in a world, also present here on forum and even update his emulator time to time. I recall my first acquaintance with fMSX, that's when I was really shocked not so much by the emulator itself as by the selfrejection and love of its creator for this platform. Later, when I examined his track record, I was hit on a tumble!

It was the end of the last millennium, when I decided for myself that the platform died for me.
Long live the new era!
... but ...
These are the two guys who bring me back to MSX thanks to their works, tips, tricks, incredible effects and amazing architecture knowledge and code examples:

9. NYYRIKKI

10. ...and ofc you, Grauw!

By the way, there are many other good programmers, designers, musicians. I have not forgotten anyone, I see and read you all, I admire your code, your abilities, and your love of MSX.
Thank you all!

Nice initiative Grauw. I've had the privilige, at least I think so, to grow up with the computer development. From MSX 1 with tape era and followed every development since. The influence of people came along this period, since people in my surrounding also got in the computer age.
Well, here is my list kind of chronological, although I am not sure it was actually in this order. I'm getting old

1. It all started with a visit to a friend way back in 1984. He had a philips vg 8020 and we played ghostbusters on cassette. And believe it or not, I was hooked to msx. So after whining for a few weeks, my parent bought me a vg8020. So at the age of 12, my life realy started
2. Defenitively konami. From all the games (copies) on tape, konami games sticked out for me.
3. The friend from 1 used to be very active on msx so he influenced me the most of all people in my starting years of msx. As soon as the nms 8280 came out, he bought one and showed me super imposing, digitizing pictures with camera. The amazement was complete. Those new devices called diskdrives where so much faster then tape. Flight deck was loaded in matter of second, where my tape recorder was loading for 10 minutes. And my first glance at a megarom game shooter called Nemesis. To make thing short, involving a lot of whining (again)…
4. The philips NMS 8245. What a machine.. LOVED IT. Picked it up at the philips store in eindhoven with a borrowed philips employee pass.
5. A big influence was my Judo buddy. Not only did hey show me Nemesis 2. I mean, let me hear Nemesis 2. It was called SCC and it sounded amazing. He was the one that got me interested in programming. He called himself Delta Soft and soon we teamed up.
6. The biggest influence was my school friend, in our programs refered to as 'charlie'. He was a programmer and learned me a lot. He realy boosted my motivation to make own programs. Mostly demos in the first years.
6. Another friend showed me a game, which involved crouching and hiding in the shadow, sneeking in a base with a real story line..Metal gear. blew my mind.. again..
7. By that time there where some megaroms that worked with standard 128 kram, but without sound or hanging half the way (like metal gear in the elevator). So I met a guy who was involved in making memory mappers of check mark. So I took a holiday job, birthday money, and bought the 256K memory mapper. All of the sudden I could play all kind of games, I couldn't before.
8. the Federation Against Commodore. When I first saw and heared the fac 3 demo.. man.. I didn't know my philips music module was capable of this.. Together with charlie we mastered the art of making sound samples and that would be the means of 'music' in our programs.
9. My uncle Rambi. At a certain point he joined Delta Soft. Some of you may know him and he is a fantastic guy. He also was and is a great motivator and also involved. Helping with ideas, testing, music, promotion material, boxcover ect. Delta Soft would not have been the same without him.
10. A guy called Piet vermeer of MSX club Vianen. In 1997 members of Delta Soft went to the msx club tilburg for the first time. We met Piet and he realy motivated us to be more active and release our programs and have a fair booth. So after that fair, we started attending dutch fairs. It was his push in the back we needed to do so. I never seen or spoke to him again, but, if someone knows him, give him a big thank you from me
10.1. The guys from surrec who made moonsound music for Thunderbirds are go and Findit. So enthousiastic and skilled composer. These games would not have be so nice without there help.
10.2. BiFi. He was and is my safe guard. There are only a few Delta Soft programs he is not involved in. He helped me a lot with difficult tasks. I owe him a big thank you aswell.
10.3. OMG. I met so many enthousiastic MSX people these past 36 years. But I don't want to bore anyone, so let's end this. I think everyone I met in the msx-scene influenced me and 99% of them in a positive way. And it goes on. So, a big thank you to you all.

In the 1980s and 1990s...
My gramps, who bought me my first computer (an MSX).
My cousins, who gave me their old MikroBitti magazines with type-in games for MSX and SVI, which helped me learn to program in BASIC.
People who wrote games for the said magazines. In particular I remember Pasi Kettunen's name as a positive sign that I should type in the game (Starjet, Skyfox, Kuolemankilpa), not that I understood much of the first two (not written in BASIC). Mikko Kärenlampi is another I remember (Attack, Bouncer, especially since the latter was such a compact game IMO).

In the 2010s, I'd say...
MSXdev organizers and participants, for showing me people still write MSX games and I could try being one of the "cool kids".
Santiontanon, as without Transball's source code as help I'm not sure what kind of games I would've been able to make.
Grauw for the online BIOS entry reference page.
The person who had a Z80 assembly page at some Hungarian site, as that was my go-to reference.
MRC staff and users, for help, wiki and feedback in me learning to write MSX games.

Ops! I forgot to mention ARTRAG! I'm so sorry!
ARTRAG always does a great work coding and helping, and he allowed me to study is reverse SAT routine from Uridium sources. And he always has a hint for anyone who ask help here. So, thank you too ARTRAG!!!